All Categories

A Journey to My Gift

I was the one in our family who brought home the stray dog and tried to rescue the bunny whose mother may have been killed when the field behind our house was mowed.

A neighbor girl and I built a hut in that field when the grasses were tall, by collecting the diverse pieces of plant material we harvested by hand, then weaving them through a sheet of chicken wire we must have found somewhere. It wasn’t very big, - maybe the size of a one-man pup tent, but we were two small girls and could fit quite well inside. I don’t remember much of what we did spending time in our hut, but what I do remember is that I considered this our clubhouse, and that our club was all about the animals that lived all around us. We were part of their world in our little hut and we cared about them.

I can’t say that we accomplished much toward the welfare of any animals - we didn’t campaign for animal rights or try to raise money to help animals. I don’t recall even having an animal shelter of any sort in our small town of 800 people that we wanted to serve. Still, I felt that animals needed to be protected, so I wrote a song that I thought important for our club that we sang at the beginning of each ‘meeting’ in the clubhouse, a sort of dedication.

It was a short, simple ditty and the words went like this…

Don’t shoot said the rabbit
it’s such a bad habit
             although you may think it great fun.

You’d think it less funny
if you were the bunny
           And I were the chat with the gun!

I believed at the time, that I wrote it, but as a disclaimer, perhaps I heard those words somewhere and adopted it as mine. In any case, it has stayed with me all these years.

There was another very special being, who also live in that field and would become a strong influence in my life. He was a small horse, just 14.2 hands high, whose pasture fence was just a short distance down the slope form our clubhouse. His name was Lucky. I was not unfamiliar with horses at this time in my life. I must have been about 8 or 9, and my sister and I had ‘shared’ a horse for about a year. Well, sharing a horse between two horse-loving sisters is asking for more rivalry than friendship. As I got more familiar with Lucky, it was clear to our parents that 2 girls and one horse was a sure formula for bickering and trouble so Lucky came into my life as my own first horse.

I soon discovered Lucky turned out to be more horse than a somewhat beginner could handle. Although I had taken riding lessons from a local rider, who took many ribbons with her horse at the local fairs and horse shows, I hadn’t learned much about understanding or connecting with my horse. This was going to take years and hard lessons for us both.

Many years later, maybe 40, and several horses down the trail, I was again in a situation where I learned that an animal in need of a home was being let go ‘cheap’. The nine year old bay mare lived just up the road from me and was owned by a couple who were no longer riding, particularly not this horse.  She had been known to buck and rear to unseat her riders so was labeled dangerous. I had been exercising horses for anther neighbor who suggested I take a look at the mare. On the ground she was really nice and I liked her immediately, but I was warned by yet another friend that I was asking for trouble. Never having any traditional horse training to speak of, this was obviously not the right horse for me. But something wouldn’t let me say no.

I decided to have a more experienced trainer evaluate her for me. I watched as the man put her through some paces, and what I saw, or I should more clearly say, felt, was the fear in this sweet lady. When the trainer stepped out of the saddle, the mare was trembling and sweating. His advise – “you’ll never make a friend of this horse”. I’ll never forget his words, but I had seen something different, so I bought her. Her name was Duchess.

Then the reality hit me. I didn’t know what to do with my new horse and I was a bit afraid of her. I spent a lot of time grooming her and getting to know her, and I tried a few ground lessons on the lunge line. She all too eagerly tried to do what I asked and actually anticipated requests that she thought I wanted. When she would stop on the end of the line, she immediately turned toward me, but there was so much tension in her body, I could feel her trying her utmost to keep herself together. When I walked toward her, she reared. So without ever getting on her back I decided I needed some help.

Just at that time another friend suggested a trainer who was coming to town who worked with horses in a very gentle way. I thought I’d give it a try and signed up for the clinic. That was the beginning of a journey for Duchess and I in the world of Tellington Touch(TTouch). The clinician, Linda Tellington-Jones, although not well known at that time in the US, but well know in the horse world in Europe, considered herself an animal ambassador. As I learned more about her work, her dedication, her life and her mission, I felt her method would serve Duchess and I well as we became acquainted and trusting of one another.

The method communicated with the nervous system of an animal through the skin using a combination of gentle touches, strokes and lifts to help calm the animal, access areas of trauma, release old patterns of holding and allow for learning to take place. It made perfect sense that learning could not take place in the presence of pain or fear and that touch is an avenue for building trust. The work was transformational for us both. Duchess stopped rearing while I became more attuned to her expressions of confusion and fear that drove her to need to ‘speak out’ loudly when her quite means of communication were not received or considered. The touching helped ground her and help her feel relaxed in her body again. We slowly starting coming together, me listening and trusting what she was trying to communicate to me, and her trusting my efforts to understand her needs. I was really intrigued and grateful to have found a way to open a connection with her so I continued taking clinics and learning all I could about TTouch.

My experience with Duchess and TTouch led me to become a practitioner in the TTouch programs for horses and companion animals. In this work, I had found an expression for being a voice for the animals that I was looking for as a little girl in the home made grass hut so many years ago.

We are all in need of listening and being listened to. Listening to ourselves, to others, and having the space where we also feel heard. Communication, connection, trust and love, are things we seem to have lost in our fast paced, isolated, high tech, consumerism world of today. There is no need to go backwards and deny the achievements that we have made. Many of them have served us very well, and now we need to look forward. Recent studies are revealing the intelligence, emotions and depth of animals, how they connect and communicate with each other, which can be valuable for how we connect with our companion animals. New discoveries about communication networks in our natural world are opening our eyes every day to how other species interact with each other to sustain life and growth, such as the communication of trees within a forest through the network of fungi, or through flowers that boost their scent when they sense the presence of pollinating insects, which benefits both species. When we work as communities in cooperation, everyone benefits. Each of us has a gift that we can bring to our communities while fulfilling our own heart’s desires. In fact it is the most efficient way to live.

We need to listen to our environment, to listen to our hearts, find our own gifts and then to share them.