In this amazing and often painful journey we call “life”, many of us relentlessly strive for release from our pain and misery, desperately hoping that each new day something miraculous will occur that will help to fill a void in our souls that has grown so large that we have fallen back into ourselves and cannot seem to find our way out. A gaping void created by grief, loss, pain, low self- esteem, and abject unhappiness. We flounder miserably in a sea of sorrow and despair, not daring to hope that some day we might rise to the surface and once again breathe the heady and intoxicating fragrance of our own existence. Following is an account of how I, a very ordinary person, splashed my way to that surface with the help of a very extraordinary horse.

I was diagnosed with type II diabetes in 2000, after ballooning up to almost 300 pounds. I had suffered through the trials and tribulations of becoming a mother in my teens, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. One day I found myself sitting on my husband’s side of the bed with a gun in my mouth, and only the tiny tapping of my little boy and his tentative “Mommy?” woke me out of my fogged stupor and ultimately forced me to seek help for my deep depression.

I began medication, took control of my diet, quit smoking, began to exercise, and lost almost 90 pounds. I wanted to be there for my husband, children, and grandchildren. I realized that my love for my family was stronger than my hatred of myself. However, the stress of the past finally caught up with me, and 7 years ago I was diagnosed with an extremely disabling condition called “Fibromyalgia”, an incurable and little understood syndrome that causes a vast array of permanent and unbearable symptoms including constant muscular pain, sleep problems, chronic fatigue, Irritable Bowl, and a host of anxiety disorders. While still unsure as to exactly what causes this condition, doctors speculate that it is neurologically based and brought on by a shock to the system, or a traumatic illness, injury or event.

Well, I certainly fit all those bills! Many people with Fibromyalgia become so debilitated that they stop moving and eventually have to go on disability, due to the devastating results of the condition. Because of the unrelenting pain, I lost interest in walking, hiking, swimming, and all the outdoor activities that I was so fond of. Consequently, I gained back 25 of the pounds that I had lost. Washing the dishes and doing the laundry became chores that took days, not hours. Many mornings before work my husband had to draw a steaming hot bath for me before my legs would work. I had not slept through the night in almost 20 years, was haunted by my past, cursed by my present, and drowning in despair. However, I had absolutely no clue that a momentous event was about to occur: one that would forever change the way I looked at myself and the world around me.

My husband already had a large, cantankerous Appaloosa/Quarter Horse that he and our trainer were working on, and he was determined that if I had my own horse, I would grow to love it and we could enjoy trail riding and horse camping together. So began the hunt for an equine companion for me. I had always envisioned a cool little pinto or a quiet quarter horse to plod languidly along the trails with, but after weeks of searching, what I wound up with was a nervous, highly spirited 6-year-old Missouri Foxtrotter with the formidable name of “Fugitive’s Bad Rumor.” Jim had insisted that a gaited horse would be best for me because I would not suffer the constant jarring motion of a non-gaited horse, so we yanked her out of her pasture and brought her home to live with us. I immediately changed her name to Avalon, the mystical island of King Arthur, for she was surely a mystery to me.

Avalon, or “Avie-Mare” as I came to call her, did not settle in well at first. We were in the process of landscaping and building on our property, and the din and dust were overwhelming to her, having just been plucked from a very large and serene pasture that she shared with several other mares. She was nervous, extremely spooky, and her mode of operation was to “bolt now and ask questions later” when fear overcame her. She was terrified of clippers, would not pick up her feet for cleaning, and did not even have the simple skills of being led properly with a halter, having been pulled along with a lead behind a golf cart. She had absolutely no trust in me, and I had even less in her.

Every morning before work, I would drag myself out of bed, limp down to the barn and feed her and Archie, whom I came to affectionately dub “HorseZilla” due to his size and general lack of common sense. I would stand quietly next to her, stroking her silky head and brushing her body with a soft brush while she ate. I would talk constantly to her, assuring her what a beautiful girl she was and how much she was loved. Once in a while, her eye would turn away from her hay bucket and she would regard me questioningly for a few moments before returning to her breakfast.

Realizing very quickly that I needed help with her, we employed the trainer we used for my husband’s horse to assist us. Day after day, I plodded painfully along next to her, my body screaming in revolt as I dutifully performed the halter exercises that our trainer had shown us. It was difficult at first because she bolted so often and so suddenly on the lead that she would almost yank my shoulder out of its socket and put me in horrific agony for weeks. However, she was actually very intelligent, and learned quickly. I taught her to put head down when she was nervous, which helped tremendously because she could no longer look around with huge saucer eyes and see all the horse-eating-boogie-monsters lurking in the shrubs! In a few short weeks we began working on more difficult maneuvers such as pivots, side passes, and backing up. We purchased some amazing treeless Bob Marshall Sport Saddles that weigh about 1/3 of a regular saddle and literally mold to the horse and rider, and I began working with her under saddle.

