An EAP SessionSpirit and V—-(due to confidentiality, we cannot use the girls name)
There were ten girls in the van that pulled up to Healing Hearts for Horses that Tuesday morning in early summer. They were ages twelve to eighteen, and had left their group home near Des Moines in order to participate in one of our Equine Assisted Psychotherapy sessions.
In preparation, we had herded ten horses from the front pasture into the grassy arena, where they grazed peacefully, a sea of different colors and sizes and unique histories blended together. Every horse, like every girl climbing from the van, came from a background that was less than ideal, many from unknown trials and harsh circumstances we could only imagine. There were histories of abuse, neglect, and a million other kinds of pain, but on this bright sunny morning, with wind ruffling manes, tails, girls’ hair and the trees overhead, hurtful memories did not occupy our minds. We saw only a small herd of well-cared for horses and ten eager, nervous faces.
The challenge for the day was simple: each girl was to select one of the ten halters hanging on the fence, choose a horse, and put a halter on its head in a manner allowing the horse to be led around. The catch was that executive director Deb, fellow intern Sara, and I were not allowed to offer help.
The air was soon filled with questions – how do I put this thing on? What if he won’t stop eating grass? We answered only “How would you do it? It can be however you think, it just has to work.”
They turned to the horses, looking puzzled but excited. As each girl chose a horse and approached it with the halter, they seemed to form a tentative connection with that particular horse, whether or not the horse was easily caught.
Inside the arena that morning, there were so many stories. And, in some cases, so much nervousness and fear. Cari had been a show horse, and had worked for so long that she no longer wanted to be caught and worked anymore.
Midnight had been broken strongly and harshly enough to provoke her fiercely independent spirit. Deemed a “killer horse” before arriving at Healing Hearts with Horses, she had improved and grown content with her new life, but did not easily allow new people to handle her.
And then there was Spirit. His brilliant buckskin coat made him one of the first horses the girls noticed when they entered the arena. He stood out from the other horses with their darker coats, and several of the girls initially chose him. They soon found, however, that he moved determinedly away from each of them, allowing no one to come within reach.
He had a reason, as we explained to each girl as, one by one, they changed their minds and switched to friendlier horses. Spirit was an Internet fraud case. A girl who lived near Healing Hearts with Horses had bought him from Arizona over the internet. She was sent photos and registration papers of a well trained, fine-boned thoroughbred looking buckskin who would be the perfect child’s horse. However, when she decided to purchase him and have him shipped to Iowa, a very different horse was unloaded from the trailer.
Spirit was very obviously short-legged, stockier, and less trained than the horse she had been led to believe she was buying, and he came with far more baggage. From the beginning, it was evident that he had been abused. We are fairly sure he was a mustang caught and adopted from the BLM by rough criminals who broke him harshly and abusively, then sold him under false papers with false photographs. The men were eventually caught and held accountable, but Spirit still needed a home, and he had so many training problems it seemed unlikely that any young girl would be able to ride him or work with him at all.
Little by little, however, Nicole began to work through his fear and terrible memories, and despite many frustrating days, began to turn him around. The horse the girls saw in the arena was still fearful, but less so than his first days at Healing Hearts with Horses.
Still, catching Spirit proved challenging, and soon only one girl, V—-, continued to try. She was a cheerful, smiling girl with short brown hair and was obviously a bit lower-functioning mentally, but she continued to follow Spirit’s illusive movements with patient determination.
“He was treated very badly before he came here,” we explained to her. “He doesn’t trust people because he’s afraid. It’s hard for him to trust new people now.”
She seemed to accept our explanations, and continued to advance slowly and calmly, trying to stop just before Spirit found her presence too close for comfort. With some tips from Deb, she was finally able to stand at his shoulder and pet his neck, but as soon as she began to untangle the halter, he walked away, just swiftly enough to be safely out of reach.
The “elusive” Spirit
“It’s not you’re fault; he was abused before he was brought here.” We tried to reassure her. “He’s trying to decide if he can trust you, because he thinks people are going to hurt him.”
One by one, every other girl managed to catch and halter a horse, and proceeded to lead them around the arena’s edge at a walk and trot, calling to others to watch. Slowly, V—-’s optimism began to shrink, though she did not quite seem ready to give up hope.
Finally, one girl offered to let Duke loose, a very friendly and easily caught young gelding, so that V—- could catch him. Reluctantly, she agreed. Duke’s inquisitive friendliness made it easy for her to slip his halter on and buckle it, but as soon as she had returned him to the first girl, she returned to Spirit.
Just as most of the others had stopped watching the pair of them, she suddenly, in a smooth, quiet motion, managed to slip the halter over Spirit’s nose. Once she’d gotten that far, he stood quietly as she buckled the crownpiece behind his ears.
The small group of us who had been watching erupted in quiet cheers, and V—-’s smile lit up her entire face as she petted Spirit’s golden neck. Her original optimism and enthusiasm restored, she joined the other girls in experimenting with leading their horses around the ring. She seemed to glow with her success and she petted Spirit’s nose, than urged him into a trot around the grated arena track.
I wondered how much of her triumph was overcoming the challenge we had set before all the girls, and how much could be based on the bond of difficult memories she and Spirit might share. Perhaps both sensed some kind of kinship, maybe even a foreshadowing of shared obstacles lying ahead on their separate roads to recovery.
A few minutes later, while crossing the arena, I walked past where she and Spirit were standing. In a quiet, earnest voice I heard her saying “I’m so proud of you, Spirit.”
-Taiga Christie, volunteer/intern
