Years of healing and finding ways to function later, I was riding horses again. The story of my long time of training horses and riders is held back in a respectful way from saying that I worked always with a disability. I did not want humans or equines to think of me as anything but fully capable.
Sometimes the young or abused and frightened horses would be able to challenge my questionable grip on the lead shank and I have always found a loose horse a very scary prospect. When I got Dharma Gita and Darjeeling (brother and cousin to our own sweet Dream Cat) - purebred Arabian colts - I found myself feeling compromised. I looked at an old drawing I had of a "war bridle" and began tying a smooth rope into halter-like configurations. I did not like the part that went through the mouth, so I eliminated it.
I ended up with a simple design that would squeeze the horse's head when they tried to pull away from me but would immediately release when they yielded. This aspect was what made it work - the horse got an instant reward for yielding to me and listening. It was incredible. I could safely lead Darjeeling past terrifying things like tractors and really know that I could hold onto him; better yet, I could SCHOOL him in the halter and he was learning in half the usual time. Dharma Gita had been orphaned at birth and had a tendency to test ALL of the boundaries... he gave me a name for the halter. The "Boundary Halter".
I made them myself and took them to confidence clinics I taught. A client bought one and was finally able to work with her very bold and strong Morgan gelding. She said "This halter could save someone's life". It had saved me on so many occasions!
I ended up a few years later helping at an equine rescue and was able to work with many draft horses and draft crosses there and the people often watched me hold onto and successfully school a massive horse or a colt who had been unhandled... and certainly others were working the horses, too. But, I had a left hand and arm that were functioning at 10 or 20%. I offered my boundary halter to one of the fellows whose horse always bolted and got loose. No one was interested. A trainer that came to them each year had truly disliked my design because it squeezed the horse's head. Of course I told everyone that you NEVER tied a horse with this halter and NEVER left one on a horse.
Years passed. I still used my halter. I sold a half a dozen of them. I was just not wanting to push them at people and I felt like I was the only one who needed to use one.
Then, tonight, I was looking at videos. I saw, just in a passing moment, a man in Britain schooling a horse in a halter just like mine!! I found his website and saw the identical halter not only in use but offered for sale. Strangely, I was elated. I am smart enough to know that no idea is totally original and my halter is/was so simple... heck, I had posted photos of it often through the years and would be thrilled to know that someone had made their own and it had helped a horse. But what made my night, so to speak, was the fact that this respected trainer was getting profound results and using the same design I had created also. Those who had criticized and dismissed my design were somehow exposed (in my awareness) as having tunnel vision. I was correct. I was smart when I found a way to overcome a weakness in myself and make a training tool that offered instant clarity for the horse.
Sad, though, it is that it took an outside observation to make me confident again and proud of my design. Sad it is that I was influenced by others to feel diminished then influenced by another to feel vindicated. I have GOT to let go of any need for outside approval from humans. How things go with the horses is the true test of success.
