Our Days Of Wonder

My heart sank a bit at the idea of maneuvering through yet more repeated curves. Maybe, I thought, we could cut time and effort with an extra-shallow serpentine. I decided to see how little turning we could get away with.

Now, to understand the significance of what happened next, you must understand this: At that point in my equestrian career, I’d never performed any lateral movements (a few clumsy turns on the forehand and haunches notwithstanding). I dreamed of doing upper-level dressage but was still perfecting 20-meter circles and straight lines. I possessed only vague, complicated notions of how to execute diagonal movements—but nothing about how they should feel and look from the saddle. And at the moment Sissy and I entered the cone weave, I had no thoughts of trying.

We passed a cone to our left. I kept my hands still, waiting. Sissy’s shaggy crest extended in a straight line in front of me, on track to pass the next cone. I watched her left ear draw closer and closer to that bright orange marker.

Just before we reached it, I moved both hands to the left. At the same time, I kept my body facing more or less squarely ahead. I imagined moving Sissy’s withers sideways, out of the cone’s way. My goal was to shift us both left, just enough to avoid the obstacle and put it on our right as we moved forward.

It worked. Sissy stepped cleanly around the cone, her body mirroring mine, and resumed a straight path forward along the rail. Delighted, I repeated the move at the next few cones. We zigzagged our way through the weave until we were clear.

Later, as we wound down the ranch’s gravel drive on our way home, my mom observed, “Chris said Sissy doesn’t leg-yield for everybody.”

My jaw dropped. “That was a leg yield?”

Apparently, my humble lesson pony and I could perform a recognizable leg yield, on little more than a thought, repeatedly. My heart swelled with gratitude for my pony and with pride at what we’d accomplished together—accidentally.

I’ve treasured that memory for many years since. It inspires me to work harder to uncover whatever potential lies within horses and me. And it reminds me that connection and (reasonable) playfulness are just as important to that quest as is formal education.

I’m not the only one who’s had such an experience. Recently, a horse trainer I follow on social media described stumbling upon horsemanship practices that “worked,” but for which she had no name or formal explanation … and that she later discovered were being practiced by other equestrians as well.

For me, such moments offer doses of humility and wonder. And joy—the joy of realizing what we humans and equines can do and learn together.