By the first day of spring, Claire, Mother, and I were working in the Maury River Stables Therapeutic Riding School. Three times weekly after Claire’s school day had ended she, Mother, and I taught a lesson as a team. Though Claire was at that time only eleven, she had completed the required training and was considered a junior volunteer able to serve alongside Mother.

Our charges in the therapeutic school ranged in age from the very young, of perhaps five years of age, to much older, closer to the age of Mother. I found satisfaction and purpose in this work and felt that my entire life had prepared me to teach in this way.

My therapeutic students always greeted me with affection and treated me with the greatest respect. They often brought me drawings and paintings for my room; some gave me cookies and treats. Others, I was told, included me in their bedtime prayers, and it was for this that I was most thankful. To be so loved at such an advanced age as mine was a great motivator. Their devotion humbled me.

I returned their love fully and generously. Whether I was hot or cold, whether I was in pain or enjoying a respite free from pain, I welcomed every therapeutic student, every time.

Why some students attended the therapeutic school and others did not was not always immediately evident to me. True, for many of my therapeutic students, a physical impediment blocked their technical mastery, but that was truly the case with all my students, whether in the therapeutic school or not. Take Mother, for example: a deformity in her back impeded her technical mastery, and an unexamined fear in her mind kept her from pushing herself further. Yet Mother was not enrolled in therapeutic school as a student but as a sidewalker volunteer with Claire.

I gathered from Gwen and Mac that the therapeutic riding school served people of all ages who were in some manner wounded. Perhaps they had no use of their legs, which was easy enough to discern since in those situations, a chair with wheels carried them up a special ramp built to the height of a horse’s back so that all transfers were made laterally. This removed the danger that could be caused by lifting a student up and over onto my back. Other students brought wounds that were more difficult to detect because there was no outward evidence.

I quickly observed that the most noticeable difference in most of my therapeutic students was that they possessed an uncommon openness and willingness in their hearts. I will take heart and loving-kindness over technical ability any day of the week — for a rider with an open heart allows the fullest possible joining up, whether galloping over the Maury River, slowly walking a figure eight, or merely standing in my room watching the blue mountains.

Before I started this work, Mac told me we could not play favorites in this job. I suspected Mac spoke from having learned from experience that such strong attachments eventually cause a degree of brokenness in the heart. I, however, am not ashamed to disclose that there were a couple of students to whom I was particularly partial.

One student, a girl named Kenzie, I learned after three lessons together, could not see out of either eye. At first, I had thought perhaps Mrs. Maiden had mistakenly placed Kenzie in the wrong program. She moved with such confidence and grace in the saddle and on the ground and with a heart as open and kind as any girl, save my Claire. I adored Kenzie; she was like a blast of spring, arrived in the dead of winter. Her blindness did not prevent her from placing her full trust in me or Claire and Mother, her sidewalkers.

Claire and Mother kept us moving as a team by acting as Kenzie’s eyes and, of course, compensating for my own left eye. They guided us around the ring and over poles, or around a spiral of cones set up for bending practice. Truthfully, Kenzie had little need of sidewalkers in a traditional sense. Claire and Mother gave Kenzie no physical support. Nor did they make actual contact with Kenzie or me. They jogged or walked alongside me and used their voices more than anything — Claire instructing us and Mother encouraging us.

“A little more leg, Kenzie. Now close your hands around the reins, but don’t pull back on them. Sit down and relax,” Claire would say.

After trotting circles in our corners without breaking, Mother would applaud us both. “Beautiful, Kenzie! Beautiful, Chancey! Now enjoy this straightaway — you’re doing great!”

Mrs. Maiden always kept the therapeutic horses on a lead line, for precautionary measures. After only a few lessons, Kenzie became such a proficient rider that Mrs. Maiden hardly worked at all. I listened for Kenzie’s directions, and Mrs. Maiden kept the lead line slack. I certainly would have indulged Kenzie a bit more than my other students if she had squeezed her hands too tightly around the reins. Yet she held the reins with a light touch as if they were robin eggs in her palms. If, because of her blindness, Kenzie had fallen on my neck a bit more than my sighted students, I would gladly have tolerated her weight. But she kept her center of gravity fully aligned with mine.

