“Okay Frankie,” said Shannon. We were standing in the covered arena. “We’re going to practise something that will be brilliant in your liberty demonstration, if you can pull it off. Otherwise it’s going to be a humiliating failure.”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s going to test you. It’s going to break your heart. It’s going to …”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Stop!”
She was laughing and so I laughed, nervously, too. “What is it? Seriously. I’m terrified!”
“You’re going to send Zen away from you all the way to the edge of the arena, and then you’re going to ask him to come back to you. It’s called The Draw.”
“That’s it?”
“If it goes well the effect is spectacular.”
“Okey dokey.” Things had been going really well lately with Zen, I reminded myself. I had every reason to feel confident.
The basic starting point, Shannon explained, was to stand face to face with Zen, and ask him to disengage his hindquarter – which means crossing his back feet over each other as he stepped away from me – either to the right or to the left. The first thing to do, as always, was to think about him doing it. The next phase of firmness was feel, so I lifted my hand, with my arm bent at the elbow, holding up his lead rope.
“Now send energy from your bellybutton to his hindquarter.”
I tried not to giggle as I sent out a laser shaft of dancing energy to Zen’s butt.
“If he doesn’t step his back feet away when you are face to face, move one step at a time around him to direct your energy more at his bum,” said Shannon. “You’re using your soft eyes to look. Once you’ve got him to take a step, you stop.”
That came surprisingly easily, and we quickly moved on.
“Now I want you to send Zen out into a circle around you to the edge of the yard and ask him to stop moving. It’s called The Disengagement, which is when he crosses his hind feet over into a stop. Instead of asking him to stop completely, though, you’re going to ask him to turn and keep coming towards you in a straight line, through the centre of the circle.”
We had only been working on this for half an hour so far, but my brain was already starting to feel full.
“To do that, you’ve got to magnetise him towards you.”
“Magnetise,” I repeated flatly.
“You’ve got to scoop him up with your energy. Draw him towards you.”
I imagined a wave of energy springing away from me, curling under Zen and drawing him near. It worked! Zen came walking towards me in a straight line, stopping just a foot away from me.
“And voila!” said Shannon, delighted. “That’s why it’s called The Draw.”
That was all good, but there was no way I would be able to remember all the things she was telling me, let alone reproduce them when I was on my own. Shannon got me to send Zen out in a circle to the edge of the ring again, but this time when I sent the wave out to scoop Zen up and magnetise him to me, he turned around and walked off to the right instead.
“The critical moment to ask him to turn to you is when his ribcage is passing your bellybutton,” said Shannon. “The timing of this is crucial.”
The next time I tried, Zen turned and went the other way, and after that things went from bad to worse.
“You’re focusing on the wrong part of his body,” Shannon reminded me gently, every time.
“That’s because he keeps moving,” I snapped as I tried desperately, over and over again, to scoop him up and magnetise him the way I had the first time.
“You’re giving him mixed messages,” said Shannon finally, when Zen had come towards me like I wanted him to, but then kept walking straight through me. He would have run me over if I hadn’t stepped aside.
“What’s got into him?” I gasped. “He’s never been like this, not even on that first really bad day at pony club.”
“Well, now he’s got an opinion,” said Shannon. “He knows you’re listening to him, and he’s telling you that you’re making him feel horribly confused.”
“I’m making myself feel horribly confused,” I said miserably. Maybe this liberty demonstration was a really bad idea.
Over the next two weeks I practised The Draw, and failed, every day. Zen would trot when I wanted him to walk, or he would simply ignore me. After each session I spent time re-establishing our connection, going over our basic groundwork exercises to make sure we ended with something positive, and taking extra care when I was grooming and feeding him, only to wreck it all again the next day when we practised The Draw again.
“Can’t we just not do this move?” I begged Shannon after one terrible afternoon. “With the music and the way we play together and chase each other, it’s still going to be a fun routine.”
“But not nearly as exciting, Frankie. This is a really profound and challenging move.”
“What’s so profound about it?” I muttered. It was hard to see what was so profound about bickering for half an hour every day with an equally irritated horse.
“Most people, when they talk to a horse, are talking to their head, but the place they really need to be focusing on is their backside. A horse’s hindquarter controls how the horse goes forwards, and how they stop, and you need to be talking to, and managing, the energy coming from there. And some horses won’t just give it over. The more self-confidence they have the more you really have to earn it.”
“I guess I should be glad Zen has a lot of self-confidence,” I said, glumly.
“Zen won’t stop moving when you ask him to, or move his hind legs, until he has total respect and complete trust in you as his leader. When you can do The Draw, Frankie, you’ll know that you’ve won Zen over.”
I kept working at it, taking Zen into the arena to practise every morning or afternoon. Somehow, every day, I would be so keen to get The Draw happening that I would forget to do something, so even though I had learned something new the previous day, I was still getting it wrong. I would forget to start by facing Zen, or forget to get him to move his hindquarters gradually at first and yield just one step.
The trouble was, Zen had found his voice by doing natural horsemanship with me, so now we were having a two-way discussion. If I got it wrong too many times, or started out with something confusing, he would simply take off, snatching the lead rope, spinning on his haunches and trotting away from me.
“When I began learning natural horsemanship I cried every day,” said Shannon after one particularly frustrating afternoon.
“How long did that go on for?” I asked Shannon through my tears. Sometimes it was hard not to think that Zen just didn’t like me any more.
“Two years.”
“Is that meant to be encouraging? This is so hard.”
“It’s all just part of working with horses, Frankie.” Shannon shrugged. “You have to see this as part of building your mettle. You’ve got to be prepared for the hard stuff as well as the great stuff. You’re training for the moment that your horse is going to say no to you, so that when those nos come along you will have a toolbox full of ideas learned from hard experience like now, or from tips and tricks you have picked up along the way to know what to do in those difficult moments with confidence.”
“I feel like he’s saying no all the time. What if this all goes to pieces when we’re actually doing our demonstration?” I asked.
“This is training you for those moments in life that don’t go the way you expect them to. Instead of falling apart, you’re going to be able to get back on your feet.”
The next day, something changed. Zen and I did The Draw five times in a row, each time perfectly. I felt stunned, and proud, exhilarated and full of wonder.
“Well done. These are the results of hard work and lots of practise,” said Shannon. “It takes strong willpower, resilience and determination to do this, Frankie, but that’s what you need to make a success of your riding. And your life.”