Things not always what they seem

This particular blog has been brewing in my mind over the last couple of days and I really wanted to get it out of my head and onto a page.

You may or may not have heard the phrase' things are not always what they seem to be' or the variations of. In my mind it goes with other phrases like 'you cannot judge a book by its cover'. The reason this particular phrase is on my mind this week is another story I have to tell about my horse Athena.

So for those who have not read my previous blogs, I have owned my horse Athena for just over a year, she is 10 years old now and is considered to be young in her experience and training and has some ways to go before her full potential is unlocked.

Her background is largely a mystery to us, so a lot of the time when we are asking her to do things, we do not know if this is the first time she has been asked or if she has done something similar before. Our experience working with her tells us she had a very different life to the one she has with us now, given her behaviour we believe the change has been for the better for her which we are pleased about.

About 3 weeks ago, Athena and I had some back luck. I say bad luck because I believe it was not intentional on her part but she bit my finger and then I fell off her when she bolted in the school. The latter was not normal behaviour for her and it did cause me to feel sorry for myself as I recovered from being battered and bruised and my confidence was shook as expected.

Most people I know tend to go over the whys and wherefores when something like that happens. I wanted to know what had been the cause to obviously avoid it again in future and I was at a bit of a loss. Then after more reflection I started to realise that I had seen Athena displaying problematic behaviour when being ridden in the school (its called napping).

We know the school is not one of her favourite places and prior to our incident we had been taking her for a walking in an open field (called hacking) and she was enjoying that but because of the poor behaviour in school we had stopped that and tried to focus on what seemed to be happening there.

I started to put together a pit of a pattern in my head like she was moving more than she had done previously when we tried to mount her, we struggled to steer her in school and she was avoiding turning in certain directions which we felt was very odd. Her behaviour elsewhere was fine she was eating well, sleeping and no signs of any ill health that we could detect.

Obviously animals cannot tell you what is wrong in situations like that and given me knock in confidence I also did not want to read too much into it. I wanted to give her some time to process what has occurred for her as well because bolting and having your rider come off cannot have been a good experience for her either.

Then the answer came to me on Saturday this week, Athena was having her saddle checked, we did not think it was a big deal, we knew her strap under the belly was bigger (called a girth) meaning she had lost some weight in a good way. Then came the eureka moment when the saddler agreed not only did she need a new girth but a plate change on the saddle.

This is where I try to relate this to a human so you can visualise.....imagine you are wearing an outfit where the top is quite tight and constricting it is not shaped well and using your shoulders and twisting is uncomfortable, also your trousers/skirt etc is loose at the waste band so you trying to keep them on because they are as tight as they can be and still too loose. Now add a heavy backpack onto your back which is not very well balanced and had various parts like the straps over the shoulders causing even more discomfort. After all that you are then expecting to hike up a large incline and others cannot understand why your being so slow.

There was the answer, on the outside it seemed like Athena was being her young and untrained self, napping in school and not taking instruction. But underneath its very likely she was uncomfortable and coped better with it on some days than others.

The adjustments were made and we tried to ride her in the school, what we saw was a much better behaved and comfortable horse. Given the above, we should not have been too shocked but we were delighted when we asked something new of her she gave us her all. It may not be just that simple, she may have been on a good day, but the more I write this down the more I hope we can now move forward positively.

Why did I compose a blog like this? I think they are a lot of similarities when you look at someone who is struggling with their mental health. They maybe doing what is required of them, school, work, other commitments but underneath there are things they are uncomfortable with and they struggle to communicate that.

We need to be kind, understanding and give others at times the space and confidence to tell us what is wrong and look to keep trying to help them, even if we do not understand at first how.