Kenzie rode with an open heart. Like me, she used her ears, her nose, and every nerve in her body to work for her eyes. My role with Kenzie was simply to respond to her touch, her voice, and her feelings. When Kenzie brushed my body, I made a quiet, low sound of contentment so she could feel that I enjoyed her manner of grooming me. If Kenzie wrapped her arms around me for affection, I wrapped my neck around her in kind, so that she could feel my affection, too. In the saddle, I paid close attention to the directions of Claire and Mother as they instructed Kenzie which aids to deliver, so that at the slightest detection of effort on her part, I obliged. Kenzie showed me that eyes are but one way to see the world. She comforted me a great deal, and every time I spent an hour or two with Kenzie, my fear of losing my own sight lessened.

Zack, a boy student of mine, bore no evidence of physical wounds at all, but even as he picked up the body brush to groom me, I sensed that his wound hid deep within his mind and so prevented him from enjoying or experiencing much of anything for more than the briefest measure of time. With Zack, my task was to reach deep enough into that wound and give it a soft enough interruption that it did not send Zack’s sparks flying. With Zack, I strove to relax him enough that his concentration would increase over time.

Zack’s nature was such that he took in too much information, too quickly, and then became paralyzed by a jungle of stimuli. When Zack started with me, he would regularly melt down, as Mrs. Maiden described it. I know that to a stranger looking at our progress, or perhaps trying to chart Zack’s progression as a rider, it may have appeared that we were slow to advance. But I am proud to say that we made extraordinary progress together. Eventually, Zack could hold his mind quiet and groom my entire right side before he disengaged again and had to be redirected to the task by Mrs. Maiden. Frequently, Zack would stand near me and take in only the feel of my mane or the touch of my nose to his neck for some time before he became distracted again. It was several months before Zack made it out of my room and into the ring. To understand our accomplishment, you would need to feel what it is like to be Zack.

When we did begin our work under saddle, Claire and Mother had a much different role as Zack’s sidewalkers than they did as Kenzie’s. At our first lesson, Zack was frightened to be in the saddle; he screamed and thrashed around. He was unable, however, to calm his mind enough to get down or get help getting down.

“I want down! I want down! I want down!” Zack screamed.

I stood square; I did not dance. Tommy, who had been trying to stir up trouble in the mare field, heard the commotion and ran over to the edge of the lesson ring. I blinked my eyes at Tommy and pinned my ears back, warning him to stay out of the ring. I knew Zack didn’t like dogs.

“Down! Down! I want down!” Zack began kicking his legs and pulling wildly on my reins in an effort to free himself from the saddle. There were too many places of connection: two stirrups, two hands on the reins, and several feet between him and the ground. Zack didn’t know where to begin. Claire interrupted the boy’s thought process.

Claire clapped her hands. “Zack!” Zack turned to Claire.

“Do you like ice cream? Chocolate ice cream?” Claire asked him.

He forgot that he wanted down. Mother lifted the boy out of the saddle and placed him on the ground beside her. I turned my head back to see if he was all right and touched my nose to his shoulder.

“Hi, Chancey.” Zack waved at me. “I was way up there.” He pointed to my back.

Claire held her hand out.

“Zack, come with me. We’re going back down to the barn to teach you emergency dismount on a barrel. That way you’ll know what to do if you ever freak out on Chancey or any other horse.”

“Okay, Claire. What about the ice cream? Do we get ice cream after I learn emergency dismount?”

Zack never forgot emergency dismount and, in fact, he used it at every lesson. He said it made him feel like a superhero. Claire, Mother, and I learned to be on guard at any point in our lesson to hear Zack shout out, “Ready y’all? Emergency dismount!” I would halt immediately. Then Zack would fling himself out of the saddle, just as Claire had taught him to do that day in the barn. Mother was always there to spot him and give him an able assist to the ground. Mrs. Maiden learned to keep chocolate ice-cream bars in the freezer, for Zack always asked for ice cream after emergency dismount.

Once, after a lesson, I heard Zack’s father say that the boy had brought home a B in one of his classes at school, which meant nothing to me in and of itself. But I saw Zack beam at his father’s pride. I heard the child tell Mrs. Maiden, “Now, when I get overloaded, I think of brushing Chancey. Then it’s easier to calm down.” Zack has taught me that no achievement is to be overlooked or undervalued.

Yes, Kenzie and Zack gave me many hours of satisfaction and joy. I eagerly anticipated our meetings each week and was not surprised to find that I grew as much as either child. I loved Kenzie and Zack very, very much. Still, neither was my favorite. Two years would pass before I would meet that student.