Just after our wedding, Dan’s mom sent me the only video taken of his childhood, a fifteen-second clip of a four-year-old boy in a basement. The little boy is wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, chaps, a western shirt and vest. On his hip is a toy gun he’s drawing with impressive speed for the camera. I watched that video a dozen times when it was first given to us, because I see that little boy every day in my fifty-eight year old husband.

Before the twins were born and Aubrey entered our lives, Dan had said, “I want horses. We need a barn.” He’d drawn up plans, and we’d cleared land and built that barn: two stalls, a tack room, a feed room, and an upstairs storage room-turned-office for me. Then we’d bought a tractor, cleared more land, removing trees, shrubs, roots and rocks, and built a fence around the new field. We’d hired a hydro-seeding company to truck in soil and spray seed, then we waited for grass.

I loved my new office in the barn and the enclosed field outside our bedroom. But despite the purpose of both additions, horses were still just a quaint idea. Something we might pet, something to which we might feed carrots and apples, something to look pretty in our new pretty field. I loved theideahorses, but in my fourth decade of life, I knew it was exactly that, an idea with which I was in love. Like, say, the idea of being in love with the bad boy, then finding myself less in love with the flying shot glasses in the bar at two a.m., the random girl’s voice on the answering machine at four a.m., or the half-filled beer bottles of chaw spit and cigarettes littering his car and apartment.

The idea versus the real thing, in other words, is a lesson I’ve had to learn more than a few times. Like how I loved pottery until I took one class and realized there exist less frustrating ways of creating beauty. Or how I loved the idea of Bikram yoga until I spent an hour exercising in a sauna and left lightheaded and weak from dehydration, “cleansed,” as the instructor told me. Or how climbing a few of the world’s tallest peaks seemed a laudable goal until I realized my toes turn white in thirty-five degree weather.

Horses were an idea I liked and a passion of Dan’s I was happy to support from afar.

Of course, I knew at some point I’d need to learn how to be safe on and around horses, especially if Kalvin and Grace were going to ride. But that was theoretical, in the distance somewhere, out there someday. Until one day, Dan said in passing, “I set up that riding lesson for Monday with Dallas.”

“What riding lesson?” I asked. “Who is Dallas?”

“She’s a trainer at the barn.”

Ugh, I thought. I had other plans for Monday. It had been almost ten months since the incident, and perhaps Dan thought it was time for me to get back into the saddle of life, so to speak.

*

November 2012

At the barn, Dallas started me on a twenty-two-year-old mare named River.

“She’s the horse we put the kids on,” she said.

I turned to look, expecting a pony, and raised my eyebrows at the large animal.

“She’s completely bombproof,” Dan added. He had already ridden River, but I didn’t appreciate the violent metaphor. Need I remind him about the ride on Star when I was seven?

Dallas handed me a mess of loops and rope. “Here’s your halter.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“You’re going to go catch her and bring her inside.” We were standing in a field with a dozen horses.

“Uh, what am I supposed to do?”

“I’ll show you with Beau,” Dallas said.

I followed her and Dan, dragging my halter toward a golden horse who took one look at our approach and walked the other direction. Dallas cut a wide path to the right and re-approached Beau, herding him towards Dan and me.

“You have to keep an eye on Beau, he will bite occasionally,” Dallas warned. I took a preventative step back, though I was nowhere in biting range. Then Dallas drew two diagonals in the dirt, starting at Beau’s front hooves and moving forward and out at forty-five degree angles. “This is where to stand when you’re close to a horse. He can see you here, but he can’t step on you.”

I looked down at my soft boots. That would hurt. Badly.

“Find the end of the neck loop and run one hand under his neck and the other hand over his neck, like this.” Dallas had her arm around the horse’s head. “His nose goes through this loop here, then tie off the neck loop. The nose loop should be above the nose bone, not down on the cartilage, so if it slips, take the slack out of the neck loop.”

That’s a lotta loops.

“Your turn,” she said..

I found the loop in the ropes that looked the most like what Dallas had slipped over Beau’s nose.

“It’s upside down,” she said.

I flipped it around.

“River’s a good girl, she won’t hurt you. We’ll wait over by the gate.” Then she turned and walked away.

“Seriously?” I mumbled, as I tromped through a pile of poop on my way to River who was standing forty yards away. When I got to River, I glanced back at Dallas and Dan. They were talking, oblivious to my plight. I felt my heart speed up and my breath get shallow. “Okay then girl, it’s you and me.” I tried not to sound scared.

River just watched me, her eyes were passive or disgusted, I couldn’t tell.

“Be nice to me, I’m a beginner, I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

River twitched her ears at some invisible annoyance.

“I have a deep and well-founded fear of your kind, so please don’t bite me, step on me, roll on me, or kick me, okay?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t run, so I reached out to pet the side of her neck. I waited for her to rear up and kick me; I was ready to bolt at her slightest twitch. River just stood there, completely still.

