Candida Baker is a writer, journalist, publisher

and photographer. She lives in the hills behind

Byron Bay with her two children, three dogs and

one cat. She also practises natural horsemanship

and owns far too many horses.

The infinite magic of
HORSES

CANDIDA BAKER

First published in 2009

Copyright © Candida Baker 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Inspired Living, an imprint of
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available
from the National Library of Australia
www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74237 100 9

EISBN 978 1 74176 910 4

Author photo by Thomas Ives
Internal design by Nada Backovic
Set in 12/18 pt Centaur by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction

I was eighteen months old when my father first sat me up on a horse.

I loved it so much, apparently, that when I was taken off the only thing that would stop me crying was the promise of another horse ride.

So the next day my father drove around the countryside until he found a friendly farmer out on his horse, and I was once more sat up on this magical creature I’d just discovered.

That was over fifty years ago, and to me horses are still magical creatures.

Much of my early childhood was spent looking for horses to ride, until finally my parents relented and decided I could have one of my own. I think Kim Falconer’s story of her first ride on a young Buckskin filly perfectly sums up the wonderment a child feels in the presence of a horse.

I’ve often wondered about the moment when man stopped hunting horses and started riding them. The horses we know today can be traced back to Equus przewalskii Poljakoff, the prehistoric wild horse of Mongolia, which was hunted almost to extinction before a breeding program from the 1950s ensured its survival.

Once men began to ride horses, they quickly became a necessity for war, hunting, raiding, sport and transport.

Nowadays of course, horses no longer die in battle, but that is not to say that they are always treated as they should be. Several of the stories in the book deal with the poor treatment of the Australian brumby, or wild horse, and with the scars—visible or not—that all abused horses carry. If you love horses, it’s almost inevitable that a horse in need of help will find its way to you. And no doubt if you love horses you will wish you could rescue many more.

These days I have more than several horses, all of which seem to have found their way to me. (Mel Fleming gives a moving description of the energetic connection between horses and their owners.)

Of course, owning and loving horses does not necessarily make it easy to write and compile a book on them. In fact it makes it exceedingly difficult!

During this project, my Shetland was kicked in the eye by one of the bigger horses, which meant several stitches and a large vet bill; and one of the showjumpers decided for reasons unknown to launch himself into the back of the float and get one of his back legs stuck over a partition. Images of instant euthanasia subsided as we realised he was OK, if very sore, but yes, there was another large vet bill.

Large bills are, unfortunately, part and parcel of owning horses. For me, new clothes and visits to the hairdresser and beautician have all taken back seats to bales of hay, feed, farriers and vets, not to mention such specialist items as horse dentistry and must-have horse gadgets.

And every day, I am up early feeding and unrugging, and out late in the afternoon feeding and rugging and checking water and fences and hooves.

Every now and then, when it is pouring with rain and the mud is knee-deep, the tack is growing mould, my gumboots are leaking and the horses are all miserable, I wonder why on earth I keep on going when life could be so much easier and peaceful with fewer horses—or perhaps even none.

But I know the answer: life would be unimaginable and completely boring.

Loving horses is really a lot like marriage. For better or worse, for richer or for exceptionally poorer, in good times and bad, we rub along together. And sometimes—like this morning, when I fed my Golden Girls, Glimmer and Jewel, and one put her head on one hand, and the other put her head on the other hand, and I stood between a pair of golden bookends—come those magic moments to see you through and to remind you of the infinite magic of horses.

Candida Baker
May 2009

My horse has a hoof of striped agate; his fetlock

is like a fine eagle plume. His legs are like quick

lightning. My horse has a tail like a trailing black

cloud. His mane is made of short rainbows. My

horse’s eyes are made of big stars.

NAVAJO WAR GOD’S HORSE SONG

Storm’s Arrival

We had it all planned out. Ten days before Glimmer’s foal was due to be born, we would put her in a smaller field with safe fences, away from the other horses, and give her time to get used to her surroundings before she gave birth.

But Glimmer, my beautiful Palomino Quarter Horse mare, had other ideas. Two weeks before her foal was due, I’d just finished feeding the horses when Imogen, who keeps her pony with us, said to me—‘Look, there’s something strange sticking out of Glimmer!’

She was absolutely right—what was sticking out was the sac with the foal in it, and Glimmer was still nonchalantly eating her dinner.

I rushed inside and got my camera, and Imogen and her dad and I went down to the field and stood near the fence.

Almost immediately, Glimmer lay down and her foal began to appear. Halfway through the process, with half a foal in and half a foal out, she even decided to get up and eat a bit more. But then she thought better of it, lay down again, and in a minute there he was—a beautiful little Paint colt, and not just Paint, a tri-coloured Paint, with brown and black and white on him. I just kept clicking away, and I got everything, from the sac to his first steps.