To this day I am still a larger rider, but my body is conditioned enough to allow me to mount very well with a block. But in the early days, my legs, arms, and shoulders were very weak, and my legs would tremble violently when I put my weight in the stirrup, so mounting was a tremendous challenge. It did not help matters much that my legs were horribly short and stumpy despite my 5’7 height and that Avie-Mare was a big girl, standing almost 15.3 hands tall and weighing in at roughly 1100 pounds. So, diving into his usual problem-solving mode, my husband built a large 2-step mounting block (staircase would be a more accurate description) that I could climb up on to mount her. At first, she would wait until I was just ready to swing my leg over her back, and then she would politely side-step, forcing me to get off the block, reposition her, and try again. One day we spent two frustrating hours at this. I was determined that she would respect me, and resolved to not give up until we had done it correctly at least once.

With all my determination and hard work, Avie-Mare slowly began to change. I was the only one who fed her, rode her, (beside our trainer), groomed her, sang to her and played silly little games with her. I talked to her constantly…about my day, about the weather, about the fly on the barn wall…she didn’t care as long as I was talking to her! She began to trust me, and I finally began to warm up to her. I French braided her beautiful flaxen tail and brushed her silky white face. I taught her to let me clip her face and bridal path with electric clippers by plying her with horse cookies every time she saw the clippers. It was not long before she began to look forward to clipping and to this day gets very excited and eager when she hears the buzz! I also taught her to lift her feet for me with the word “hup”, thus minimizing the intense back, neck, shoulder & elbow pain that would occur whenever I had to reach down and forward, and she learned to drop her face into the halter so I would not have to stretch up very high. She learned the commands of “head down”, “head up” and most importantly “Ho!” She began to spook far less frequently, trusting me more often to know what was good for us, and calming down much faster after her spooks. And I too was changing….in my heart, in my soul, and in the very core of who I was, but I, like Avie-Mare, was very slow to acknowledge and warm up to anything, especially my own salvation.

Prior to purchasing Avalon, I had been plagued with resentment, guilt, and misery for most of my life. I was sorry for myself, impatient, and resigned to merely go through the agonizing motions of life until I felt the sweet oblivion of death. I hated the pain. It was like a coat that I put on each morning, and slept with each night; a coat that I could never remove or find relief from. After a while, any garment that never gets cleansed begins to stink, and I was consumed by the rottenness of the agony that encased me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I was impatient, short, resentful, and very sorry for myself, convinced nobody could possibly understand what I was forced to endure. I had begun to turn away from everyone, even my own husband and children, preferring to be alone with my pain.

However, with the arrival of Avie-Mare I was literally forced, day in and day out, 7 days a week to care for her. I rode her despite the pain and constant weariness, and I groomed her beautiful coat, mane & tail on days that I did not even brush my own hair. She always had her feet cleaned & trimmed despite the fact that months went by without me getting a pedicure! Her diet was meticulously maintained with only the finest orchard grass, weighed out to the exact amount each day and supplemented with vitamins, minerals, and a hefty amount of horse cookies. I had not taken a vitamin for years.

One day after work while Avie and I were zipping along in the large round-pen that had been purchased for training, my oldest son came up to the gate with his fiancé, (they are married with two little girls) and they both commented that I was actually smiling as I sped along with Avalon. I was bit taken aback. How long had it been since they had seen their mother smile? Far too long, it would seem. But I was smiling, and I found myself in the days ahead not only smiling, but laughing aloud more than usual. What was this strange malady that I suffered from? Things certainly were changing, no matter how stubbornly I clung to my shroud of doom. Other, even more annoying symptoms began to crop up! I was loosing my impatience, for instance. Suddenly, those slower elderly people who always seemed to take forever driving and walking across the intersections and complained incessantly about their constant aches and pains did not seem to annoy me nearly as much, now that I was riding the very same bus. I began to love the outdoors again, and often would spend so much time down at the stable that my oldest son would have to come down and gently remind me that it was dark and too cold for me; would I please come in. The earth smelled good, the trees whispered to me as I worked, and my horse whinnied her love to me each and every time she saw me (with HorseZilla doing backup vocals!) Yes…I was beginning to change. I was finally starting to swim my way to the surface. This is a picture taken on “The Day I Smiled” and it was indeed a turning point for me.

