Paradigm Shift, Step One

June, 2011. Horses at pasture: (left to right) Janet, Stella, Millie, and Lucy.

We have been undergoing a paradigm shift this summer in the way we view nutrition on the farm. It started back in June shortly after we put the non-gaited paint horses up for sale. Just two or three weeks earlier I had added two nutritional supplements to my daily diet with no adverse health effects. After taking in the lowest recommended dose on a daily basis, I had yet to notice results, not that I had expected to notice any. While I was intrigued by the impressive claims the product maker made for its products, I did not just roll off the turnip truck yesterday and am well acquainted with the ploys of hype and even direct falsification that plague advertisers today. As such, I was trying the supplements but my hopes for them were tempered by my more-than-healthy skepticism. Then Miss Lissamy Lucy intervened.

Forgive me, but to tell this right, I need to backtrack a couple of years. In a post titled Falling, I chronicled my unsuccessful adventure in horseback riding with Millie. The short version is: I tried riding, I got thrown (or chose to fall before being thrown), then I hurt for a couple of weeks. As I remember it now, I'd swear it took three weeks before all the aches and pains, bumps and bruises from that afternoon's single fall stopped plaguing me entirely. I still recall the nights of trying to get comfortable and waking when I turned over, and days where just catching my breath made my ribs ache. (The post reveals that distance may have magnified the event in my recall--or that pride kept me from fully reporting on the discomfort in the post.) Whatever the truth of the matter is, or was, I do know that the one fall that afternoon caused me considerable grief for many days to come. Anyway, with lesson learned and life being busily lived, I had not remounted any of our horses since then until one fateful afternoon.

We had finally decided that the horses had to go. At least the quarter horses, to start, would need to move on. Keeping them as pasture ornamentation is expensive since our acres are mostly wooded and they graze down what pasture we have more quickly than it can regrow. After posting an ad for Lucy and Janet, our red-and-white paint mare and her two-year-old filly, I got the bright idea to give Lucy some time under saddle before introducing her to potential buyers. That Saturday afternoon, she was calm and gentle as I saddled her up, familiar with the procedure even though she had not experienced it for a long two years. Although I considered doing some groundwork with her before mounting, I felt pressed for time and did not think it was all that necessary. Maybe prudent, but I chose to forgo it. After all, I had never ridden a horse that had been out to pasture with her herd for so long, and I "reasoned" that when I had first met and tried Lucy, she had already been out to pasture with a herd for some weeks, and had been a perfect lady then. Bad choice on my part.

When I went to mount, she stood like a lady until my toe nudged her in the side. Leg not entirely over her back, I had no chance and went flying the moment she exploded out from under me. Since I had been trying to mount with the assistance of a rock pile, that's where I landed--that first time--back on the rock pile. After just a few bronc-like bucks, Lucy settled down and agreed to be caught. A bit more cautious, I went to the house for help. I thought if our Operations Manager could just hold the mare's head while I bumbled onto her back, all would be well. Wrong. I will spare you the blow-by-blow description. Suffice to say, I managed to get thrown thrice that afternoon before having the good sense to hang up the saddle. We humans recalled my experience with Millie (see Falling) and agreed that, while I was moving fine just then, I would pay dearly for my indiscretions by the morning. Lucy, unsaddled and cooled out, was turned back out with her herd. I finished the farm chores for the day, and sent up a prayer of thanks for a learning experience gained without serious injury. Amazingly, I wasn't even sore at that point, but I knew that time and rest would rectify that situation.

Okay, so I had stopped counting by that point, but again I was wrong. Night passed with nary a twinge. Morning dawned and I felt amazingly well. Indeed, days passed with no physical evidence of my adventures. Finally on Friday, after steeping out of the shower, I saw a colorful bruise on one "cheek" in the mirror. I poked and prodded and found the spot was tender. But that was it.

Now, I have not gotten any younger over the past two years. I'm over fifty and at that time my body was happy to remind me of my age, frequently. Why, then, had I been able to get thrown off of a horse not once, not twice, but three times in a single day without paying with physical pain? We talked it over and the only difference we could discern was the addition of those two nutritional supplements mentioned at the beginning of this post. I went back to their literature and found claims about ease of movement and reversal of aging. Thinking about it, I could remember a time in my youth when I rode daily and suffered the occasional barn injury with no complaint. Without further hesitation, I contacted the company, reordered the supplements for another month, put my order on auto-ship, and signed up for a business site with them. I was not ready to "sell" the products, but I was eager to share my story with a few friends and figured that I might as well enjoy the benefits of referring possible sales in the event anyone I knew opted to try the products. The company is Emerald Express and their products are Emerald Sea--an encapsulated blend of organic sea vegetables, and Action Whey--a whey protein powder made from the raw A2 milk of organic, grass-fed cows.

I invite readers to research the products. (Here's a link to a YouTube video overview.) Stay tuned as I continue to ramble about our household's paradigm shift on nutrition. As stated above, this experience merely nudged us onto this journey; these products represent but step one for us.