By then my daughter Anna had arrived back from school, and I decided we would see if Glimmer was happy for us to imprint her foal.

Imprinting is a somewhat controversial method of handling foals that was created by horse specialist Dr Robert Miller about twenty years ago. The idea is that before the foal’s flight instinct has kicked in, you handle it, a lot. You do just about everything from rubbing your fingers on its gums to picking up its feet. I didn’t want to go that far, but I did want to see if Glimmer would let us stroke her baby and how the foal would feel about it.

We went in very quietly and just sat on the ground near him, and I just lightly stroked him and then Anna did the same. Glimmer didn’t mind at all. She even joined in, giving him a few kisses and licks. Before long, we could stroke him all over. We did it for only about ten minutes, but from that moment on he was so easy to handle.

We called him Storm because he was born between summer thunderstorms. I was grateful that we spent the time with him, because when the rain got fierce I could put Glimmer in the stable and Storm was very happy to walk beside me.

As soon as Storm was born, all the other horses crowded around, including his bigger half-sister, Jewel, and gazed at him for hours. The geldings all stood in a row against the fence line. It was the funniest thing to watch.

Now he is six months old, a beautiful Paint colt, and he runs and gambols—he is very independent. He managed to get separated from his mother a few times, and neither of them panicked, thank goodness, although she was walking like a nursing mother who was desperate to give her baby a feed by the time I got him back in with her.

Every morning when I give them hay, Storm asks me for scratches. Then Glimmer always manages to drop hay on his head, so that he looks rather goofy instead of like the noble steed I hope he will one day become.

Candida Baker

A stubborn horse walks behind you,

an impatient horse walks in front of you,

but a noble companion walks beside you.

ANONYMOUS

Ducking for Cover

My horse, Shilo, is a 14.2 hands chestnut Arabian mare. She’s sixteen years old.

A couple of years ago, something really unusual happened. I was having lessons with my riding instructor, which I’d been doing every week for the past three years. On this particular day in the sand arena, I was doing figure-of-eight circles, and Shilo refused point blank to go down the centre of the arena in a straight line. She would just side-step when I got to the middle, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Once the lesson was over, I came to a stop in the middle of the arena and waited while my instructor came over to talk to me. ‘Gee, she really didn’t want to step in the middle today, did she?’ she said with a laugh.

We both thought it was a good joke until I asked Shilo to move off so we could go home. She wouldn’t move. Not even one step. She just stood there, ears pricked, head tilted to the side, staring at her feet!

That’s when we saw what all the side-stepping and fuss had been about. A baby duckling had found its way into the arena and hadn’t been able to get out again. While my instructor and I were talking, the little duck must have found its way over to Shilo and sat very snugly between her front hooves. I can only imagine how scared that poor little duck must have been, especially with Shilo and I charging around it.

All that time Shilo had been trying her best not to step on the poor little fluff ball, even while I was on her back unwittingly trying my best to get her to walk straight on top of it!

I will never forget how cute both my horse and that little duck looked as they both stood there staring at one another.

Mykaella Gosper

A good trainer can hear a horse speak to him.

A great trainer can hear a him whisper.

MONTY ROBERTS

In the Dark Hours

There’s not a whole lot of fun in having depression.

Especially when you are busy hiding it from the world and making out you are OK—telling friends and family that you aren’t lonely and that you don’t need any assistance.

Perhaps hardest to endure is crying alone. All you crave is someone to hold you and tell you it’s going to be all right. Even when you don’t know what ‘it’ is that’s making you feel this way, it’s company you desire, another human spirit to let you know that someone understands and things are going to get better, eventually.

I’d been having such a day last year. I was five hours’ drive from family whom I didn’t want to burden. And I didn’t want to contact a group of friends who were either recently married or recently hooked up, or who I thought were too happy to bother with someone suffering a bout of depression so bad it knocked me sideways.

I was tired of my life. Tired of pretending that I was happy by myself and that I didn’t need anyone.

It’s funny how we can trick ourselves into thinking we are OK, yet it just takes the slightest thing for the veneer to slide off and we are exposed for who we truly are; how we truly feel.

So there I was on the outskirts of a small country town, population 98. No one around but two horses in the paddock for company. Funny thing about those horses, about seven months before, I had saved them from starvation a couple of towns away from me.

I’d saved them towards the end of a winter when the average overnight temperature was around eight degrees below freezing. They were in a bare paddock—no feed, no rugs, so thin you could play music on all their ribs. It was obviously a long time since they’d been shown any love or attention. I’d been alerted to their plight and had brought them back to my place and my empty paddock, but not before a good two-hour battle to coax the older mare into the truck.