I moved in a bit closer, drawing Dallas’ safe zones on the ground in front of River. “Okay, I’m just going to put this thingy over your neck here,” I said, extending my arms as far as they would go. My fear left me decidedly off balance as I reached around her neck. I threaded the end through the loop, pulled it snug, tied it off, and then I stepped back. Something looked off. The nose loop was hanging straight down, flapping free, clearly noton River’s nose.

“Good girl,” I said again, edging forward. “Don’t step on me, K?”

She turned her head toward me then and gave me a look I could only interpret as, You’re an idiot and not worth the effort. Then she dipped her head slightly as if to say, Here’s my nose, put thatloop, over my nose, you buffoon. I stepped forward, loosened the halter, and reattempted the most basic of horsemanship skills. When all looked situated, I took a step back. “Alrighty then,” I said out loud to nobody. I was standing in a field by myself with a horse connected by a lead rope. “Go me.”

That day, all I learned was the one-rein stop, or what I like to call the emergency brake, executed by sliding a hand down one rein and pulling straight back to bend the horse. I did sixty one-rein stops that first lesson, and by the end, I knew how to stop a walking twenty-two-year-old horse. So that was good.

A week later, I strode into the field, determined to halter River by myself. I stared at the loops until I was sure I knew which loop was for her nose. River stood still as I approached. “Good girl,” I said. “Remember me?” I pet her neck then fed her nose through the nose loop and praised her profusely for not stepping on me. As I led her inside to the cross ties, I was unreasonably happy with myself.

“Hey there,” Dallas said, rubbing River’s neck. “What’cha doing?”

“I’m brushing her coat, then I was going to brush her tail,” I said.

“That’s great, but that’s not River.”

I took another look at the horse I’d haltered.

“That’s Cheyenne. Let’s take Cheyenne out and go find River.”

Dan was laughing in the next crosstie over. He was laughing a little too hard.

“Shut it, husband,” I said as I led Cheyenne back outside.

It got easier over time. I managed to correctlyhalter the correct horse. I learned to groom and saddle River, ask her to go forward, to turn right and left and stop and even to trot.

After a half dozen lessons, I was mostly getting the hang of things when Dallas said, “It’s time for a different horse.”

“But I like River,” I said.

“Yes, but she’s not listening to you. River is used to eight-year-olds, gripping and pulling on the reins to hold on.”

I loosened my grip on the reins. I mean, after all, I’m not eight.

“So sometimes, she just does what she wants, tuning everything else out, including the rider. You need someone more responsive. You need a horse that will listen,” Dallas said.

Damn. I was just getting comfortable. River was like the Queen Mary: she took a while to get going, stop, or turn, but she was solid. And she never once tried to bite me or buck me or run away with me.

But the following week, I graduated from River to Beau and Dan graduated from Beau to Peppy, a stallion with copious bad attitude. But I was just as wary of Beau. He had a tendency to be cranky with other horses and to bite when being cinched. Dallas said he’d bitten her on the ribs once. “Left an enormous bruise,” she said, laughing. Yeah, ha ha.

The next week when we arrived, Peppy and Beau were already saddled in the cross ties. I led Beau into the arena and stood clear as Dallas tightened the cinch. When Beau turned to bite her, she smacked him on the face. “Knock it off!”

I expected him to react, to bite, to kick, to do something, but the horse looked like a scolded child and simply stood there.

Dallas turned toward me and held out the reins. “He can’t bite you while you’re on him,” she said, gesturing again for me to take the reins. “He’s a bit naughty sometimes, but he’s actually a nice boy.”

“That’s comforting,” I responded. I was scared. I’d seen Dallas stick her hand into a horse’s mouth and grab its tongue, which to me, was the equivalent of patting a shark on the nose. You can say he’s a nice shark, but I’ve seenJaws, thank you very much.

“I’ll hold his head while you get on,” she acquiesced.

I kept my eyes glued to Beau’s head as I stepped up into the saddle. Once out of danger, of being bitten at least, I consciously slowed my breathing as Dallas’s voice came through my headset, “Just walk him around and pick up a little feel.”

We started clockwise, slow and steady along the rail.

“That’s it, just keep his mind with you. You’re doing great.” After two laps around the arena, we switched directions, and I relaxed enough to stop white-knuckling the reins.

“When you get to the mirror at the far end, ask him to stop.”

The arena had two huge mirrors, relics from a church choir balcony. As we approached the first mirror, I sat in the saddle and pushed my feet forward. Beau came to a sudden stop before I could use any rein. When I leaned forward again, he stepped into a walk. Feet forward and the horse stopped again on a dime. Beau did what I asked him to do, tight and responsive. I didn’t have to tap his sides multiple times to get him to walk. I didn’t have to yank on his reins to get him to stop. And what was more exciting was my ability to recognize the difference between River and Beau, the equivalent of discerning the difference between driving a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler and a Porsche. But for someone new to the horse world, the awareness was thrilling.