After months and months of work and preparation in the round pen and arena, we finally began the daunting challenge of taking the horses out on trail. Because the Fibromyalgia, (again, which many doctors believe is a neurologically based condition) affected my entire nervous system, I would literally shake before each ride, even though I had ridden for many years as a child. I knew I was not afraid of my horse or the trails, but the slight and normal apprehension of doing something new was intensified a hundred-fold by my condition. It did not help much that Avalon was still very trail green, hot headed and prone to bolting.

During those first rides, Avalon was very high strung, wanting to push ahead of Archie constantly. We would both return from even short rides exhausted. Her flat walk was slower than his trot, and her fox trot was faster than his trot. When left behind he would throw an absolute tantrum by bucking and backing up, thus causing even more disturbance! Los Penasquitos Canyon, the canyon park that we rode in (and still favor riding in) is gorgeous; flat and with good footing, shady oaks, creeks and a waterfall, but it is very “sensory intensive” to horses, with all manner of riders, hikers, bikers, runners and shrieking children sharing the main path that runs straight down the middle of the canyon. Understandably, it can be a virtual nightmare for a green horse and somewhat disabled rider. Again, it was baptism by fire, but since that had become the norm for me I jumped right in (with a lot of pushing from my husband, that is) and decided it was time to teach my little darling some trail etiquette. For the next several trail rides, I changed her bit to a simple short curb (a bit with a longer shank that offered more “whoa” than the English-style Kimberwicke bit that I had been using since I got her) and taught her to slow down, pulling her in every time she stepped up the pace, and releasing when she obeyed and slowed down. She found it incredibly difficult to stand still in those early days, but I held her in until I could sense that she was about to move forward, and then asked her to go while it was still my idea and not hers. At first, she would only stand still for 5 seconds or so, but the more I persisted with my lessons, the longer the intervals became that she could stand still, and we were finally on our way to real progress. I am definitely not an advocate of using a stronger bit to control a horse; in fact I feel that if you need a stronger bit to control your horse, you should probably go back to the arena with a snaffle and start from the beginning. However, this was one of those cases where I, the rider, already had control in the arena and I understood that her behavior on trail ensued from high spirits, nerves, and just plain old inexperience, not refusal to obey me, so I felt the short-term change of bits was well justified. Safety had to come first; for me, my horse and the other people and horses that used the trails. The first few rides were hair-raising, but it was not long before AvieMare started to obey me over her impulses, and began to act out far less. Avalon was quite capable of a slower walk without discomfort, so I made her ride behind Archie some of the time and never let her go faster than a walk on the trail for a few months so she would get the idea that she was to relax and enjoy the ride and not dash off into the sunset. After a month or so, I was able to change back to the Kimberwicke bit and have used it ever since. AvieMare still has irrational episodes on trail or even in the arena when she can be very hard to deal with, but she now understands the inticicy of our little dance and usually performs her part well.

To date, my horse and I have crossed bridges, encountered several snakes, including a rattler, (yes, she jumped about 100 feet to the left in 0.5 seconds; we are so outa here, Mom!), crossed chest-high water, and babbling streams. We have crossed the Tijuana River Trail (no, we are never going back to that trail again) and have ridden down to the ocean and its sandy shores. She will trailer with HorseZilla, ride beside him on trail and tie next to him (although on PMS days, she will unlatch herself in the trailer and pick a fight with him over the partition that divides them!) But they still can’t live side-by-side. Both being dominant, they took to ripping chunks out of each other’s faces and fighting like stallions over mating rights.

 

I worked steadily for several years, but in the end my many health ailments got the better of me and I am no longer able to work outside the home. In addition to Fibromyalgia, Diabetes, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Reynaud’s Syndrome, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and 10 major surgeries, including surgery to repair the tendons on both elbows, I had tendon repair surgery in October of 2006 and suffered a blood clot and Pulmonary Embolism afterwards and almost died. When I got out of the hospital, I had to be on blood thinning medication for half a year and as a result got very anemic. 2007 was one of the worst years for me that I can recollect regarding my health, and although I am better, I still have not seemed to recover yet.

Today, my whacked-out nervous system is somewhat under control with the help of medication, and I am actually doing well despite my challenges. I never did regain all of the weight I lost, but I did regain about half of it when I quit smoking and went on medication for the Fibromyalgia. I am still at least 50 pounds overweight due to the numerous medications that I must take to control pain and sleep at night. They simply make me blow up like a balloon, but I must continue them if I am to have any quality of life whatsoever. I know I will fight this battle until the end of my days.

