Where I Belong
I am the first to arrive.
Wait, no, that’s not right. The barn manager has been here before me. All the horses placidly munch their hay, big flat molars grinding it into pulp, as I walk down the aisle, greeting each horse by name. Skye. Sonni. Shawaff. Questa. Marco. Lady. Lightning. Princess. Yankee. Barney.
While they finish their breakfast, I walk to the covered arena, thinking of the obstacles I’ll need for the morning’s lessons. I drag half a dozen poles through the dirt and line them up two and a half feet apart. I use four more poles to create a square. I roll empty 50-gallon barrels into place and set up skinny vertical poles embedded in big coffee cans filled with concrete. Dressage letters are already affixed to the arena rails. Right now, with no one else here, this is my riding facility. They are my horses. This is my place, and although none of it belongs to me, I belong here, in this space and at precisely this time.
Back at the barn, I check the clock. I have a full hour before the first lesson. I’ve planned it this way, because Skye, my favorite horse, likes me to take my time when I groom him. He stands quietly in the crossties while I curry and brush him. Shortly before I started working here, he slammed another instructor into the cinderblock wall and broke her collarbone. She readily admits it was her fault, but now I’m the only one who uses him.
I saddle him with a small all-purpose English saddle, just the right size for the young boy who will ride him first. Other instructors and volunteers trickle in, unsurprised to see me here and Skye ready. We chat about the cooling weather, the balloons rising over Del Mar this morning. In the quiet, we can hear the voices of the passengers in the gondolas. I wonder if they can hear us. One of the volunteers is reading a sexy bodice-ripper and wishes she’d lived a hundred years ago. We didn’t have antibiotics then, I think.
“Questa’s lying down,” a newish volunteer says urgently.
I look in her stall. “She’s taking a nap. She does it every morning.”
The volunteer looks sheepish.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It scares everyone until they know.”
I like that I know these horses, their quirks and their routines. I like this organization, whose motto is People helping animals, animals helping people. I like this place. And I love the work itself.
My first rider arrives, a slight boy of seven named Karl*. I put his helmet on him and buckle it. His parents follow us as we walk to the arena. Behind them, Louise, one of the volunteers, leads Skye. A second volunteer, Barb, walks on Skye’s right side.
“We’re doing an obstacle course today,” I tell Karl.
“Okay.” He is always agreeable, always sweet.
His parents sit on the bleachers at one end of the arena.
We use the mounting ramp, which takes the place of a regular mounting block. Louise leads Skye parallel to the right side of the ramp. Karl and I walk up the ramp together, and I help him gather his reins and swing his right leg over the saddle. Barb, on Skye’s right, makes sure Karl’s foot is in the stirrup. I do the same on my side.
“Ready?” I ask.
Karl nods.
“What do we tell our horse?”
He grins. “Walk on.”
Skye steps out, responding less to Karl’s verbal command than to Louise’s slight pressure on the lead rope. Karl doesn’t ride independently at this facility, which means he has a leader, Louise, as well as two side-walkers, Barb on the right and me on the left. He does ride independently at a different riding program during the week; I’ve seen him do it. The difference is, today is Saturday, and his parents like to give him a break from his ADHD medication on the weekends, which means when I see him at 9:00 every Saturday morning, Karl’s concentration is on a break, too. He can’t stop his horse on his own, and until he can, we can’t take him off the lead rope. It frustrates his parents, but I’m not qualified to offer medical advice; I can’t tell them to give him his meds on Saturdays. They’ll have to figure it out for themselves.
“First,” I say, “let’s just relax and enjoy being on our horse. We’ll make a couple of circuits around the track, okay?”
“Okay,” Karl says.
We follow the twelve-foot-wide track that runs around the outside of the arena. I ask Karl what he did in school this week. Conversation is easy among us, Louise and Barb included. They are my favorite volunteers. Barb, a chic lady in her late 70s, grew up riding on a ranch. Louise is taking dressage lessons.
Next to the arena is a small trail course landscaped with bushes and flowers. It incorporates a few gentle hills and a mailbox. Before we go in the arena, we ride the trail course so Karl can experience the different movements of Skye’s body as he goes up and down the hills.
“The flag is up on the mailbox,” I say. “Maybe you have mail. Should we see?”
“Yeah,” Karl says.
“Okay, pull your reins back to your tummy and say ‘Whoa,’” I tell Karl.
He tries. Louise stops Skye by the mailbox, and Karl leans down from the saddle to open it. He finds the small plastic horse I left in there earlier and accepts it as rightfully his, which it is.
“Can you put down the flag?” I ask.
He does.
“Do you want to give the horse to me so I can keep it safe for you until after the lesson?”
