Redford Makes It Look So Easy

As a child growing up on a farm in Southern Idaho, I had a burning desire to become a veterinarian. My family had practically every species of animal except horses. Dogs, cats, birds, fish, sheep, pigs, dairy cows and beef cattle were all part of the Becker farm family and were treated as such. Even the barnyard animals had names.

Horses were absent from the Becker menagerie because, as a child, my father had been injured by a horse. At all costs, he wanted to protect his family from being harmed by these evil beasts. “At all costs” meant no pony rides at the county fair, no 4-H horses and no riding our neighbors’ horses.

Fast-forward to veterinary school. My instilled fear of horses became a nightmare when my junior year rolled around and it came time for the equine rotation. At Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, most of the horses we veterinary wannabes saw were either high-strung racehorses, fresh off the track, or wobbler horses, so named because they had a cervical spinal cord injury that made them swagger and sway like Mr. Ed on a Saturday-night bender.

In veterinary school, there was an amazing dichotomy of horse sense, savvy and sophistication within the 70 young men and women that made up our class. About 20 of my classmates had horse blood coursing through their veins; they even spoke horse. They were horsey people. I watched as they walked up to a stall that contained an irritable horse, then mentally and physically communicated with the animal until the horse was seemingly transformed into a Labrador retriever with hooves.

For the other 50 of us, it was an entirely different story. We’d tiptoe up to the same stall like 6-year-olds approaching a haunted house. Peering between the panels of the stall, all we could see was an equine Stone Cold Steve Austin ready to eat us for lunch. Looking down their long muzzles at us, it was like they were taunting us: “You want a piece of me, scaredy-cat? Do ya, huh? Well, come on in this stall and I’ll show you who is boss.”

I can remember more than once trying to be a real-life horse whisperer as I whispered, begging the horse to not kill me.

During my four-year veterinary school journey, I did get bitten by a nasty stallion or two and tossed around a few times by horses waking up from surgery. I survived spending all night with a group of draft horses with explosive diarrhea.

Luckily, no broken bones or scars marked my becoming licensed to treat horses upon graduation. And yes, while I knew enough about horses to pass the state and national boards, never once in my first 17 years of being a veterinarian did I ever treat a horse or even ride one.

Talk about irony. In 1997, our family moved to a horse ranch in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, replete with barns and stables. My wife Teresa named our new home “Almost Heaven Ranch.” Teresa reignited her childhood passion and deep love of horses by picking out four quarter horses to join our happy family. Chex, Gabriel, Pegasus and Sugar Babe shared our lives at the ranch.

As a child, Teresa’s deep love of horses had been tempered by being thrown off, rubbed off, kicked and bitten — you name it. She even had her foot crushed by a horse during one particularly rough spill. As happens with many young girls, her passionate love affair with horses was interrupted by the triple whammy of college, marriage and career. Her father was only too happy to get rid of her horse, which he had hated.

I know quarter horses aren’t exactly known for being high-spirited, temperamental or aggressive like Arabians, thoroughbreds or mustangs, but I was still very uneasy around them when our orbits first collided at the ranch. Simple tasks like picking up the corral around them or picking up their feet caused me more terror than a politician on a lie detector.

The natural rapport and ease I felt around all other companion animals, even wildlife, was somehow missing with the equine species.

But like the old Chinese proverb, “Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I may remember,” involve me and I’ll understand. Teresa taught me the ropes. As I watched, listened and learned, I began to look at the world through the heart and head of a horse.

I learned that grooming them helps establish both friendship and dominance. Teresa taught me how to safely move around them, how to anticipate problems, how to optimize their health, even how to spoil them with treats. I watched the hierarchy that exists within any group of horses.

I learned, for example, that we can’t transfer human values of fair play to equine situations of dominance at the feeder. I witnessed the joy inherent in horses and found myself marveling at their horseplay.

I soon learned all five gears of a horse, including high gear and reverse.

I learned stop. I even learned how to discipline a horse that is always testing the limits of its boundaries, like a 5-year-old child on a candy high.

Talk about a transformation. Could this be the same person who had been scared to death of horses for 42 years? Who sarcastically described them as half-ton-plus horse apple presses with brains the size of grapes?

Could it really be me who was now baby-talking them and stroking their soft muzzles as they leaned over the corral rail to take a treat from my outstretched hand?

Our entire family began riding horses on frequent treks into the mountains. I was even galloping full tilt through a mountain meadow, hootin’ and a hollerin’ like I was high on loco weed.

I brought up the rear but proudly sat tall in the saddle, now that the horse was with me.