Falling

“The ground is much further away than it used to be,” we reply when asked whether we ride the horses, and it is true but Millie is ever eager for an adventure and we are loathe to deprive her again.

Nearly ten days ago we stopped simply hitching bareback lifts from round pen to barn or pasture. Millie is a lady who respects that fearless young riders grow into overly cautious middle-age women. Recognizing that we’ve no easy swing into the saddle left in us, she’ll stand catty-corner to a rock or a pile of logs and allow us to clamber ungracefully onto her back before spiriting us away on her long legs with her smooth gait.

Exchanging the halter and lead for an actual bridle with a soft rubber snaffle, then tacking her up with pad and Western saddle, two girths and a breast collar, we defy gravity by lifting ourselves (that being me, myself, and I) from ground to saddle with hardly a grunt. Okay, so Millie was standing downhill on the driveway, but still we are impressed with the small feat. She begins walking away while we’re still fumbling for the far stirrup, then waits patiently when asked to Ho!

Soon we’re moving off downhill, surefooted in a style I’ve not known in years, her Saddle Horse gait moving my midriff in that marvelous dance this body had nearly forgotten. Passing rocks, the rusting flagpole, grazing goats (without spooking), we descend to the valley with exhilarating ease. On the flat we inscribe figure-eight’s and try our luck at a serpentine—but Millie is having no such nonsense. The field is open, who are we to be acting as it’s enclosed?

Following the path along the newest fence line into the woods she slides into that gait that mimics a trot but without a shred of roughness, the rider might as well be napping in an easy chair. En route Millie begins to canter, slips immediately into a buck and is pulled back to that place where I’m confident all within a moment. Had a watching goat blinked, she would have missed the exchange.

Around the front field, avoiding the soft earth of the newly-filled waterline trench, drifting toward the barn uphill but willing to stay on the flat as requested with another pop!, canter, buck sequence neatly frustrated and this middle-age rider wonders Why not? The poor gal has not been on an adventure since carrying the visiting Caitie through the woods, if she wants to run along the hillside we need only hand in the saddle like a sack of sweet potatoes. Where’s the harm in that?

Almost as quickly as the thoughts have been processed, we’ve granted Millie her head and one stride, two, three we’re cantering when whoops! She’s bucking for keeps now. We stay on once, twice, but with the horse twisting beneath us we understand that parting is a sure thing. So much decision making is crammed into the next split-second—where are the rocks (everywhere!), where will we be if we hang on longer, how close is the water-line trench, how little impact are we having with bit and reins, and ah here’s a grassy spot let go and fly down in a clean arc, and Ooof! Shoulder meets ground as we’ve instinctively tucked and rolled, and Millie’s hoof beats echo as she races up the hillside without us.

Before she’s even reached the first pasture we are up and walking gingerly in her wake. That fear that has kept us earthbound for so long has been faced and realized. We are impressed with our own ability to analyze the situation and react; life here in the Southern humidity has kept our brain on a much slower track for so long we had nearly forgotten the exhilaration that comes of split-second decision-making. We twist our neck and inscribe a circle with each arm; nothing’s broken. That shoulder blade we landed on may well be sore tonight, but falling onto the rocky ground of Wilson County has proven quite manageable, thank you very much.

Millie is standing by the driveway gate, commiserating with Lucy and Stella when I arrive on foot. Only the near-side rein has even dropped and I scoop it up neatly and we head back to that spot from whence I’d mounted from the ground. We’ll get back on before Millie learns that she can call the shots and for the second time in one afternoon we step from earth to saddle without more help than the inclining geography.

This time Miss Millie stands while we settle ourselves, then moves off smartly to return to the field where she had just bucked me off. Energetically walking and oh-so-smoothly trotting at my request, Millie revisits the place where she’d taken the upper hand but tries no more tricky moves, and the ride provides us with the entertaining little adventure that we’d so long been promising her.

A quarter hour later we return to the barn. Although I’ve scouted surfaces where I might set the heavy saddle overnight, I find the whole rig pulls off neatly and I am quite able to carry it uphill to the storage trailer to put away properly. Cooling down Millie, fetching hay, and completing the evening chores are all done gingerly—expecting more stiffness than we actually experience. It’s quite gratifying.

Indeed it takes until bedtime for agony to be realized, by which time we can no longer take a full breath (a quarter-breath would be welcome over the ensuing two or three days) and achieving a horizontal position is anything but restful. At least Millie is not here to see the effects of her little stunt.

Nine days out I only resort to ibuprofen at day’s end, when I am tired and the little aches add up to pain. And I have learned to trust by instincts: indeed, the ground is much farther away than it was some thirty years ago, but that won’t stop me. Millie and I have trails in our future, adventures if you will; I just won’t give her the reins to drop her nose to her toes and launch me into space. She surprised me that day, probably because I’ve left her so long as a pasture ornament. We will make time for riding so that that will not happen again.