He hands me the plastic horse. I shove it head-first into the back pocket of my jeans.
“What do we tell Skye now?”
“Walk on,” Karl says.
We ride off the trail course and back into the shade of the covered arena. This time, we enter the ring. We practice walking over the poles, riding around the barrels, weaving in and out of the vertical poles. With every movement, both Skye and Karl use different muscles.
“Can you stop your horse in the box?” I ask when we come to the square I made with poles.
He tries again. Louise subtly tugs on the lead rope, and Skye stops in the box.
“How about,” I say, “we ride to the letter K and stop there?”
Karl’s eyes go to the dressage letter affixed to the rail. “Okay.”
“When we get there, remember to pull your reins back to your tummy and say ‘Whoa.’”
It’s a repeat of the mailbox, the square on the ground. Louise stops the horse. I want so much for Karl to be able to stop his own horse, but I’m not setting him or any other rider up for failure.
“Good job,” I say. “High five.”
I hold up my hand. Karl smacks it with his own palm.
“Low five.”
I hold my hand by Skye’s shoulder. Karl slaps it.
“Skye five,” I say, and with a broad grin, Karl pats Skye’s shoulder.
With that, the lesson is over. My rider is happy, and he’s happier when I give him the plastic horse, which he’d already forgotten. His parents are happy enough. I’m happy that despite his difficulty focusing on tasks, Karl has a sharp sense of humor. I’ve never asked him for a “Skye five” before.
There are other riders, other horses. Around noon, my boss, Sara, shows up. She has a student with severe disabilities who normally rides during the week, but this week her mother needed to move her lesson to Saturday. They’ll be coming later. Can I stay and help?
Of course.
When all the other riders and volunteers and instructors have left, Sara asks me to groom Barney, our 35-year-old Shetland pony. Shetlands have a reputation, often well-earned, for being nasty, but Barney is a gentleman, and Wendy needs a small horse.
After I groom Barney, I tack him with a bareback pad. It has no stirrups. We won’t be using a bridle, either, Sara tells me. I’ll lead him, and she and Wendy’s mother will side-walk.
In addition to volunteering at this facility for two years before I was asked to become an instructor, I taught riding therapy for two summers at a camp when I was in college. I’ve worked with children who have profound physical, psychological, cognitive, intellectual, and emotional impairments, and at first I think Wendy is simply one of them. A tall, gangly girl of maybe 13, she is in a wheelchair that looks like an oversized umbrella stroller. She cannot hear, cannot speak, cannot see, cannot walk. Since she is not my student, I know neither the extent of her disabilities nor their cause — nor is that knowledge necessary. I’m not here to attempt any form of instruction. I’m here to lead Barney.
Because Barney is so small, we don’t use the mounting ramp. Sara and Wendy’s mother lift her onto the pony, and the lesson commences.
They don’t interact with Wendy except to hold her on. We don’t lead her over hills so she can feel the change in her horse’s movements and her own. We don’t ask her to stop in the box or at the K. There are no reins, and she wouldn’t hear or comprehend the instructions even if Sara were to give them. As it is, her balance is nonexistent, and Sara and Wendy’s mother have all they can do to hold her on the pony.
This isn’t a lesson.
For the first time in all the years I’ve worked in therapeutic riding, I feel a sense of hopelessness so overwhelming that tears come to my eyes, but I can’t start bawling in the middle of a lesson, even if it isn’t really a lesson. In this moment, my job is to keep going, past the ground poles Karl and Skye walked over, past the vertical poles they wove in and out of. My job this morning was to set up my arena — my space — and to set up my riders for as much success as was possible for each of them to achieve. My job now is to lead this patient, plodding pony around and around an arena that’s no longer mine.
Focusing on my job won’t keep me from breaking down over the futility of what we’re doing. I ask myself what Wendy can possibly be getting from this experience, and I work to find answers. She can smell — I hope — the unmistakable scent of horse. I believe she can feel movement, though there’s little variation in it. If we take her hand and guide it to touch Barney’s shaggy Shetland coat and then his thick, bushy mane, she’ll feel the difference in textures. Her mother has gotten out of the house, and I feel certain that change in routine is a lifeline. So what if this isn’t a lesson? It’s something.
And something, our barn manager always says, is better than nothing.
I hold myself together during and after the pony ride. Sara and Wendy’s mother take her off Barney and settle her again in her big stroller, and I lead Barney back to the barn. He’s an amazing little creature. It doesn’t matter to him whether his rider is oblivious to the world. He has a job to do, and he does it.
After I rub him down, I return to the arena to remove the obstacles. Sara has walked Wendy and her mother to their van, and I am alone again, in my arena, where I belong.
*The names of all people have been changed.