Paint and Sadie were their names. Paint was still a youngster at four years old, and perhaps with youth on her side she had fared better than the old grey mare.

But Sadie was a different story. Piecing together her history, I learned that she had been handled quite roughly in the past, possibly abused. She had never fully recovered. A flea-bitten grey, she was riddled with worms and lice the day I collected her and brought her to safety. She was blind in one eye and wary of the whole human race, which had given her nothing but hurt and hunger for years.

Getting Paint, the younger mare, on the truck was easy. She was a rather bossy chestnut who knew that she deserved better and wasn’t too scared to express her indignation at what she had been put through. Sadie was different, not willing to be caught, not willing to be taken on a truck even though it was away from starvation. It took a lot of patience that day to get her safely loaded and home.

Once she arrived, she stepped gratefully down as if she had arrived in heaven, but she was wary … always wary of human touch.

Over the months Paint began to thrive, bustling up for treats, pats and attention, always the first in line at the gate when you were outdoors, a stickybeak through and through who grew more sure of herself every day.

But Sadie remained out of touch and always just slightly out of reach.

I have no doubt she was grateful she was in a better place, but any attempts, no matter how calm, to get a halter on her again and groom her just stressed her out. I think she was happy just to be alive, and I learned to let her be.

Although eventually she would come up tentatively for the odd treat and tolerate the odd pat, it was always after Paint had cleared the way for her. She seemed to watch out of her one good eye, deem the situation safe and proceed forward for a bite of apple. Then, before anything more than a brief stroke or two on the neck could be given, she would step back again.

The day I was having my worst bout of depression, I had let both Paint and Sadie into the house paddock to trim down a burst of spring grass that had come through.

Sitting alone on the edge of the verandah, overcome by sadness, I reached a point in myself that scared me. I didn’t know who to call, what to do, or even why I was feeling this way. Lowering my head, I began to cry.

I don’t know how long I sat there, I just know I was distraught and overcome by something I didn’t know how to handle any more.

I lost track of time, of sight and sound. I could have been anywhere. Then I felt the sudden whisper of warm breath on my neck. I felt a muzzle nuzzling me softly and looked up to see not the chestnut but Sadie, looking straight at me.

Standing up, I clung to her, and with my hands in her tangled, dirty mane, I pressed my face to her neck and let the tears fall. She stood stock still and let me go on weeping until I had nothing left.

Sadie, who never approached anyone, was letting me hold her, lean on her, draw strength from her. She had come to my rescue.

After some time clinging to her neck, I wiped my eyes and pulled myself together. As I whispered my thank you to her, off she shuffled … a half-blind old grey mare who had not trusted people for as long as I knew her.

The odd thing was that she didn’t miraculously turn a corner after that. She still shunned humans, still stood back, happy to let the chestnut have the attention. But somehow, that day she knew what I was going through. She must have known I had saved her, and that day she saved me.

Somehow she must have known that her fear of me wasn’t as strong as my fear of living was at that moment. I think it was her way of offering me some of her strength, the equine version of holding someone close, patting them on the back and telling them it’s all going to be OK.

There’s something about having an animal as large and alive as a horse next to you that makes you look at the world afresh. It brings back a little of the wonder, reminds you of the simple pleasures left to be had, should you choose to feel them. I love standing in the warm air, breathing in the horses’ smell and basking in their presence.

I thank Sadie from the bottom of my heart for offering me her silent support that day. For the blending of the human and equine spirit that uplifted me.

As humans, we can’t hope to fully understand the horse’s spirit. But many of us are simply thankful that it exists.

Linda Walker

Slow down so you can hurry up. In the end, it’s a

good way. Speed ahead of accuracy is no good.

RAY HUNT, HORSE TRAINER

The Horse and the Hanging Bridge

When I was young I lived in the Blue Mountains. I must have been around fourteen or so when, one cold, misty mountain day, my friend and I decided to take a long ride to the Valley of the Waters—a gorge filled with waterfalls. It was the Sixties, and it seems that kids had so much more freedom then. In those days we would ride all day on these marathon adventures across the tablelands and valleys. My pony, Jewels, was a fat little thing, but she was gorgeous, and I used to ride her for hours on end. Our parents gave us so much leeway. We often rode in big groups, but on this particular day there were just the two of us.

My friend and I picked our way down the steep gorge and came across a suspended timber bridge. I cannot imagine to this day what possessed us to think we could cross it with the horses. It was a narrow, swinging affair with thin wooden planks, and it floated 300-odd metres above the valley floor.

My friend went first, but Jewels, never one to miss out on anything, charged after, trying to push past my friend and the other horse. They made it to the other side, but just as Jewels and I reached the end of the bridge, her back legs went straight through a hole where a plank was missing. Then her front legs went down and she was totally, utterly stuck—dangling over the drop below.