The Day I Really Failed Zara

Exploring my Ambition, Attachment, and Commitment the day things went massively wrong

Have you ever failed?

Really if you are the one person in the world who has never failed at anything, then no need to read further. For the rest of us mortals, thank you for being here and reading my reflections on important lessons horses have taught me. If you are new to They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir, and would like to receive these weekly by email - or just want to get a list of past posts in order - you can enter your email address in the box below.

If you can, please take a second to hit the like heart, or tell me in the comments what you did not like or understand in the post, or just write about yourself or anything at all. I am getting between 250-300 “views” each week according to my dashboard, and would love to know who you all are.

Finally, nine months after I began volunteering with Jenny, she now officially belonged to me. When I sent the change of ownership to the Arabian Horse Association registry, I paid extra for a change of name. The barn girls were calling her The Princess, and it fit. Her new name would be Zara, one meaning of which is “princess.” “Zara” also can mean a blooming flower, or shining, bright - all of which also seemed fitting as well.

So now I owned a horse, the first horse I actually owned of the many I had ridden. And thatʻs what you do with a horse, right? You ride them. I never questioned that was our goal, our future life together.

But I had never started a horse under saddle, and it would take additional work to get Zara prepared for that step anyway. I was committed to use the natural horsemanship approach I had just discovered, so in March I audited a workshop with a Parelli Natural Horsemanship instructor at a facility in Rhode Island, a couple of hours away. During the weekend, I watched horses and their people transform under the quiet guidance of Randall Moore, who like many of the early Parelli instructors was a longtime ranch hand with an instinctively natural approach and many arrows in his training quiver before he gravitated to the structure of the Parelli program, admiring its focus on how to teach people to be better for and with their horses.

I came home with a clearer understanding of the principles and a bunch of special equipment: a rope halter, a double length 12-foot lead rope, and a bright orange “carrot stick” with a “savvy string” that could be attached to the end to extend its reach. Much like the unfortunately named dressage “whip,” this was a long stick used to guide the horse, either in groundwork or in advanced dressage moves. I have a great appreciation for the value of having the proper tools for any job, whether that be a sticky yoga mat or a mandoline food slicer or a clever app. The Parelli Program also outlined specific sequences of exercises and goals, with a set of objectives I should eventually be able to perform with Zara - on line, at liberty, and in the saddle.

We were working towards riding, but a lot of the preliminary steps showed up as huge challenges for Zara. Perhaps it was a genetic disposition, since her dam had also exhibited difficulties with accepting the saddle and other tack. Or perhaps it was just my lack of timing and feel, but either way our progress was slow. It took many months of practice over the spring and summer for her to be relaxed about having a saddle pad placed over her back. I began introducing her to pressure around her girth area with a rope. She got to smell and bite and get used to a saddle on the ground or on the fence before I began gently placing it on her.

---

Zara appeared calm about having the saddle on her back without a girth around her belly.

It was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Pam stood outside the small arena watching me put the saddle on Zaraʻs back and gently pull up the girth to touch her belly and sides before loosening it again, a technique of approach and retreat. I had been doing this for weeks. “At some point you will have to just bite the bullet and tighten it,” Pam observed. I thought about it for a moment. Zara seemed to be relaxed and I was under no time constraint for our session that day. No one else would need the arena. “You are right,” I replied. “I have you here to support me, and it looks like sheʻs ready.”

I gently pulled the girth tight again, and this time instead of releasing after a few moments, I slipped the metal prongs of the buckle into the leather billet holes that hold it in place. I took a deep breath in and let my breath out slowly.

A moment later, Zara exploded. She hit the end of the long lead rope with so much momentum it ripped out of my hands and she took off for the far side of the arena, bucking furiously. I turned to Pam. “It sometimes happens,” she shrugged. “Give her a minute to figure it out, but you need to get in there and get the lead rope off her before she tangles in it.” That “minute” was many minutes. Each time Zara stopped, I would slowly walk in her direction. Before I could get close enough to unhook the lead rope, she was off again. I was no longer the person Zara trusted. She did not see “me.” My nearness was just one more stimulus to an overactive nervous system reacting to the predator that had grabbed her around the middle and was stuck on her back, intent on eating her for lunch.

