Give Me Sugar

We approached Sugar where she stood in a sturdily fenced corral.  It was at this moment that I had a pang of regret for my voluble chit chat a week ago on the trail.  My musings on a wish to get to know a horse had become moist breath and big eyes and odd noises, and that was just me.  I came toward Sugar a step and a half behind Karen.  Sugar is a black and tan Mustang with an unreadable branding on her neck.  Karen put a halter on her.  I did not really know what to do with myself without a fence between me and this large living thing.

Very quickly, without preamble, I was handed the rope and instructed to walk with her around the corral.  I was told that the two things I had to know were that Sugar would try to pin me against the fences and that if she pulls ahead I need to stop her.  She immediately pulled ahead and Karen said I should just stop and she would stop.  I stopped. She didn't.   Then I learned to pull up on the rope near her neck, phew, we stopped.  Karen pointed out that Sugar wasn't walking parallel to me either and that this is a problem.  She was essentially cutting me off at the pass.  With instructions to look straight ahead while walking tall and also the need to turn my head and see the alignment of Sugar's hips I was sending quite whacked cues to the horse.  My main concern was not being pinned against the fence.  The other thing I was doing was talking.

As much as I wanted my main talent to sway the day, the horse does not speak English, or infer meaning, or even respond.  I felt like I was at a cocktail party with people who thought I was boring.  Tons of effort and a constant report of my internal feelings, asking permission for advances, and a side play by play of all of my thoughts to Karen and one could only call me at this moment The Horse Blatherer.  Much of the most effective advice was to stand tall or be big, open my arms to the side, hold my place.  It was all a completely new language for me and I was baffled and full to the brim with my first day amongst horses.

I asked Karen as we walked away from Sugar's corral to repeat the rule that horses like to pin you to fences and get ahead of you.  Her reply was "Oh no, that's just Sugar, all the horses have different problems, each their own."  This sounded ominous.