Eleanor and Her Horse

Margot Lasher

Eleanor is a tall, stately woman, with the look of bodily strength you get from growing up in the country and working with horses. I met her at the pool where we both were swimming through the New England winter. We spoke to each other in those conversations that occur in locker rooms where everyone is feeling good because they are stretching and relaxing their bodies, but I don't think we ever talked about animals. The winter had been both long and severe, and like everyone else at the pool, we discussed the weather and how we couldn't wait to be swimming outdoors.

At the end of May it was still cold, we were still swimming indoors, and I mentioned that I would be leaving next winter to work on a book about human-animal relationships. Her eyes widened, and she told me about Stormy Weather.

Eleanor was born in the desert of Texas, grew up in the farmlands of central Florida, and spent her teenage years in the hills of Maine. Her father was a Texas horseman, and whenever the family moved, it was always to a place where her father could keep his horse. The family house and the stables were just different parts of her home to Eleanor. From the beginning she rode tucked in front of her father on his horse.

The situation was difficult for Eleanor's mother, who was afraid of horses. She imagined all of the accidents that can happen around horses happening to her child. In her mother's visions, Eleanor wandered into the corral and was kicked by a horse. Or she was riding with her father and as the horse reared, her father lost his hold on her and she fell and was trampled. Her fears were compounded by her knowledge that there was something wrong with Eleanor's sight. The horse was already much more powerful than her tiny child. The horse would sense the child's added weakness and use it against the child.

Eleanor was born with limited depth perception. When she walked, she couldn't see the ground clearly. So Eleanor, as a three-year-old child, did not see the edge and fell down a staircase. She was fitted for glasses after this fall. But it is hard for a child to keep her glasses on. Essentially, her visual world was a sphere of clarity close around her, and a blur beyond this sphere. It was like walking perpetually through a light fog.

Still, Eleanor's father took her out to the stables and with him on his horse. And her mother could see that Eleanor was happiest around horses. Then one Sunday, her father said it was time for Eleanor to have her own horse. They went out looking, and Eleanor found Stormy Weather.

Stormy was young, two and a half, and almost completely untrained. He was gentle if you approached him on the ground, but he wouldn't let anyone on his back.

Stormy was being sold for two hundred and fifty dollars. Eleanor wanted him. She didn't know why. Her father kept saying that she could have a better horse, meaning one that was much more expensive and trained, but Eleanor held her ground. They brought Stormy home.

This was the beginning of a relationship that would last throughout Stormy's life. Stormy threw everyone who tried to get on his back: first Eleanor's father, then a professional trainer whom her father hired, and lastly Eleanor. After a few weeks the trainer, who was an honest person, told Eleanor's father that he was wasting his money and that the best idea was to leave the girl and the horse alone to work it out. Perhaps he sensed the connection between the horse and the girl. It was good advice, because soon Stormy allowed Eleanor to sit on his back. "Gradually," she said, "he began to accept my commands."

Eleanor took the word "commands" from the horseman's language. But it seemed out of place in their relationship. "People in the horse world see the relationship as one of dominance and submission," she explained. 'The rider is taught that if he doesn't dominate the horse, he will be dominated." She said that she has been in the dominant position with many horses over the years. She just knows that it was not this way with Stormy Weather.

Stormy simply decided to trust her. She knew something, nonverbal and indefinable, when she first saw him, and at some point he knew it too.

Stormy and Eleanor went into the green hills together, both of them feeling for the first time the joy of wandering. It was an incredible accomplishment for Eleanor to be out on her own. Stormy and Eleanor could leave in the morning and wander all day in the Florida hillsides. He saw the ground clearly and didn't stumble. They were safe with each other.

One beautiful fall day her father tried to ride Stormy. Stormy threw him over and over. Eleanor told me this with a smile and a heightened energy in her voice and body. I got a sense of her deep affection for both of them.

"My father was good at everything. He was better than me at whatever he did, and he let me know it. So I guess I really liked what happened. Stormy was the only thing I did better than him," said Eleanor.

I thought about the interwinding relationships: her father, her mother, Eleanor, and Stormy Weather. If Stormy was Eleanor's closest companion, her mother and father might have sometimes felt sad that her connection to Stormy was stronger in some ways than her connection to them.

One evening Eleanor's mother said: "I think if there was a fire you would save that horse before anyone else in the family." Eleanor remembers that she said this with an edge of jealousy.

And any of us might have felt jealousy, in addition to longing for the closeness of Eleanor and Stormy's relationship. They were connected to each other empathically.

Eleanor and Stormy were really there for each other, tuned in and responding. They gained inner strength from the safety of their connection. They gave their strength to each other. When things changed dramatically, they responded together to the change.

Eleanor knew that something was wrong. Stormy had always loved to go out riding. He began to hesitate now, to slow down, as they were leaving the pasture. He tripped over a stone on the path. One day, he stopped at the gate.

Eleanor knew; asking the vet to look at him was just a formality. Stormy's sight was going. When Stormy's sight grew worse, Eleanor rode him only within the pasture, where he knew every piece of the ground by smell and touch. She rode him just as much as he wanted, letting him feel safe with her as he had let her feel safe with him.

Abridged from And the Animal Will Teach You, Berkley Books, New York, 1996.