Pie was a fabulous appolusa, who died of cancer, but not before he made a lasting impression on many people. Hear some of his story here, and the rest in a later episode.
These stories tell of changes humans can make in their belief systems that shift our experiences of this world. They are stories of the "Quiet Revolution"
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
Pie was a fabulous appolusa, who died of cancer, but not before he made a lasting impression on many people. Hear some of his story here, and the rest in a later episode.
These stories tell of changes humans can make in their belief systems that shift our experiences of this world. They are stories of the "Quiet Revolution"
For more information on names or materials referenced, or to contact Ishe- please email. iabel.hhc@gmail.com
This is the Horse Human Connection, a captivating podcast where we extend into the world of equine assisted learning, horse training. and gentleness in working with these magnificent creatures. Captivating stories from the leading professionals and ordinary people alike unravel novel ideas in being with horses. The Horse Human Connection is an idea, a place, and a voice. The idea is to support the quiet revolution and recognize the intelligence and true nature of the horse. The place is a destination farm near the Umpqua Forest and River that slows down visitors and patrons enough to experience the shift. The Voice is this podcast. Welcome to today's episode.
MacBook Air Microphone:Welcome to another episode of the horse human connection matrix. I am here with my best friend, Diane. Hello. How are you today? Is she. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. So what are we going to talk about? Well, I was hoping maybe you could tell me another one of your stories about some of your horses or one of your horses. All right. Let's do that. Okay. So. One of the horses that I. High limit losing him. His name originally was hula Kai, which means a wave dancer. And he came to us on my birthday. This was back in. Like 2012 ish when a horses were going for free, in our county. And there were a lot of ads on Craigslist. And he was to be the horse of my step son, Christian. And we went to go pick him up. The people said, you know, we really don't need them anymore. We were going to use them for a pack horse, but he's not really working out. Haven't had time to train him and he was living with a bunch of goats. And he really bonded with Christian right away, latest head on Christians, chest and Christians, a very gentle soul. So it took him about half an hour for the guys to get this horse in the trailer. And we brought him home. And at this point, I cringe about the ignorance that we had back then. I just, I cringe because we used to chase horses around the round pen, trying to dominate them loudly and bigly. And make them run fast because we thought that if they ran faster on the round pen, they would sir come to us. And that was kind of the goal back then. That was probably the mainstream accepted. It was, so it was very mainstream back then at sprouted out of Monte Roberts. Although our application of it was horrendously. Rough. Horrendously ref. Anyway Christian ended up moving to Hawaii and hula Kai became hula PI because he was so sweet. I really liked this horse he was a BLM branded. Mustang. And he was also a foundation Appaloosa. Okay. That was that he didn't have features a lot of features of a Mustang. Well, he. He did. I mean, Mustang, that's a, that's a good point, Diane, because Mustang has a lot of different connotations. Literally, there are no wild horses in America because all of them have some past history of having been domesticated. So technically they are feral. And although we might think about some Mustang, characteristics of kind of a flat nose and a little bit of a broader face. Really there's so many horses have been introduced into the wilds. inTo the feral herds that you can have anything you could have draft, you could have Arabian, you could have Appaloosa. Correct like PI was, but he was very Appaloosa. Like there was no doubt. And Appaloosa's come from. thE Nez Perce tribe. So they were wore ponies. They were a specific breed and they were really, their history is being more ponies. So anyways Eventually. I was left. On this ranch with a lot of animals, including the horse pie. And every time I tried to walk him, Around this Knoll from one side to the other. And I was not a very experienced horse person. At this point, he would rear up create a Fest turn in circles. Push me around. And create such a stink that I would turn around and go back. He just did not want to be separate from the other horses. And now knowing what I know it makes perfect sense. And I understand that. Much much better. Well, and I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to two horses still I'm learning since I've met you and And enjoy them. PI was, was a really a sweet horse. He was really. He was, he was a good soul. He was, he, he was very sweet, but he had a, he had a side to him. I took some lessons on