Why It’s Never Too Late
Sue Kroug was the manager of the restaurant my parents owned in the heart of Wayne, Pennsylvania. Sue wore snakeskin stilettos. She also owned a horse. I started riding with Sue when I was 6 years old.
My life quickly became punctuated by time spent at the barn and riding. Weekly lessons turned to summer camps. I watched Ronald Reagan reign at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 1984 with my dad and rode as much as possible every day. Summer Camp led to horse shows and leasing ponies and, in time, to buying a horse. I named that horse - Oliver.
Oliver was a retired racehorse. He was a lot of horse for all 98 pounds of me. Oliver became a retired girl’s horse, after an accident with a pasture fence completely severed his back right tendon, leaving him unrideable. I was 15 years old.
I hung around the barn, riding other people’s horses and showing for that year, but the pause in momentum came at an important moment in my life. There was a major upheaval in my family. Attention and resources turned to my oldest sister and my dedication to horses (and my ride to the barn) got lost in the shuffle. I started to lean away from horses and towards school friends and sports and boys – naturally. Life marched on and I’ve lived lifetimes since then.
In August 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, on the heels of my mother’s recent death, horses came back to the top of my mind. I was working as an end-of-life doula, watching a powerful woman face her death in front of her beloved husband and young daughter. The desire to spend time with horses, working on a ranch, was tugging at me more. Horses became the answer to a question I didn’t fully understand yet.
I thought the ranch would be in Montana -- it turned out to be in Carbondale, Colorado. My dear childhood friend, Jen, introduced me to her cousin, Sheryl, and Smiling Goat Ranch (SGR). I waited until a month after my friend had passed and then made my way to Colorado.
I had a sense that my time on the ranch would be a bridge between a part of me that had been split off or simply left unfinished. This bridge was the only thing that I was certain of.
SGR is a ranch dedicated to helping humans with neurosensory issues heal with horses, using the Horse Boy Method, which has roots in classical dressage, neuroscience and Shamanism. It counts on the horse, through sensory work and back riding, to give the oxytocin boost required to quiet the nervous system to allow learning and rewiring of the brain. I arrived in April to start training in the Horse Boy Method, as a working student.
My time at SGR was an exercise in physicality, stillness, input and integration. It was also a place to learn the give and take of imposing my ego and will, and when to be receptive and selfless. The horses at SGR – Gates, Alaska, Takoda, Marley, Adobe and Prince – were the vehicle, both in the saddle and on the ground, for weaving this all together. I am left with the understanding that we are capable of embodying every person we have ever been and those we did not quite become or have yet to become, with who we are in this moment –simultaneously. Everyone can find the center of life again. I hope and plan to continue to ride horses, forever.
