They call it lunging, you tie a long lead to the horse and they walk in circles around you, somethings trotting or galloping. It helps with bonding, it exercises the horse, it hones the skills of the rider and animal. Fate joins in sometimes, she likes to sit in the middle and watch, Chloe steps around her. These two have no unease with one another. That is the mark of a good farm dog.
Maria loves working with her pony, and I can see it has been good for her, as training a dog is always good for me. It is true that animals make us better, it is true that training animals force us to look at ourselves. I am excited that lunging is now a part of our landscape.
Six or seven months ago, I could never have imagined the scene I saw this morning when I strapped on my trusty camera and headed out to the pasture with the dogs. Maria was already outside, she was lunging with Chloe, giving her her daily exercise, one of their bonding rituals. It is now a part of our daily life, if you told me this would happen earlier this year, I would have laughed.
In the harsh winter, we were struggling with so many things – trying to sell Bedlam Farm, grappling with the resulting debt, dealing with the loss of Simon, Frieda and Lenore, struggling to care for the animals in the very brutal cold. We are not naturally positive people, Maria and I, we are learning how to be positive people.
The news is really on the bad news of the world, bad news could easily have been our story this winter. It was not. After darkness light, we are always changing, always learning, always growing. Life is filled with hope and promise, if you can open your eyes to it. This winter, Fate was not even born and Chloe was living on a farm in Pawlet, Vt. We could hardly imagine owning a big and strapping pony.
This morning, here it was, I was about to call the dogs to go get the sheep and get us all to work. Care for nature is part of our lifestyle now, it includes the capacity for seeing the good and beauty in the world, not just the bad, and for living together in harmony and respect.
As a young writer, I felt much of the bad news of the world was being hidden away, I thought it was my job to find it and bring it into the light. In our time, the greedy people figured out that bad news is profitable news, and so that is all the news we see, all the news our politicians talk about. This year, I am proud to say, we saw beyond our bad news, we are making our own news, and it is not always good, but it is not always bad.
That is life’s hope and promise, the lessons we are learning here on the farm, the lessons we share.
