Arivaca Ranch

Miss Virginia, are you in or not?

Nick & Miss Virginia

Nick has been working with a 4 year old Arabian mare that has turned out to be incredibly calm and lovable. Nick has spent a lot of time with her. She responds very positively towards him, calmly following him–wanting to be with him. One characteristic of Miss Virginia, however, is that she is very sensitive to Nick’s emotions. When Nick has a bad day, Miss Virginia has a bad day. In the round pen, as Nick works with this mare, she tunes in to his emotions and her response is magnified many fold. On one particularly frustrating day, as Nick was lunging the mare, he threw down his rope and “stormed” out of the round pen. Miss Virginia just kept running, around and around, as if Nick was still pushing her. His energy was still pushing her even after he was physically gone. She is that attached to him.

Last week we had a lesson on horse grooming. Each of the boys brought his horse down to the “newly installed” wash mats. The mats are large, black, and lie flat on the ground. To a horse they must look like a huge pit ready to swallow them up. Nick was waiting his turn with Miss Virginia. As they started to approach the mats, Miss Virginia decided she didn’t want anything to do with that huge “hole” in the ground. She got nervous and started to fidget. Nick got after her and she returned his discipline with more nervousness. He returned her fidgeting with more discipline which eventually led to frustration. Of course, the more frustrated Nick felt, the more nervous Miss Virginia became. The cycle had started.

I called over to Nick to help him recognize the cycle of frustration. He caught it and started to calm himself down, hoping to calm the horse. Slowly Miss Virginia started to calm. As they approached the mat, Miss Virginia backed away. (I might add that the previous horse walked onto the mat with no fear at all. So, at this point Nick was a little disappointed in his horse.) As they came within 3 feet of the mat, Miss Virginia just dug in her heels and wouldn’t move one step closer. The tug of war started, the cuss words flowed, the frustration accelerated with both of them. Nick was ready to give up…. After all… “this stupid horse *&#!*…!” I stopped the war and had them back away for a few minutes to calm down. Nick didn’t want to continue—he had had it for the day. I convinced him to relax again and get Miss Virginia to do the same. (Nick understands well that he can calm the horse by calming himself.) We had a little time before dinner, so I suggested we just try to get her to place just one hoof on the mat. Kind of a game. Nick decided to go along with it. Again, as he neared the mat, Miss Virginia started to pull back. Nick again got frustrated. I asked, “Nick, why are you getting mad?” He replied, “Because she won’t come, it is sooo frustrating.” I asked, “Why is it frustrating? Are you in a hurry or something?” ‘It just is,” he replied. I responded, “Listen, Nick … we are not in a hurry. We have time to work with her. She is scared. Look at that mat, do know what she sees? She sees a great big pit that falls into nowhere. In fact, she believes there are vampires in the bottom of that pit.” (The boys have all been reading the Twilight series about vampires.) “So let’s review what is going on. Here you are, someone she trusts and loves, telling her to step into this pit of vampires that are going to kill her. She looks at you as her big brother and is confused. She wonders, why would you do this to me?” “Nick, here is your ‘little sister,’ totally scared and you are trying to get her into the pit. Are you going to do that by yelling at her—by pulling her in?” He stopped and looked at her for a moment. Then he went up to her and started to calm her and tell her, “Everything is all right.” His whole approached changed from frustration to caring and concern. “It’s OK Miss Virginia, nothing is going to hurt you. You can trust me.”

Nick started to ask her to move one foot at a time, just an inch forward. When she did, he would stop and comfort her and try to convince her that there was nothing to fear. They moved one inch at a time, closer and closer to the mat. Well, I started to get a little impatient myself, it was getting closer to dinner time and the other boys were finishing up chores and gathering at the kitchen. “Nick, let me help a little,” I said as I stepped behind the mare to apply a little pressure towards the mat. She immediately started to lift her head in fear and back away from the mat in response to my interference. “Ron, just let me do it, your scaring her. I think my way is better for her.” Nick signals me to back off. Oooohkkkay… what is this? The boy is teaching me! Nick continues, “You have to patient with her. You can’t push her. It’s has to be her idea, she has to feel safe.” I backed right off, and decided if it took all night, that was all right. Well, it took about 45 minutes for her to finally get one foot on the corner of the mat. It was getting dark and we needed to join the rest so I suggested we call it a success, one foot on the corner, end on a good note, and pick up from there tomorrow. I had to practically drag away one of the most impatient boys I have ever seen. (Remember, he wanted to quit earlier. Now he wouldn’t stop.) As we walked to join the rest of the group at dinner, I suggested that on Monday he set a goal to get Miss Virginia to put two feet on the mat. It might take a week to get all the way on the mat, and that was OK. He should make just small steps, small goals, in order to avoid the frustration of falling short of “too big of a goal.”

I left the next morning to return to the city for a couple of days. You can imagine my excitement when I got an MMS message on my phone Monday afternoon (his next attempt.) The staff had sent me a picture (on my phone.) There stood Nick and Miss Virginia, all six feet in the middle of the mat. And of course a huge smile on Nick’s face. When I returned to the ranch, I asked Nick what he learned from the experience. I really expected a comment about patience, or about not getting angry and keeping himself and the mare calm. Or, even something about small goals. Nick surprised me a little with the following: (I asked him if he would write his comments.)

“On Saturday, January 17th I had an amazing experience with my horse, Miss Virginia. Basically I was trying to wash her, but she didn’t want to step on the black mats that were set out because to her it was extremely frightening. It ended up taking her an hour to place one foot on the mat. To you, that may seem like nothing. But to me, it’s a life changing experience. I realized that in this analogy, I was the horse and the mat was Arivaca Boys Ranch. I want to try out the Arivaca Boys Ranch so bad, but I’m scared to death. I don’t know what the other side entails. But the truth is there is nothing but good benefits that come out of stepping on the mat. But taking that step will change your life, and Arivaca is all about taking those small steps into a better life.”

“It is all about taking small steps to a better life!” Thank you, Miss Virginia for providing both Nick and I a great experience to learn more about ourselves, and about life.

Arivaca Boys Ranch – “Building men Of Integrity… One Horse At A Time!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Stories from the Ranch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.