Neo

A couple of months ago, I spent a day in the sun picking up manure and riding horses. I had finally gotten back on Strega after a winter hiatus, rode Drifter in the arena and, despite my exhaustion, decided to finish the afternoon with a short stroll around Shay Meadow on Jake. As we rounded the bend of rocky trail to grassy meadow, we rode upon two people and their horses. The woman was grazing her buckskin paint horse and the man was mounted on a bay.

Courteous greetings were exchanged and when they asked how I was, my response was, "Tired. This is my last ride of the day."

"Do you train?" She asked.

"Not officially." I responded. "This is just my passion."

The conversation progressed to where we realized that we had met before, at Paul Dietz's Big Bear Clinic in 2008, and I recognized the grazing paint, Neo, as the same beautiful 3 year old from that clinic.

Neo in 2008 at age 3

"You're Maggie*, right?" I confirmed, remembering when I met her that she was just 3 months recovered from a horse-related broken arm. She came to Paul's clinic for confidence building and said he helped her tremendously.

She insinuated that they wanted some help with Neo, that there had been some changes in her life. Things were left open-ended, and Jake and I continued down the trail.

With Paul's clinic fast approaching, I've sent out flyers and emails and text messages, I got a response from Maggie asking about the clinic for her new husband and if I could indeed help them with Neo. So this week, we set up a time and they came over yesterday afternoon.

At a towering 17 hands, Neo was nervous, so I got him moving freely in the arena. He didn't appear spooky and was not bothered by the flag sending him in different directions. He was, more or less, distracted but eventually came back to be haltered. He crowded my space and wouldn't back up, was heavy when leading, and he was not interested in flexing laterally. As I spent some time figuring out how responsive (or unresponsive) he was, I was able to get a few things working for me a little better to move on to what was a bigger problem for his owners: saddling.

"He steps away. My ex used to sneak up on him to saddle him."

"Do you tie him?" I asked.

"No. He pulls back."

Hmmm. I thought. "OK, let's start from scratch."

So I decided to get myself in colt starting mindset. I carried my saddle and pad out into the arena and worked at swinging the pad up and off, repeating several times as he occasionally stepped away from me. I reached down, grabbed my saddle and swung it up.

"He never does that!"

"I believe you." I said as I pulled the saddle off. He wildly swung away as the saddle slid from his back. He planted his feet in cement as I asked him to step forward.

"Here's the horse that pulls back." I said. "He does not yield to pressure here. He should step forward."

So I changed gears from saddling to groundwork again, trying to build through pressure and release a horse that will lead properly. While working through this, Maggie gave me a little glimpse into Neo's past from 2008 where he was a colt with a lot of promise to the troubled horse he is today. He'd been to a few different trainers for 30 days here and there, but last year bucked off someone who had just offered to ride him. I'd heard the story previously and tried to keep my opinion to myself (gymkhana without quality, riding with legs draped over the saddle forks, riding in a mechanical hackamore are all observations I've had of this particular person).

I saddled him again, it wasn't perfect, but it was progress and cinched him up while he stood quietly. But then he became unglued and nearly ran me over (thank goodness I built in a smidgen of respect, because he backed off when I threw my hands up in defense). Neo bucked across the arena, flinching and kicking at the saddle strings. When he came back to me, I got back to groundwork again, confused by the saddle issue with an 8 year old horse that's had "professional training". After several passes of stepping hindquarters away and moving the front across to switch directions, I moved back to lateral flexion in a tense neck that couldn't bend without moving the feet.  Neo made me wait for minutes until his feet stopped and he could get soft to the pressure on the leadrope. This was not going to be easy. No wonder they've been having trouble.

Finally, he was in a place where I felt I could get on him. He bridled pretty easily, when asked to lower his giraffe head down to take the bit. I became the best contortionist I could to reach a toe into the stirrup and hopped on my right toe in several circles until Neo stopped his feet. I lifted my body and balanced on my left toe until I felt he was stable enough to swing my right leg over. His mouth gaped and fussed with the bit and he was not light to my hands. Serpentines later, he was moving a little better.

All throughout this process, I could not comprehend what happened to this horse. Maggie told me stories, but there is a massive hole in this horse's foundation and I can't quite put my finger on it. Thankfully in the colt starting video I shot with Paul in 2011, he caught me several times with my boot too far in the stirrup. I remembered and placed it as far out as possible so as not to get caught because when I dismounted, Neo bucked away from me.

There big black hole in his foundation.

They returned again this morning, where a few things were a lot better (including their walk over to my house), and I began to introduce to Neo that picking people up from the fence is another mounting option. I noticed a few vertebrae that seemed to be out of place and asked if they've had his back checked. Maggie said she has a chiropractor and would seek getting an adjustment for him. Understandably, with Neo's height, her small 5'2" frame cannot see that high. I really wanted to revisit mounting from the ground because, naturally, he should be able to do both. Saddling and mounting today was worse than yesterday. While not cinchy, when asked to first move when saddled his body twitched and flinched and he made an odd audible noise before taking a first step. I am no doctor and typically don't think about pain issues with horses that don't like to be saddled, but something is amiss here.

After some groundwork under saddle, I worked at mounting. Maggie shared with me a slicker story that sent a trainer to the hospital. I discovered that he oddly was almost more accepting of me trying to mount from the right than on the left, but his height made that attempt awkward for me so I didn't pursue it. After possibly 10 minutes of bending and releasing, flapping the stirrups, and fake mounting by putting the weight of my hand in the stirrup and hopping on one foot, I was able to climb onto the quietly standing giraffe. I rode him a bit, worked with trying to get him soft on the bit, and approached the fence to visit and build patience in him to let me dismount there. When it finally happened, it was uneventful.

But Neo is on my mind.

What happened to him and how can I help him?

And how can I help his owners, who seem very open minded and care about him, but currently lack the education and experience to help him break through his barriers.

It's hard to not pity a horse that seems to have some dark secrets.

Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity.

No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it. ~ Robin Hobb