Kūkūilama and my "Aha Moment"

Once again I throw out everything I think I know

Aloha! Welcome to my newest subscribers and welcome back to my cherished long time readers, some of you hanging in here for over two years.

To recap for those of you who are newer, They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir began with sequential stories of my life in my late 30s, a period of adventure and intense learning from human teachers. Then my equine teachers decided they wanted their say. Luckily, Substack lets me tag posts, so you can choose to read only what interests you: the early years, or everything to do with horses, or relationships, or real estate.

But at the end of the day, isnʻt it all just different ways of looking at this journey of being human in relationship with other humans?

Kūkūilama is the name of my Arabian gelding, a name having various meanings to do with “light” - so it should have been fair warning to me that he was destined to shed light on my next life lessons. Especially because he came into my life through a big not-to-be-ignored synchronicity.¹

Kūkūilama watching the light of day fade.

So letʻs get back to his story, because for some reason it is taking its time being told. I wrote about the concept of “joint attention” almost three months ago, without explaining how I came to realize that Kūkūilama simply did not care about what I cared about. I promise to finish that explanation today. Really!

The story I am about to tell takes place six months into our relationship. I recognized when Kūkūilama first came to me that he was a bit shut down, traumatized by his recent and rough introduction to being saddled and ridden. Then after entrusting him for 90 days with another, gentler trainer, I realized his foundation of trust and communication was no better than before. He was absolutely ok with me climbing on his back. But no one had yet explained to him why he might want to be part of a team with a human partner. There was no use sending him off to anyone else. Kūkūi and I had to find our way into partnership, and it was my kuleana to take the lead, to make new offers that he might accept as a fresh start.

I had been there with Zara² decades before. When I met her she was a six-year-old mare who had big assumptions about how to minimally get along with humans, but no idea that real two-way communication was even a possibility. Please, even if you were with me when I began writing about Zara, it would be helpful if you go back and read about the first time she and I shared an understanding: her “aha moment.”

I am glad I went back and reread it for myself - because I just realized that both her aha moment, and mine with Kūkūilama, came at a time when I was asking them to back up. There has to be a metaphor there.

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Finally - pause for a drum roll - here is the story.³

Kūkūilama was now getting regular body work to undue the physical damage from being started under saddle and I was given a stern prohibition not to ride him until his back was healed. Which was fine, because we had so much to work out face to face, eye to eye, which meant doing what horse people call “ground work.” I was trying to make it more like play rather than work, because horses interact playfully with one another all the time. The tool I had at my disposal was a series of requests or “games” that Kūkūi was already familiar with from the two trainers. For example he knew that he would be asked to travel in circles on line or at liberty. He knew that when we went into the small arena, certain things were going to happen in a certain sequence - and once I started giving him permission to express himself, he made it clear he did not like any part of those things.

With Kūkūilama facing me at the end of a 12ʻ lead line, I asked him with the smallest of movements to start in a circle to my left. My energy was barely above a “stop” level, just the tiniest suggestion of movement. He turned with a toss of his head (already not a good sign as any Arabian owner will attest), walked about two steps, broke into a trot for another four strides and then bolted off the circle in a straight line, ripping the lead rope from my hands.

Hmmm. That was a clear “no.”

I decided to break everything down to even smaller steps. First ask him to back up and relax. Then maybe ask for a single step and relax.

My horse liked me - once he got off the circle he stopped to graze and let me approach, pet him, and pick up the line. I switched to a 22ʻ lead line to give him more room to maneuver and express himself. I asked him to follow me to a different part of the arena, not at the center and not at the edge, and just stand facing me. We stood for a bit until I saw him cock a hind leg in relaxation. Then I started wiggling my finger at him to ask him to back up. His head shot up and he looked at me defiantly. I wiggled the rope a little more strongly, and then a little more strongly. His look became more complex…he clearly did not want to back up but could see I was not going to give up. He could not come forward and he did not want to go back, so all of that energy went up and he reared, front legs high above the level of my head.

At that exact moment, someone opened a door at the house behind the arena to step out onto their lanai. Rather than come straight down with his front legs, my super athletic young gelding jumped sideways and landed six feet to my right, still looking at me, our shocked gaze betraying the adrenaline pumping through both of us.

My first thought was “well that was scary, but better than if it had been the early days with Zara because she would have spooked forward and run right over me.” My second thought, my aha moment, was “He was barely paying attention to me at all! All the time he is here in the arena with me, his attention is outside the arena. He just spooked at a small movement a hundred yards away.”

We stood together and I focused on my own breath until I heard him take a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. At that point I unhaltered him and let him graze while I turned to help the young woman who was practicing her groundwork skills with patient Zara. My mistake #2 - his lead mare, the one he would look to for support, had been in the same space but occupied elsewhere. No wonder his attention was everywhere else, looking for escape routes.

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Did I mention that horses had taught me to operationalize the definition of “insanity” as doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result? No way was I going to keep trying the same strategies that had been effective with Zara. It was time to reset all my assumptions. Having had the insight that Kūkūilamaʻs attention was not inside the arena, I went back and looked at all the videos I took during his months with the second trainer. And sure enough, whether he was being circled at liberty or being ridden around the rail, his head and eyes were focused over the fence. Often he spooked at something outside- much more than at anything he encountered in the arena itself.

Fortunately we had a relationship. We spent plenty of time hanging out together in the pasture and he would meet me at the fence when I arrived. You might even say we had begun to love each other. But our relationship sucked. We did not know how to communicate in a way that built trust and a shared path forward.

Let me stop right here and ask a rhetorical question - how often are we as humans interacting with one another, minimally coordinating action, but with little or no sense of connection or shared purpose? How often does one of us just leave when it isnʻt working, mentally if not physically? In our work teams, in our daily interactions, in our marriages? Just saying, I am never only writing about “horses.” And in any relationship that is stuck, I find that in most cases it is for lack of knowing how to find a way forward, not for lack of desire to connect in a more meaningful way.

Maybe that is why with both Zara and Kūkūilama, the moment of insight came with trying to take a step back. Because that was exactly what I had to do. Take a step back and be willing to leap sidewise. To stay still and wait for the light to beckon.

1. Let me just warn you, if you manage to do what we say we want and you get into that big flow the Universe keeps offering us, it gets increasingly hard to say no to what shows up as your destiny, and increasingly easy to say no to whatever would just be a distraction.

2. I wrote about meeting Zara as “when the student is ready the teacher appears.”

3. Anyone who knows me in real life will recognize this pattern. I start telling a story to make a point but first there I digress into a different story, which reminds me of another point…thank you to all my patient listeners in real life.