After about half an hour Zara let me come close enough to touch her. I hoped to take off the saddle before releasing her from the lead rope, but as soon as my hand moved towards her belly she hunched to buck and took off. I quickly dropped the rope, stepping backwards from the flying hind legs. The next time she let me near, I did not hesitate. I quickly unclipped her halter. Zara stood with me for a moment, sides heaving. Then a movement outside the arena sent her off again, galloping frantically. Her body was in the arena. Her mind and attention were not.

Three hours went by. A small crowd gathered to watch, people coming and then drifting away. Each time I could get close enough to try to release Zara from her imagined attacker, she would stand quietly only until I moved towards the saddle. She ran. She bucked. Arabian horses are known for their endurance, and it was on full display. Eventually my husband showed up to see why I was still at the barn. Without thinking, he let our big sleek dog, a greyhound-pit bull mix, out of the car. Krishna enthusiastically ran straight towards where I was standing next to Zara to greet me. “NO!” I yelled as Zara backed up a step eyeing him, flipping from flight response to fight mode. I grabbed my dog by the collar as my horse, now unsure of whether to strike or run, spun in a tight circle. Her body slick with sweat, this movement finally caused the girth to loosen and the saddle slipped under her belly. Zara froze.

My husband sheepishly retrieved the dog. I went to Zara and carefully unhooked the girth, allowing the saddle to fall onto the ground. Then I clipped her halter to the lead rope, and using the body language weʻd learned, encouraged her to slowly step away from me and then forward away from the saddle. She shook herself like a dog after a bath, and hung her head low, both signs of a release of adrenaline. At that point, I knew it was finally safe to get close and reassure her with my presence and touch.

---

I was mortified. It was not just that I failed at my goal of preparing Zara to accept the saddle. I felt like I had betrayed the very hard earned trust of my equine partner. Even though she gratefully allowed me to cool her with water from a hose, and then stand near her in her paddock just being present - with her, and to this jumble of emotion inside me - I ached at the thought that she might never forgive me for compounding her trauma after more than a year of what I had hoped was healing it.

That night I did some serious soul-searching.

Maybe my problem was ambition. Had my ego led me to think I was good enough to do this when I was not anywhere near prepared? Had my ambition to achieve the goal gotten in the way of my listening to the only feedback that mattered, which was from Zara? My ambition had produced relationship casualties in the past.

To be honest, aside from my concern for Zara and for our relationship, I was also feeling embarrassed about my very public “failure.” I chided myself. After a decade of formal meditation practice and study of the dharma, I should have recognized my attachment to showing everyone how miraculous natural horsemanship is and how good I was at doing it. Things would not be as I wanted them to be; they would only be as they were. I was a beginner. I had made mistakes. But tomorrow would be tomorrow. The only real question was what commitments I was prepared to make for that new tomorrow.

How often is this true in any domain of life? Circumstances beyond our control interrupt our story line, a breakdown occurs. A pandemic hits and our work and home and social routines are upended. We donʻt get the promotion we feel we deserved. We arenʻt admitted to our first choice college. A past client lists their home with someone else. The person we are happily dating suddenly cuts us off abruptly - or worse, just ghosts us without explanation. Our parent or our friend or our pet or our dream unexpectedly dies.

Each of these breakdowns is an opportunity for examining our commitments. Deepening them, abandoning them, rewriting them.

This much I knew: I was committed to my relationship with Zara. Years later when I was in therapy following my divorce, my very good therapist explained to me the concept of “rupture and repair.” This was something I had always taken for granted. Part of my family heritage was knowing that shit happens in our important relationships, and out of our commitment we recommit and repair the damage.

I was also committed to the natural, more intuitive approach to horsemanship. That meant I would need to spend some serious time dedicating myself to getting better at it. This particular horse would require me to get much, much better. Zara and I had some past success to build on, but I would have to develop a solid mastery of the concepts and skills, and be honest with myself and ask for help when something was beyond my level of competence.

What I was not willing to do was punish Zara for not meeting my expectations, although others at the barn were offering their opinions that I either should give up on her and get rid of her, or send her immediately to a traditional trainer.

We would have to find our way to a new future together. Despite my failing her that day, Zara saw my continued commitment and gave me hers in return. Two decades later, our relationship has been through phases and changes I could not have imagined. She is still my greatest teacher about relationship, commitment, leadership and love. All my human relationships and commitments have benefited and benefit from her partnership with me and from her wisdom.

Yes, sometimes we have to “fail” to see how to move forward with dignity and commitment to what matters.