One horse, one assumption, and an early lesson in paying attention to what the horse was actually showing me.
When Kitty Hawk was diagnosed with navicular and could no longer continue the work we had been doing together, I was devastated. We had been at the top of our game, and at that age it felt as though everything I had been working toward had suddenly disappeared. Eventually, I began to understand that our relationship had not ended; it had simply changed. She stayed in my life for years after I stopped showing her, and we found other ways to enjoy each other through trail rides, flatwork, and simply being together.
Then Joe came along.
He was a beautiful sixteen-hand dapple gray Thoroughbred with a heart of gold, the kind of horse who seemed genuinely happy to do whatever you asked. I was thirteen when I brought him home, and what made him even more special was that he was the first horse I could truly call my own. I had leased horses before, but Joe belonged to me, and I remember feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.
My confidence was high. I already had years of riding behind me, I had been successful with Kitty Hawk, and Joe and I seemed to click almost immediately. Our first month together felt effortless. Our lessons were going beautifully, we were progressing quickly, and I was convinced I had found another incredible partner. Show season was approaching, so I was riding every day and preparing for what I assumed would be a very successful season together.
One day, my instructor, Sue Cassell, and I trailered Joe to a nearby equestrian center where I had competed many times with Kitty Hawk. It had a dressage arena, show-jumping ring, and cross-country course, so it was familiar territory for me. Joe hauled beautifully, settled in easily, and our warm-up felt great.
Sue set a jumping course for us, and off we went. Jumping three-and-a-half-foot fences on Joe felt almost effortless. He was athletic, willing, and seemed to enjoy the work. The first few fences came easily, and as we continued through the course my confidence grew even more. The final line was a triple combination ending with an oxer, and I can still remember coming around the turn thinking, This is easy. We’ve got this.
The first fence was perfect, and the second felt even better. Then, as Joe took off over the oxer, something changed. I felt it, but there was no time to understand what was happening before he bucked somewhere over the fence and I went headfirst into the ground.
I was unconscious briefly, and when I began to come around, my mother and instructor were beside me. Joe was there too. I remember looking at him and having this incredibly clear sense that he was just as confused by what had happened as I was. He came over and put his nose against my face, and at thirteen I interpreted that moment through the language I understood. It felt as though he were telling me he was sorry. More than anything, I knew in my gut that he had not simply decided to throw me off, although I had no idea yet what had actually happened.
After a few days of recovering from the soreness, I went back to the barn determined to ride again. I did not want one fall to turn into fear, and I wanted to prove to myself that Joe and I were fine. We started with flatwork, and everything felt good. The longer I rode, the more my confidence returned. Eventually we jumped a few simple verticals, and those went well too. My nerves settled, I relaxed, and the whole thing began to feel like an unfortunate accident that was already behind us.
Then I set up a double combination.
Joe jumped the first fence easily and approached the second in a nice canter, but as we took off I felt that same moment of discomfort. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground again, this time with a badly bruised tailbone and an ego that was not doing much better. Joe walked over and put his nose against me, and I remember sitting there trying to understand how the same horse who had been willing, generous, and seemingly happy in the work could have reacted almost exactly the same way twice.
That repetition changed the question for me.
It would have been easy to decide that Joe had developed a behavioral problem over fences, that he was becoming dishonest, or that something in my riding was causing the reaction. There were plenty of possible explanations, but by that point none of them felt complete enough to account for the horse I knew everywhere else. He was still the same horse on the flat. He was still generous and willing. He had not suddenly become difficult in every part of his work. Something about this particular demand was changing his response, and even though I did not yet understand why, it seemed worth looking at more carefully before deciding what the behavior meant.
Because of my bruised tailbone, I could not ride for the next couple of weeks, which gave me time to watch Joe differently. I worked with him from the ground, lunged him, watched him move, free-jumped him, talked with my instructor, and worked with our veterinarian as we tried to understand why this horse, who otherwise gave us very little reason to question his willingness, was reacting so dramatically when the fences became larger.
Eventually we discovered that Joe had arthritis in his back and that jumping the bigger fences was causing him pain.
With that information, the two falls looked completely different.
The behavior itself had not changed, but our understanding of it had. What had initially looked like a horse bucking over a fence became part of a larger pattern that made sense only after we considered when it happened, what he was being asked to do, how the demand changed, and what we already knew about the horse everywhere else. Joe had been giving us information through his response, but the response alone could not tell us what the explanation was. We had to keep looking long enough for the rest of the picture to come into view.
That distinction has stayed with me because it is so easy, with horses, to confuse what happened with why it happened. Joe bucked. That was true. He bucked me off over fences twice. That was also true. But neither of those statements explained the behavior, and had we stopped there, it would have been very easy to build an entire story around him that was not actually fair to the horse.
What changed everything was the pattern.
The response occurred under a particular demand. It repeated. It did not fit with the way Joe behaved throughout the rest of his work, and as the demand increased, something about his ability or willingness to meet it changed. Once we began looking at those relationships instead of treating each fall as an isolated event, we had much better information to work with.
Understanding what was happening did not make the next decision easier. I wanted to jump, and Joe could no longer comfortably do the job I had imagined for him. I loved him deeply and had already built a very specific future around what I thought we would accomplish together, but wanting that future did not change what his body was capable of giving me.
Ultimately, Joe went to a wonderful little girl and her family, where he could live a life that suited him better. He went on trail rides, was loved tremendously, and I suspect ate far more carrots than any horse reasonably needed. Letting him go was painful, but it also required me to recognize that loving a horse sometimes means letting the picture change when the information changes. The future I wanted with Joe was not more important than the life that was right for him.
At the time, I thought he had taught me about acceptance and humility, and he certainly had. Looking back now, though, I can see another lesson running through that experience, one that has influenced much of the way I work with horses today.
Joe taught me how important it is to question the first explanation, especially when the horse in front of us does not seem to fit the story we are telling about them. He showed me why repetition matters, why changes under greater demand deserve our attention, and why behavior can give us valuable information without automatically giving us the answer. Most of all, he taught me how much can change when we stop asking only, How do we correct this response? and begin asking, What else might this response be asking us to look at?
I did not have that language when I was thirteen. I was not thinking about pattern recognition, compensation, nervous system state, context, or clinical reasoning. I simply knew that the horse I knew did not make sense inside the easiest explanation for what had happened, and that discrepancy was enough to keep us looking.
I think about Joe often now when a horse suddenly becomes different in a movement they have done hundreds of times, when behavior appears that seems out of character, when a rider tells me something has become harder without knowing exactly why, or when the same physical pattern continues to return despite everyone’s best efforts to address it. None of those things automatically tells us what is wrong, and I think we create problems when we expect them to. What they do is give us a reason to become more curious about the rest of the picture.
Sometimes the most important information is not in the behavior itself, but in the relationship between that behavior and everything happening around it. When does it appear? What changes immediately before it? What happens as the demand increases? Does it repeat? What else changes at the same time? What about this response does not fit with what we already know about the horse?
Those questions do not guarantee an immediate answer, but they give us somewhere much more useful to begin.
Joe was one of the first horses who taught me that what looks like resistance from the outside can make perfect sense once we understand more of the picture. He taught me that a horse can be generous, willing, and trying very hard while still reaching a point where the body can no longer comfortably meet the demand being placed upon it. And he taught me that when what we are seeing does not fit the horse we think we know, the answer is not always to become more certain about our interpretation.
Sometimes we simply need to look again.