A few years ago, my husband and I purchased a horse for our family. Sophy was a beautiful quarter horse; not too large but well-built and fairly young. The man we bought her from rode her around a little before loading her into our trailer for us to take home. After a few minutes of leading her around the pasture to get her used to our place, we put children on and led them around for another hour or so. We put Sophy away and went to the house, content with our purchase.
The next time I went out, it was with the intention of riding Sophy myself. I got my gear ready and headed out to catch her and take a little ride. After I caught her I reached for the bridle to put it on her. I reached out my hand to touch her head and she backed up, jumped and shot her head up as though I had just beaten her with a stick. I worked for several minutes to try and calm her down, talking softly, rubbing her sides, easing her. She was breathing heavily, her eyes were showing white and she was in a state of complete panic. I finally got her settled and tried again to reach for her head, this time with much more care and caution, working up from her neck to her head to her face. It took a few more minutes to reach that far and at last I was able to take the bridle in hand and begin again to put it on her. It was a long process of slowly touching, reaching and gaining trust. But it was clearly a foreign experience for Sophy.
About this same time, my brother asked if we would be willing to let someone stay with us who needed a place to stay. He said that she had had a lot of trouble in her life and needed some special attention. Tami, (not her real name) had been abused terribly as a child and was in need of a great deal more than just a place to stay. Her health was poor but her spirits were even poorer. She felt unwanted and unloved. Her abuse had made her bitter and resentful. At first, when she came to stay, she would help around the house and try to do everything she could to keep herself healthy. After a while, she began to think that we were going to treat her the way she had been treated as a child and she began to lash out. She stopped taking care of her health, and eventually moved away.
As I watched these two, Sophy and Tami, I began to wonder about the fragile nature of life and how important are the precious first years of our lives. I read a book recently in which one of the characters is telling his son not to go near the young colts. He told him that it would only take one bad experience with people and those colts would be worthless for future training; that they must be protected, guided and gentled by a loving hand at all times while they are young in order for them to be capable of learning the skills of harness horses later in their lives. One false move in the colt's earliest months could mean the difference between success and failure in the horse's training later on.
As a mother, I have learned that children too are extremely fragile and susceptible to the treatment they receive when they are very small. One word, one unkind act, one traumatic experience can cause a child to be handicapped socially, mentally or spiritually for the rest of his life.
When I bought my horse, I expected a nice kid's horse that we could ride around the farm and have fun with. What a got was a horse that had obviously been mistreated and was never able to function on the level we had expected or hoped. The longer we had her, the more bitter and reactionary she became. At the sight of a man with gloves, she would become frantic with fear, rear and try to run. If anyone even lifted their hand in her presence, she would jump back, flinching and rearing. Like the girl who came to stay with us, she expected everyone to treat her the way she had been treated when she was young. The result was unhappiness and dysfunction in both cases.
What I learned is that both horses and kids should be treated with “kid gloves”. After all, can we really be too kind?
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