PI. frOm Chrissa and I would get a little triggered being on him because I couldn't handle them. He didn't respond really well to my aides. And so I would get up, as I say kind of triggered having some. Probably some adrenaline going on and, and he would respond in like, kind to that. So Chris being as wise as she was, she would have a psych attempt to go from point a to point B and have me work on some particular aid strategy is to keep him moving forward in a straight line. Which involved, not always moving forward. And every single time I would look back at where we were as I was learning to use these aids to counter his maneuvers, he would come up with a new countermove. And we would be. Much closer to point a to point B where we were headed. When I looked back. Somehow he had just arranged for us not to get where the intention was that we were going. But fortunately, We were always focused on what I was learning, not where we were going. So it wasn't a control struggle. One of my favorite memories of PI. I was going on a ride with my ex-husband and I rode PI bear back in a halter. Is he, a lot of times he didn't want to put equipment on. So I was like, okay, let's just go. And he was so congenial on this summer, August, summer day. And my, my ex-husband got on, on his horse and I got on PI and. We went way up the hill, way up on the property where the, the. The best juiciest blackberries were and PI parked us at at a level where we could reach the barriers and he could reach the berries. And we had our fill of berries and went on around. Some other parts of the trail with, with PI leading, this was one of those co-created rides that was so magical because. I didn't care where we went. Nobody cared where we went and PI was showing us. He was showing us around. And when we got back. I, when I got off, I saw his face. Like being an Appaloosa, he had a white, gray head. And his whole front of his face around his mouth is covered in purple from the blackberries. Yeah, he was really something. So PI ended up with With cancer and the way we discovered. His cancer. Is every time people came again, I was not an experienced horse person. So every time a more experienced horse person came to the ranch. PI would arrange to get in front of them. And drop his penis. And people were like, what's going on with that? As I just never noticed, I just didn't have those powers of observation back then. And I'm gradually, you know, eventually I called the vet and that came out and. And diagnosed him with. The first diagnosis wasn't cancer. It was something else. So we treated whatever that was. And it didn't go away. So eventually we got the diagnosis of melanoma. I choose a type of skin cancer, which is not uncommon in lighter animals or white horses. And PI had a fair amount of white on him. He was white and gray and dappled, but with the spots and. Ah, so that's what it was. And we treated it. We did many rounds of chemotherapy and then we did a surgery and. iT didn't end up working. Long-term. But it put him through quite a lot. Coming home from the surgery. I will never forget his Winnie coming out of the trailer and calling to the girls. And it was as if he was saying I'm back I'm home. I made it. And he was so cute yet, this kind of paddle footed little walk and. Yeah. So he had quite a journey of a lot of pain, but. I remember another time. This was way before. So PI came back to the ranch, but I'm going to go. So this is like way back in time when he was still new and we had six horses. And six goats and three minutes are donkeys. And two holy cows and then the head of black Angus all at the ranch. So this is way back when and PI was put in an electric fenced pasture. With two other horses and other Mustang named his name was Zeus to begin with, but we kept calling them. Hey, Zeus. And so pretty soon as name became exist. And and a beautiful red headed. Tennessee Walker named Maddy. And the three of them were put in this one pasture and something happened. I think both the geldings had a crush on Maddie. And PI became. Very disgruntled. And I kept looking out at this pasture with a big water and trough a hundred gallon stainless steel watering trough. And for three days, he stood in the same spot in front of this watering trough. And at first I went over and checked the water and there was plenty of water that wasn't the problem. When I noticed after three days that he had not moved and he had not eaten. I realized he was, he was having a sit in. He was boycotting being in this pasture. We had other electric taped pastures. so I moved him, but this was another one of my, this was during the time period. If you've listened to the other stories of co-created rides and. And Firefly and. And all of that, that. I was coming to learn horses, communicate. Quite well, if you pay attention. And I feel bad cause it took me three days to notice and to know, but I mean, that's where I was then. So I moved him in and he ate and he drank and he was so much happier. Never really figured out exactly what all that was, but I'm pretty sure it was just