Field Note: Nobody Files A Report
Sometimes Scout drives me nuts.
There. I said it.
He is one of the smartest dogs I know, which makes it particularly frustrating when he suddenly seems to forget how anything works.
He follows me from one room to the other when there are really only two rooms to choose from. He gets clingy. Concerned. Resistant at precisely the moment when I have neither the time nor the patience for resistance.
Of course, there is always a reason.
He may have heard something. Felt something. Noticed something I haven't. Or, quite possibly, he has noticed me.
I am stressed, so Scout becomes more watchful. Scout becomes more watchful, so I become more stressed.
And there we are.
Two nervous systems trying to help the situation and occasionally making it worse.
Sometimes I get impatient with him. Sometimes he digs in. Sometimes I realize I overreacted and apologize.
And sometimes, seemingly out of nowhere, Scout walks over and licks my hand or my leg.
That's it. We're back.
Nobody files a report.
Flitzer and I have a different arrangement.
With Flitzer, you have to pay attention. He loves affection until he doesn't. One stroke too many can be exactly that: one stroke too many.
There is something about him that has always reminded me a little of my father. A certain grumpiness around the edges. The need to notice when you're approaching the line.
Flitzer is also very clear about what he wants.
He asks.
And asks.
And asks again.
I tell him, "I hear you. I'll be there in a minute."
He asks again.
Eventually I get short with him.
And somehow we survive this too.
Nobody files a report.
And then there is Shana.
Shana is my truth keeper.
She has an extraordinary ability to notice when what I feel on the inside and what I am doing on the outside aren't quite congruent. There isn't much point in pretending with her.
But being my truth keeper doesn't mean she floats around dispensing equine wisdom while I gratefully receive it.
Sometimes she's just annoyed with me.
And sometimes I'm annoyed with her.
She'll be demanding something from me while I am doing three other things. Then, ten minutes later, I'll need to tend to a spot on her fetlock and ask for her foot.
No.
"Shana, your foot, please."
No.
"We're doing this."
I'll show you.
"No chance."
There are moments when we are less horse and human and more like two old friends who know each other well enough to have an attitude.
Eventually she gives.
Eventually I soften.
Eventually she softens.
Sometimes I apologize. Sometimes I suspect she knows she took it a little far herself.
And afterward?
Nobody files a report.
No one gathers evidence.
No one adds today's offense to a mental folder of Things You Have Done To Me.
No one brings up what happened last Tuesday.
The rupture remains proportionate to the rupture.
I think that may be one of the things I treasure most about my relationships with my animals.
There isn't much room for pretense.
I can soften my voice and say, "It's fine," while my jaw is clenched.
And they know it isn't fine.
I can perform patience.
And they know I'm impatient.
I can try to hide my worry, irritation, sadness, urgency.
Well, good luck with that.
Perhaps, over time, being known that well makes pretending less interesting.
I'm irritated.
You're irritated.
I still love you.
Apparently we're doing the hoof anyway.
Fine.
And then we move on.
There is an idea about relationships being a little like bank accounts. We make deposits over time—trust, attention, showing up, affection, repair—and those deposits give us something to draw upon when things aren't quite so lovely.
I think about how much my animals and I have put into those accounts.
Years of feeding and tending. Listening and misunderstanding. Walking together. Standing together. Asking. Refusing. Trying again. Getting things right. Getting things wrong. Caring for each other's bodies and moods and peculiarities. Thousands of completely ordinary moments in which we simply kept choosing one another.
There is something in the bank.
Enough that one difficult moment doesn't threaten the relationship itself.
Maybe that's why we can be so completely ourselves with each other.
Not because anything goes.
Not because we don't affect each other.
And certainly not because I am endlessly patient or they are endlessly agreeable.
But because neither of us has to be perfect to keep our footing.
What if the safest relationships aren't the ones in which we never upset each other, but the ones in which we know an upset doesn't erase everything that came before it?
Maybe intimacy isn't the absence of irritation or rupture.
Maybe it is knowing the relationship is large enough to hold it.
Somewhere between Scout's clinginess, Flitzer's ENOUGH, Shana snatching her foot away, my impatience, their insistence, my apologies, their return—and all those ordinary days upon ordinary days of choosing one another—we have accumulated enough that after an imperfect exchange, none of us needs to ask:
Are we still okay?
We already know.
We're okay.
And nobody files a report.
With whom in your life is there enough in the bank that an imperfect moment can simply be an imperfect moment?
Over the past 25 years, I've kept returning to the small moments—the halter, grooming and tacking, the mounting block, the lead rope—and what changes when we see them through the horse's eyes.
I began gathering those moments into Mindful Horse Handling. At first, I thought it would become an online course.
It wanted to live in the barn.
So it became Mindful Horse Handling — A Guide for Therapeutic Riding Centers, a hands-on resource for the people whose everyday interactions shape a therapy horse's experience.
Small moments. Lasting change.
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