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*This is a First Friday Freebie, please feel free to share!*
Inside all of us is hope, fear and adventure. Inside all of us, is a wild thing. ~ Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
This September marks four years since a great and fascinating character in my life story left this world, and so I thought it fitting for our September First Friday Freebie to revisit what I wrote at the time of Gusto’s death. He left my world poorer for his passing, but also a better place, leaving an indelible mark on my mind and heart. In a world increasingly obsessed with control, he demanded freedom and autonomy, and showed me that the more I let go, the more extraordinary our collaboration could become. The more I allowed him his wild majesty, the deeper our bond, and hence his willing compliance, became. He taught me to never let myself be tamed, but rather, to seek those who could live with my need for freedom and a little dab of the feral.
Gusto. Photo credit: Susannah West Cord
Gusto came to me with a bad reputation for a nasty rearing habit, among other unfortunate tendencies. And yet, in our decade together, he never once reared under saddle, or put me on the ground. In fact, he saved my butt on more than one occasion. He became a constant - and enduring - source of inspiration for living life from a place of authenticity, because Gusto was never anything but true to himself, and demanded the same from me. The space that we came to inhabit when together was one of curiosity and deep mutual affection, an exploration of possibilities once thought impossible.
Gusto and Susannah in a clinic with Walter Zettl. Photo credit: Linda Parelli
The day I took a deep breath and took his bridle off, riding him with just a rope around his neck, he strutted his stuff with more pride and more pizzazz than a rooster with a newly acquired flock of hens. That same day, he also almost lost me after an unscheduled burst of joie de vivre that led to a spontaneous exhibition of airs above the ground that finished with a flourish - a capriole. As soon as he felt me become less than centered in the saddle, he stopped short and let me gather my wits and body about me as he turned his head and wondered if I had not received the memo. He proved to me again and again, that his problem had never been an unwillingness to comply. It had always been an issue of overbearing and forceful measures of control.
It seems like everywhere we look nowadays, control is becoming more and more of an issue. I see it in the horse world and the world at large. Whenever I am in doubt about the appropriateness of measures and means that I observe applied to horses and humanity, I think of Gusto and I have my answer.
Less Is More.
The rest speaks for itself, so let me get out the way, and let the past live again, even if just for a few short minutes in our minds. Here is what I wrote the day after I had to let him go.
Gusto, the day he arrived at the farm. Photo credit: Susannah West Cord
Some Things Are Not For The Taming
When most people told me to stay away from the horse I came to call Gusto, my then teacher Eddo Hoekstra told me to look in his eyes. What I saw was not the flickering rage, broken spirit or dead soul I had expected. Instead, I felt my presence acknowledged and met full force by a keen and friendly curiousity, tempered only by the promise of defiance.
In the years to come I would learn to appreciate his fierce warrior spirit and utter dedication to the integrity of his own dignity, though it came at a heavy price, the tale told all too clearly in his broken body. I learned to joke that his motto must be “I have an opinion about that.”
I found that behind all his wild majesty and naughty shenanigans, his constant need to challenge the status quo, beat the molten heart of an extraordinary character just waiting to be acknowledged for his magnificence, and his pride in the same. When I fully understood and embraced this, his world was my oyster. He gave me all of himself to the last drop, trusting I would never demand too much, or try to keep him for myself. Gusto was never a horse to be taken for granted, his compliance was always a gift and never a promise.
Gusto was a horse who demanded I meet him in a place of equality, and more often than not, it meant I had to step up. He demanded to feel respect and be respected or it was game over. We never reached the heights for which he was made, but over the nine years we had together, he learned that I would love and nurture him no matter what. That I had his back. That with the help of Stephanie Millham and Classical Horsemanship, I could and would help him heal inside and out, and most of all, that he could trust me, that I would never demand his service in the face of pain, cruelty or unfair demands.
Gusto knew full well what had been taken from him, but together, we experienced flashes of the magnificence to which he was born, fleeting moments of a glorious feel of shared power and lithe balance. We glimpsed a future we would never have but at least, we dreamed a little dream together.
Gusto. Photo Credit: Susannah West Cord
In our last few years together, I felt the full effect of my devotion and dedication returned in his throaty nicker of welcome and the warmth of his gaze upon me, the beam of golden affection enveloping me as I entered the barn. I knew the truth of his heart when he presented his forehead each day for a kiss in what became a ritual greeting, or tenderly wrapped his head and neck around me or one of the girls who helped care for him. I felt his friendship when I wept in his stall and he carefully took the muckfork from me and pressed his head against my arm, asking me to stop and stay with the pain of my breaking heart, to lean on him while it broke.
When his time came, he laid his head in my lap and comforted me as only a horse can, and in that moment I knew that while he belonged only to himself, he had given me all he had to give, in all ways. Our time had come to part, for a horse like him is never one to keep, and never in the face of loss of dignity. A horse like Gusto is always his own, first and foremost, with a destiny of his own and a pride and poise that will not be subjugated. He will break before he will bend in the face of injustice. If Gusto taught me nothing else, he taught me that some things are not for the taming, only for the loving, just as they are.
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Gusto. Photo Credit: Susannah West Cord
*If you’d like to read more about Gusto and his journey, you can read about him and much more in my book, Riding By Torchlight, from Xenophon Press.
Talk To Me!
Do you have a favorite equestrian principle you’d like me to talk about? Do you have a favorite non-equestrian saying you’d like me to look at through the eyes of an equestrian life coach? Or do you just have a great question or idea for a subject matter you’d like to see me write about? Then drop me a comment below and let me give it a go! Credit will be given for source of inspiration.
Some Things Are Not For The Taming