the dynamic with the other horses. Right. Yeah, they definitely let you know. If you. Take the time to. Listen. They do. It's like I kinda think about. I don't know if you've ever known people like this, but you tell them something and they're not listening. And you tell them again, and you know, they're not hearing you, they're ignoring you and you say it again and pretty soon. The inclination is either, you know, to yell or take an action. Or to just quit asking. Right. Depending on your personality. And I think so many horses do that. We're not paying attention. We're oblivious. And they just think humans are way too stupid. Why would I bother trying to communicate with them? This is so obvious in the horse world, and they're completely ignoring all of our attempts to tell them what the problems are. I really think it's like that for a lot of horses in many situations. Right. Well, we get busy. Thinking we're the boss. We're the king. We're the. The dominant and. Doing our own thing. Instead of trying to. B one with the horses and. Listening to them. And just being, you know having a relationship rather than just I'm here. You were there. Exactly. It's about the relationship. And that relationship isn't just when they're out of their stall or out of their pasture. I mean for them. If you allow it, that relationship is off the time. I think that's why people instinctually that are horse owners want their horses at home, not in a barn. At some point. In most horse owners lives. If it's an option at all. They're going to want to move, to stay away from stabling their horse at a barn or arena to having them home, where they can have more interactions with them on a daily basis. So PI was sick. PI was the horse that when I got back from equanimity resorts in British Columbia, And I said to the herd, you know, if we're going to do these case studies, like I wanted to do and re relive what I experienced at equanimity, which is where if you open your heart, the horses laid down and people cuddle with horses. Like you cuddle with your dog. And when I first saw that on Facebook, I was like, I have to go there. So I did. Well, when I got home, everything was different. And one of the things that was so different. Was when I said this to PI because they work, you know, pinning their ears and chasing each other around this, this pen and being kind of nasty. And I was, I had the thought, well, if I bring people in to do the case studies, this is not the way they were heard up there reacted. They were calm. Somebody is going to get hurt. Right. And I said that, I said, I'm going to need to trust you. And at that moment, Pilate down. At my feet, he had never done that before he laid down. And I was like, wow. Okay. Well, I was able to bring home. The magic of what happened at equanimity. And from there we started in Dawn case studies. And PI was the star. Oh my gosh. She was such a star. One of my favorite examples of one of these cases and remind me, let me explain that my job in the case study was to do nothing. And my mantra. And my mantra that I had to tell people that came to do the case studies was trust and allow trust and allow. So my job was to just take notes on what the horses did, and that might be nuzzling people, big yawns and eye rolls. Urinating, farting swishing, tails. Licking and chewing, blinking. And I didn't know this, but crying horses, shed tears. They actually cry like humans. I did not know that. Yeah. So one of my favorite examples. So there was this horse woman who came to do a case study. And it's as if the horses knew, depending on the people, what exposure they'd had to horses, like they just sense this. Some people were afraid horses would work 10, 15 feet away from the people, but if they knew that the person was comfortable with horses they would come in much closer. So PI came up to interact with this woman. Who had long hair in a hair clip and he took the hair clip out of her hair with his teeth. And she kind of laughed about it, twisted her hair back up, put the clip back in and stood in front of him. He took the clip out again. And she's like, okay. And she put the clip in her pocket. Next, he put his teeth on her wrist, where there was a little beaded bracelet. On an elastic string. And he, he snapped the elastic with his teeth on her wrist. And she was like, okay. And she took the bracelet off and she stuck it in her pocket with the hair clip. And she kind of looked at me like this is weird. And next he took her zipper jacket. In his teeth. You haven't heard this story before Diane. He took her zipper jacket in his teeth and he unzipped her jacket. And she's like, all right. She was also, by the way. Part-time massage therapist. So she actually made a comment like, all right, I get the drill. And she took off. She took off this jacket and stood in front of him. He proceeded to run his nose down, her arms. Down her legs. Down the back of one of her legs. He pinched her with his teeth a few times. And I had, I had warned people that they could be pinched or bitten. During this process. And a lot of