Mara forgets to breathe again

Lately I've been taking Mara on some hardcore walks - 3 hours of going from one challenge to the next. Funnily, I cannot always predict what the challenges will be, and today there was something completely unbeknownst to me but knownst to her that had her frozen in her tracks, heart pounding visibly out of her chest. I let her just stand there until she remembered to breathe again, until she looked away for a moment, and grinded her teeth in a "I give up" gesture.

Last week there was a new group of sheep in a new field and she was not so happy about it, but I just hung out there talking to the sheep in my sing-song voice, "HELLOO! Ja, HI!" in an attempt to show her how delighted I am to encounter animals during our walks. There was a lamb nursing, its tail wagging like crazy. I wanted it to come close but its mother keeps it away.

On to the "reindeer" (actually some sort of edible deer, no idea). As you know this is the most stressful place I can bring Mara, and if it weren't for the massive double fence, I'd be nervous too - their antlers are huge and they look like they know how to use them. For the first time, Mara wasn't stressed out about them. Of course they spotted her and got scared and ran off, that helps! Mara started eating some tasty dirt (just decomposed oak leaves, I suppose) and I knew she was OK.

But no, there are new cows in a field. About 6 of them, half with babies, and the babies are about the size of Mara. All these cows are the exact same color as Mara, but with wicked horns and they exhale fire when they breathe. The bad thing about these cows, besides being so ridiculously large, they are curious. Are all cows so curious or just German ones? They all came to the fenceline, as close as possible to us, and stared at us unmoving for 30 minutes. I told Mara we'll stand there until they get bored and leave, but my that took a while. She was upset, she pooped and peed and I could see her heartrate by looking at her, but she wasn't threatening to drag me out of there to safety. I know the moment an animal moves away from her, it teaches her something about that animal - harmless - so I try to wait til they move away. I admit I was a little scared though because I'd read this week about a herd of Highland cows that escaped and started charging people and had to be shot by the police (I guess the cops do use their guns in Germany afterall). I don't like hearing about rampaging cattle. Again, I talked to the cows and whistled to them to try to allay their burning curiosity, and imagined that the thin treeline between us would slow their stampede. Anybody have a spare cow to put in our field til Mara's OK about it?: )

Today I decided to take Mara into the woods and sit on the first bench I found (by the shepherd's house, after I fed their chickens some clumps of grass and watched in fascination as they devourted them - don't chickens make the cutest noises? It's like they're saying "Yum, thank you, Yum!"). I wanted to read my Kindle while Mara learns to be tied to trees. Well, Mara's not that good at it yet, even though she was pretty calm. She tried to break free once when she'd walked around the tree and the rope tightened, and she panicked. I guess she's not ready to be tied to trees she can walk around yet, so I tied her to a massive beech. That worked. Ironically the book I'm reading now is called Riding Fear Free - it has some really interesting concepts about how to recover to a state of fear-free riding. For example, the main theme of the book is to not ever do anything *despite* fear. Pushing yourself through fear isn't as effective as working on things you're comfortable with until your fear boundary moves on its own. Another concept is when you finally are able to do something you were scared to do, not to drill it - just do it once and reward yourself by quitting, because your brain needs the processing time. The book recommends riding in very short sessions, and not everyday, and not letting a trainer push you to do things you don't really want to do yet. And it's true, we are more patient with our horses' fears than we are with our own.

I told Mara we'd stay there until she relaxed and cocked a hip. Well she never cocked a hip, but she stood like a statue, not fretting, but certainly very keyed in to what was going on in the woods. I could tell when a gust of wind was on its way by her posture. A bicycle passed her, an old man who asked if the tree was strong enough to hold her (I hope!), and finally a horse, yay, it was Harry, that Standardbred I'd done some exercises with at the TTEAM clinic, and sure enough, he was in his endurance gear. KT had told me his rider is an endurance rider.

I took the opportunity to chat with her and she was kind enough to answer lots of my questions even though she probably wanted to continue her ride. She confirmed that you have to go a very long way to find an endurance ride that does not use streets, and that if you ride 50 miles you MUST have a crew, because ride management does not bring supplies to vet checks for riders. Harry is only 5, but apparently doing much better than Mara on the trails - as they were approaching, he saw Mara tied to a tree, motionless, the same color as all the red leaves all over the ground, and he raised his head, but did not balk at all. OK he hesitated a bit, and his rider said, "Well that's something we've never encountered - a horse tied to a tree!" Yah, that doesn't happen much around here. Anyway I complimented her lovely bay horse - oh, he's just the perfect size for a Standardbred - 15 hands, and a really pretty specimen.

After they left I took Mara down to visit a new herd of Icelandics, and when they came running, she spun around me in a crazy fear reaction, even though she'd just spent some time hanging out next to them by the fenceline. I was disgusted with this - she was absolutely unable to stand still at that moment.

Then coming up the switchback trail was my friend C and her husband and a dog that looked enough like a coyote I told them it needs an orange collar. She asked me if we can go riding soon - she's the owner of that pretty Appy named May. I told her a very short ride to help my horse get some confidence, because we've had only bad rides lately.

Finally home again I got out some butcher paper and a "sharpie" and tried to make a sketch of my saddle for my new saddle pad order. Oh man, it's like trying to represent round earth on flat paper. I had a heck of a time getting it right. Then the donkey grabbed my sketch and ran off! I was yelling at her BELLIS NO but she kept going. I worked so hard on it! This is how she communicates with me, "You left me alone for 3 hours today, so I'm taking your things away from you." Seriously, she's like a cat when it comes to making a point.

Eventually I got it back and it wasn't destroyed. She looked at me with big eyes like, "That really upset you huh!?" I hate that look because it shows me how sensitive she is to me yelling at her. If you haven't been around donkeys you probably don't know their expressions but they are much easier to read than a horse. I'm gonna go out there and give them both some apples now - I guess today was hard on both of them.