A Mare's Purpose

Penny has always run toward what most horses flee. A strange sound at the fence line, an unfamiliar person, something moving at the edge of the pasture (usually the sandhill cranes). Where other horses startle and withdraw, she moves toward. I have been told this about myself too, in various ways, by various people, not always as a compliment. Sometimes it is due to a long history of being told to ignore my perceptions. But in the case of Penny, it is something else. It took me a long time to understand that this quality is not recklessness. It is a particular kind of curiosity. A willingness to find out what something actually is rather than flee the idea of it.

Penny was bred to be a reined cowhorse, carrying the bloodlines of champions, brought from Saskatchewan to Michigan at two years old with a future mapped out for her in arenas and competition. That future never quite materialized. Her body had other ideas, and so did she. Her sire is one of the top Paint reined cowhorse sires. Her dam, Teena, was never ridden. A career broodmare who stayed with her breeder until she died in her mid-twenties. I found it curious that Teena seemed to be simply loved, no truly special bloodlines. Something perhaps just special about her.

I remember one of the first comments on Penny came from the man who transported her from Saskatchewan. She had never seen a garden hose before. When they stopped to fill her water she drank from it directly. He mentioned it as a quirk. I have come to understand it as Penny.

The horseman who started her, John Tilley, noted she bucked and struggled with crossfiring behind. She also tended to “get a little lost when by herself,” he noted. Honest observations, offered without judgment. The first time I rode her was at a clinic with Harry Whitney in Tennessee. She was the clinic favorite. Someone approached me afterward and asked if I was interested in selling her. I said no without hesitating. She felt free, loose, forward moving, happy. I felt that joy too.

A trainer I worked with later said something I have not forgotten. Penny had been bucking at the lope and tried to do everything with speed rather than understanding her own balance. He watched her and said: we need to aim the fire, not take it away. He noted that intelligent horses tend to feel deeply and bond hard. He also mentioned a  parent who would sit with Penny in her pen for the length of her daughter's lessons  He paused when he mentioned that and looked off into the distance. He seemed to want to say something about what he had witnessed and couldn't find the words.

She has been the barn favorite at every facility she has entered. A rider at a clinic borrowed her when her horse went lame, rode her through open fields, offered to buy her. The veterinarian at the reproductive facility where she is currently staying called to discuss next steps and mentioned,adamantly, that she is easy to get along with. The barn favorite there too. An equine bodyworker came to work on her this spring and told me Penny had spent the session placing her body between myself and the bodyworker. She asked if Penny had witnessed something happen to me. She said she feels that Penny believes her job is to protect me. Even to protect me from her own emotional struggles.  She feels that Penny sees me. I will hedge about that because I’ve never felt a horse’s job should be to understand me.

All of this. And she was bred to work cows in a competition arena.

What she became instead — farm greeter, barn favorite, keeper of the gate, the mare who greets everyone chest first with bright eyes – turned out to be something no bloodline could have predicted and no competition could have measured.

I have been thinking about what that means. For her. For me. For what we believe makes a life worthwhile.

There is a particular economy applied to mares. What she can win. What she can produce. These are the two answers the horse world has for what a mare is worth and they are not so different from the answers offered to women.

Penny has quietly declined both.

Her body was never comfortable under saddle in the way the cowhorse arena required. Years of crossfiring, anxiety at the lope, an abscess that had been building long before anyone thought to look for it. We tried breeding her last year. Three attempts. None took. The first embryo this year didn't make it to 28 days. Her body has been saying something consistently for a long time. The question has always been whether anyone was listening or whether they were too busy trying the next available measure of her worth.

I have stage 4 endometriosis and adenomyosis. For years my body signaled clearly and consistently that something was wrong. For years that signal was dismissed because I was still functioning. Still showing up. Still useful enough that the pain didn't qualify as real. This is not an unusual story for women with these conditions. The diagnosis comes late and typically only at the woman's persistence that something feels terribly wrong. If it comes at all it often arrives in the context of fertility. When the body fails to produce, suddenly there is something worth investigating. The pain alone was not enough. The pain alone is rarely enough.

Female bodies, both equine and human, are legible to the world primarily through what they can perform or produce. When they can do neither the question of worth becomes suddenly complicated. As if worth were ever that simple. As if it were contingent on output rather than something the creature simply carries, unchanged, regardless of what the world can extract from it.

Penny is the barn favorite at every facility she has ever entered. She has never won anything. She has not yet produced a foal. She moves toward the strange sounds at the fence line while other horses flee.

I don't know the outcome of whether she will ever produce a foal. I do know that is not what makes her matter.

We need to aim the fire, not take it away.

Penny still struggles, my body still struggles, neither of us arrived at the uncomplicated life her bloodlines or my ambitions suggested. It named something. The fire was never the problem. Misdirected, unnamed, running through a body with nowhere to go. That's the problem. That's what gets labeled difficult. Emotional. Too much.

The work I am building at Meadowlark Farm & Ranch is built on a different premise. That the body is not the problem. That what looks like resistance is usually information. That purpose is not something performed for an external audience but something lived from the inside out, even on the days– especially on the days — when it can't be measured by anyone watching.

Penny's dam Teena was never ridden. She stayed with her breeder until she died in her mid-twenties. Loved completely. Not useful in the way the horse world measures usefulness. Worth everything to someone anyway.

Penny is at a reproductive facility right now. The vet called this week about next steps and mentioned she was the barn favorite. Of course she is.

My retired mare Petunia is 26 years old. She has arthritis in her neck and has mostly lost her voice to heaves. She was supposed to be replaced. That was the plan when I brought Penny home in 2018. She is still at the fence every morning. Still calling with what's left of her voice.

None of them performing. 

None of them replaceable. 

All of them the point.