horse people are like, oh my gosh, you would never let your horse do that. That's such bad manners and such bad training. And it's just horrible. And you know, the truth of it is horses do that to each other in the grooming process and a nip or bite is not necessarily a sign of aggression. At all. In fact, when I was at equanimity. They had me on this massage table. So I'm going to leave the story about pie for just a second and go back in time to when I was at equanimity and what I experienced more there. I was afraid. Her horses were big. They were warm bloods, Canadian warmbloods and most of them were over 16 hands tall. And even though I had three horses at home and had had many more horses at different times, it seemed to rotate in and out. I felt afraid. And a lot of people would go in. So the routine was we'd have breakfast and we'd go to the barn and we'd spend three hours in meditation with the horses. And what that looked like was they would come in and eat. In these huge bins filled with hay and some people would even lay in the bin and let the horses eat around them. Like that was a great experience. I didn't want to lay in the hay, but a lot of people really enjoyed it. And then there was a barn with lots of chips on the, on the ground. So it's nice and soft and clean. And it was open. All the stalls were open in this barn. It was probably 48 by 48. Okay. Feet, excuse me. And in the bar. And there were these little stools, little stepping stools that you could sit on almost like a milking stool. But plastic folding. So people would sit on these often with their backs up against some of the stall dividers. And various things would happen in there. So I was afraid. I wasn't connecting with any of the horses and Liz came out and she took my hand and she walked me over to one of these like horse proof massage tables. So this is this big table with a little umbrella over it. For the sun. And you lay down on it and it's sturdy enough that the horse isn't going to knock it over. If he bumps it right. And she says, we're going to have you work with Merlin. He's a little guy, but he's a powerful healer. So I laid down on this table terrified, and Liz says, he's going to bite you. And I'm like, what? She's like, he's going to bite you. And it's a trust thing. And if you trust him, he probably won't bite you very hard. But if you can't let go, he'll bite you harder. So I'm laying on this table thinking this is crazy. Why did I come all the way up here to Canada to do this? This is where she's going to bite me in. And I'm like, okay, I just have to surrender. And that was the word surrender. So I'm surrendering to Merlin. And sure enough, he bit my shoulder, but it didn't really hurt. It kind of like spread a warmth through the area. And it built all this pressure up in my head. The next thing he did was he took his teeth like a comb and he raped from my forehead back on my skull. He raped with his teeth, my hair. And suddenly all the pressure left my head. Wow. It was like he was opening my crown chakra. Yeah. That's interesting. It was fascinating. So more things happen there and I'll come back to that, but I want to go back to the story with PI because now you understand. Why I didn't have a freak out when he was pinching this case study participant on the backs of her legs. So I had developed an intake and an outtake form, and there were questions like this was for the case studies. There were questions. You know, do you have any pain or tightness in your body on a scale of one to 10? What is it? what is your emotional state? whAt is your level of serenity on a scale of one to 10? And how are you feeling? So then they would fill out the same form after their session with the horse as before. And there was an area that said, you know, please explain your, what your experience was. So she said, let me get back to you with my experience. I want to process this a little bit and I want to type it up for you. I'm like, okay, great. A couple of weeks later. I hear from her. And she's like, I got to tell you this thing that happened. She said, I went in for my, our Vedic. Massage treatment. And. wHat she relayed to me is that to work on the sciatica, she had, they worked on the opposite leg and as the woman went to go for the pressure points, She said, what is this? You have a little bruise at each of the points that I need to use. And then a woman thought for a moment and said, oh my gosh, that's where the horse nipped me. Could PI have known. Like. What a horses really know. Right. Yes. It, it. It's beyond me. I don't have an explanation. Anyway. PI would also do things at the at the case today's he got in the habit of coming up and I had the My notes. I had the waivers. You want a liability waiver. If you know your horse is going. Bite people. Right. So I had these waivers and I had the intake and the exit forms on clipboards. And he would come up and he would scan the clipboard with his nose. Like he would literally run his nose back and forth on the clipboard as though he were reading. If I'm telling this people, I can see