Horsekeepers: Skip The Guilt Trip!

 horsewoman, have missed the early warning signs of EPM? I should have seen it coming! What was I thinking?!

“But he didn’t really have any signs,” my daughter pointed out.

Even so, what about his weight loss last summer? I thought it was his teeth and had our equine dentist come out.

“Right,” my daughter said, “and then he gained his weight back.”

Then there was that video my husband took while riding—one of those “between-the-ears” shots. I noticed Mighty looking left more than he was looking right. Another subtle EPM sign that I had missed? No, my husband patiently explained, there was something making rustling sounds off to the left in the forest.

I couldn’t drop the idea, though. Mighty had been looking left, but I hadn’t noticed, and here he was a month later, compulsively circling left! If only I’d put two and two together, we could have treated him sooner.

“But who calls their vet because their horse is looking to the left?” This, from Nicole, my hoof trimmer. I supposed she was right.

After a stressful week driving back and forth to get Mighty’s medicine, and researching all I could on this disease, a psychologist friend said, “Guilt’s purpose is to let us know when we’ve done something morally or ethically wrong. That just doesn’t apply here.”

I thought about that a lot. It was true.

Letting go of guilt

I hadn’t done anything morally or ethically wrong to cause Mighty’s illness. And then I found this from Bill Watterson, the creator of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons: “There’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it worse.”

Okay. Okay. Time to step off the guilt train and turn my negative energy into positive action. Truth is, I think I was even bringing Mighty down. I set to work on massage and body work to help his recovery.

Mighty improved and I felt so much better. But if the outcome had been less positive, I would still have known I tried my best.

Maybe you feel “guilty” when you don’t have enough time to spend with your horse. Perhaps you wish you were a better rider. Or maybe, like me, you wish you had noticed those earliest signs of trouble. I encourage you to step off the guilt train.