I realize that I only pretend to myself that I am “normal”, and still have very bad days when the pain and hopelessness of it all overcome me. During those times I want to be alone, with no other living creature next to me except my horse. I bury my face into her side and cry for a while. She knickers softly to me like I am her foal, and licks my hands, nuzzling me tenderly. She knows my soul! Her personality mirrors mine in a very odd way. She is funny, high-strung, solitary, and 1100 pounds of PMS at the bad times of the month, when she gleefully tortures my husband with her irritability and encourages me to do the same. Poor man! She tolerates my husband now, but loves me to obsession, and I her.

In retrospect, Avalon was the worst type of mount an overweight, anxious and somewhat disabled rider (who was getting back into horses after a 30 year hiatus) like me could have chosen, and by all accounts our relationship should have floundered. However, I no longer need to ask myself why ours not only worked but flourished when so many others have failed. I finally know the answer: rarely in a lifetime does an event occur that is so profound that it alters a person or animal’s very soul, and through adversity and hard work, challenges them to become far more than they ever dreamed they could be. And while I, like so many others, have faced many seemingly insurmountable challenges in my years, Avalon proved to be one of the most complex, frightening, thrilling and ultimately rewarding experiences of my life. I also know that by hiring a trainer to teach me how to teach her, I greatly improved both our odds of success. The extra money was hard to scrape up, but I couldn’t afford not to get help.

I remember quite vividly how, during the early months of our friendship, I felt guilty about not allowing Avie to live up to her “full potential” and actually put her up for sale. I felt like she deserved better than to be stuck with a sick, chunky, middle-aged woman who could barely walk a straight line and succumbed to anxiety attacks just driving to the grocery store. I had neither the desire nor ability to participate in horse shows, long trail rides or fast, hard riding, all things that I had been led to believe “real” horses and riders did, and all the things that Avalon was supposedly bred to do. I felt like I was letting her down. When the first phone call came after I placed the ad, I spoke from my heart to the woman on the other end, explaining my reasons for wanting to find Avalon a new home. She listened very patiently, and then told me quite plainly: “You can’t sell this horse. You two were meant to be together.” I knew then and there she was absolutely right; that this complete stranger had confirmed what I repeatedly denied to myself: that Avalon and I were both destined to great things, even if only within the circles of our own tiny world, and the reason that we had been brought together was because we both needed a hero to call our own. She needed me to teach her loyalty, serenity, trust, patience and love, and her reason for existence was to champion a sick, tired, middle-aged woman and give her the courage to live again. When she came to me, she bore with her a flaming sword which she passed on to me…a sword which with to draw a line in the sands of misery, pain, doubt and despair and dare them to cross it!

AvieMare and I have shared our story with whomever would listen and take courage in regaining their lives back during adversity. We have been featured on State Line tack's "Pet of the Day" and the "Mane Event" newsletter they used to put out. We also have appeared on the National Fibromyalgia Association's website and in their magazine, AWARE, as well as in the Ramona Home Journal news magazine. One of our proudest accomplishments was to be featured in a huge 3-page spread in the Missouri Foxtrotting Horse Association's JOURNAL. We will continue to share our experiences, for it only one single person is encouraged or motivated to not give up their struggle, then all of our efforts will be well paid. "He who saves one person saves the world entire" -Jewish Proverb

I know I can never fully repay AvieMare for her courage, loyalty and companionship, but I will care for her with love and compassion until the end of our days. I will ride her until I can no longer mount, and then maybe she can learn to pull me in a cart! She, Archie, Arwen our mini and whatever horses we have in the future will grow old with us and we will all go out to pasture together as cantankerous, crotchety old farts. And when I die, *God forbid that I should go to any heaven in which there are no horses.* R.B. Cunninghame Graham

The Best Ride of Your Life

I can hear your footfall,

And smell you on every wisp of wind.

I’ll carry you through all your sorrows

To whatever end.

I’ll soar with you upon the breath

Of dreams we both embrace.

Together we will take by storm

This world that we must face.

Don’t worry now…I’ve got your back,

And side-by-side we’ll fight.

If one should falter on the path,

Then let us both take flight.

I’ll bear you far away with me,

And shoulder all your strife.

Trust me and I’ll take you on

The Best Ride of Your life.

Scherry A. Clarke