where people are, like she's making this stuff up. There's no way that happened. But it did. Right. Hmm. If you talk to other people that went to The city, they would tell you so many stories that you would have to believe mine as well. That was in Canada. Yeah. And Canada, equanimity retreats changed my life. Going there changed my relationship with my horses. There are a lot of things that have influenced me. But doing those 20 case studies, because this is kind of thing didn't happen just once. Right. It kept happening. And. Louis has been doing these retreats for a number of years. And so, you know, there's hundreds of people that have experienced similar things. And that's what feeds into this quiet revolution. So many experiences by humans of these things. That sound incredible. And like in credible, like not credible, but they are. It's got to change things. Makes me want to go out. Be with the horses and see what there's no bite me. I'm sure Charlie. I'm sure Charlie will bite you. Charlie is PI's replacement. And he's near. Let me before he hasn't helped you hasn't he he's refining the nip. I think I did actually call an animal communicator and, and ask her to talk to him about that because they don't want people to get hurt. And. The further away I am from that visit to acronysm. Essity. To be truthful, the harder it is for me to trust and allow sometimes and not know what people's reactions are going to be. And so we had her talk to Charlie about biting. And. Her. Mythology about that was to let him know how fragile humans really are. And he didn't know. She said, he just didn't know that we were that fragile. And he hasn't bitten anybody. Since then, right. Like you said they do that in the field. With each other pastor and that kind of thing, they do that with each other. So. Yeah, the, the lips or the lips are fine, you know, there's another memory of PI. One day we were settled up to go for a ride and I was at the hitching post. He started licking me. He licked my hands. It was summertime. My arms were bare. He licked my arms. He, he completely licked every inch of both of my arms and hands. And my experience was that it calmed me down. It took me down several notches into a much more relaxed state. And looking back. I think what he was doing was preparing me to be on his back. I can only imagine. Being an animal, like a horse with a very sensitive, nervous system. And having somebody get on you that's anxious or afraid or amped up about something else in their life and how. How uncomfortable that would be if you were really sense of really sensitive being, I mean, I know I'm a sensitive being and it can be uncomfortable for me to be in the same room. With another person who's having anxiety. Or is dysregulated about. Some event that's happened to them. Sure. And if you're coming in contact, it would transfer. Much easier. Exactly. You're actually on their back and not just on their back, but asking them to do things right. Wow. I I've heard people say that when they go to the barn, it relaxes them after work. And I have a theory about that. I think that the horses.
This is the Horse Human Connection, a captivating podcast where we extend into the world of equine assisted learning, horse training. and gentleness in working with these magnificent creatures. Captivating stories from the leading professionals and ordinary people alike unravel novel ideas in being with horses. The Horse Human Connection is an idea, a place, and a voice. The idea is to support the quiet revolution and recognize the intelligence and true nature of the horse. The place is a destination farm near the Umpqua Forest and River that slows down visitors and patrons enough to experience the shift. The Voice is this podcast. Welcome to today's episode.
MacBook Air Microphone:Have worked on people. I think they move. Those unpleasant. Emotions off of us. I think they help to regulate us without us knowing it. And it's almost PVE logging in. Like somebody walks into the barn after work, took a ride, their horse and. The horses moved the energy off of them so many times to help them relax at the minute they walk in the barn, it begins to happen. And people think, oh, ready, my horse relaxes me. When I think it's much more true. That the horse has conditioned you to drop. Your day at work or whatever's bothering you before you get close enough to infect them. Yeah, that's, that's very good insight. Yeah, I could be wrong. It's just my theory. Anyways, I think that's about all the time. I have. I thank you for listening to my stories today, Diane. You're very welcome. I love your stories. I love hearing about the horses and. Some of your escapades. Yeah. And if anybody else out there. Has horse stories, especially magical ones. I would love to hear about them. If you vehemently disagree with me. I would like to hear from you too, although I'm almost scared to say that I I'd much rather people agree with me, but, but not, everybody's going to, so I've gotta be fair. Alright, horse human connection. Is she able and Diane signing off for today? Bye.