Visions of Cervantes’ Don Quixote fighting windmill-giants in his outlandish fantasies seemed an appropriate metaphor for my quest to compete at the Olympics in the sport of dressage. It was the latest goal I had set for myself after several years of college and life experience revealed that sandwiching my name between Dr. and DVM wasn’t worth the stress of school. I wanted to ride horses! So, with some inherited money and a new job as a trainer at a horse-breeding farm, I purchased my young dream horse. Glossy magazine photos fed my desire. Dressage horses were captured frozen in time, prancing with sweat glistening, braided manes, necks tightly held in just the right position, in the midst of flawlessly executing feats of athletic prowess. I read about the riders who had made it to the top with their determination and grit. I cataloged articles and collected shelves full of books further elucidating the lofty goals of dressage. I had the time, the talent, the right trainers, and now the right horse to take me all the way to the highest levels of the sport. 

Even though she was only 9 months old, I was eager to start her preparation. To begin La Mancha’s in-hand training, I haltered and led her proudly around the long circular driveway, away from the other horses. She was big for her age, but still pony-sized so I could hold on as she leapt from side to side, like a marlin caught on a fishing line; but instead of being caught with a hook, she was “caught” by a halter buckled around her head and attached to a thick cotton rope with my gripping hands at the end. 

I felt her fear of being separated from the others and continued to walk on, tightly holding onto the rope and my emotions. Past experience told me once she figured out how long the rope was, she would settle down and see I would keep her safe from the dangers she imagined. I noted her high-spiritedness, persuading myself it would translate into that extra “something” needed for high scores. 

The farm we lived at by the time La Mancha turned three was the perfect place to initiate her into the subtleties of mounted work. Each day for weeks before her formal training began, I would enter her corral to pick up the previous day’s manure. She quickly learned if she backed up to me, I would scratch her favorite spot, the top of her coccyx, her tailbone, gradually all the way down to the bottommost tip of her spine. If she continued backing up, I scratched her more vigorously. Often I would end up backed right into the pipe panel fence. I climbed the fence and continued, moving my fingernails up her back to her withers. 

One day, looking down on her sloping red back below me as I sat scratching her from atop the fence, I felt a temptation I couldn’t resist. I slipped my leg over her backside and then was on, feeling her warm muscles through the denim of my jeans. The moment I let go of the fence and put my body completely on her back felt like symbolically letting go of control of my own life and destiny, and entrusting those moments to the mind and power of a three-year-old filly. She cocked her head to look back at my leg as it descended her side and then continued to stand as if nothing had changed. I stayed on for a moment, rubbing her withers and then slid down to the ground, thanking her for the opportunity she had given me.

I made more of that first “ride” of ours than she did. As I wheeled out the muck cart, she followed me to the gate, maybe hoping for more scratching or treats, or perhaps with some other message I couldn’t understand. My mind was racing. How effortless it had been; surely that was the start of a great mounted partnership. She was so easy to get on, not seeming to mind me on her back one bit. Once again, I fantasized about the competitions we’d win, the places we’d travel to, and the adoration we’d gain.

After a few more mounted scratching sessions, I figured it was time for “serious” training. For that I got a large loose ring snaffle bit and an oversized bridle and started getting her accustomed to having a piece of metal in her mouth and a small leather pad on her back with a strap tightened behind her forelegs. I taught her to run around in circles, attached to me by a long cotton line, otherwise known as the discipline of longeing. That was when I started to realize just what she was capable of. A panicked horse usually does one of two things; she either freezes, or tries to flee. La Mancha chose the latter, turning into a huge red mass of bone, hoof, and muscle leaping so high that she brushed tree branches with her hind legs. The fact I was attached to that 1200-pound phenomenon by a line running through my thinly gloved hands shook my confidence. The hundreds of years of Warmblood breeding culminating in this powerfully athletic chestnut mare presented me with something I could barely understand or control. In my imagination, when I placed myself on top of her, what resulted could be classified as mentally-induced terror. The thought of what might happen to my body if she ever performed those sorts of leaps with me aboard was the beginning of an underlying doubt that, as self-confident as I seemed, made me question how to proceed.

I gingerly started mounting her with bated breath, no longer free in the corral, but as a rider mounting a horse, fully appointed with saddle, bridle, bit, whip, helmet, and protective vest. Was I riding into battle on my chestnut steed, or preparing to do battle with my chestnut steed? Typically she seemed to tolerate my presence on her back for several minutes, until something changed and her feet left the ground in a leap, buck, or bolt. I became skilled at twisting in the air as I looked for the best landing spot, trying to ensure that I landed on my feet or at least my backside rather than my frontside. Often, the next challenge she presented when I got back on, as I always did, was to plant her feet and not move. I would sit in the saddle, looking out through a cloud of fear disguised as an attitude of “you’d better do this or else” with my legs, seat, and whip mechanically commanding her to go while the rest of my petrified being prayed feverishly for her to stay put.

Motivated by fear, I began to seek out “experts” to advise me on how to deal with a horse of this caliber. I thought she needed a rider who was relaxed and confident in the saddle; with her, I wasn’t that rider. While teaching at a riding camp, I described my problem to another one of my colleagues; one whose former careers included the rough world of conditioning racehorses and Three Day Eventers. This six-foot Amazon woman seemed the type who had real confidence and wouldn’t take “no” or even “maybe” for an answer. It was threatening to my self-image that another trainer might be able to do what I couldn’t, but I hoped she had a special trick that would make La Mancha relax and settle into her role as a riding horse so I could get on with the business of readying her for competition. When I called to check on her, I received reports of how well my horse was doing out on the trails, walking through creeks, up hills, and with other horses. I believed what I heard, but something cynical inside of me warned, “Yeah, but that woman’s different. She’ll still misbehave for me.” 

When it was time to pick her up, we scheduled enough time for me to ride her in the arena. From the moment I stood next to La Mancha, ready to mount, I felt the old familiar fear creeping back in. “Sit up, shorten your stirrups, relax your arms, hold this whip,” the trainer directed as she placed in my hand a thick jockey’s whip with leather strips poking out like ruffled feathers on a turkey’s neck. The queasy, insecure feeling intensified, and I had the thought, “What good is this horse if she doesn’t do what I want?” In essence, I was really asking, “What good is this horse if I feel scared on her back?” After holding back tears and willing myself to do as the trainer said, I dismounted, thanked her, and assured her I would let her know how it went in the coming weeks. 

After a few rides on La Mancha at home, my fears were confirmed. Nothing had changed. I continued to go through the motions of training, figuring this was the grit and determination the top riders were referring to. There would be days when she graced me with a trot far beyond anything I had experienced on horseback, or a canter so balanced I felt I could hang in the air on that gentle rocking chair stride forever, the feeling of heaven descended to earth. But those moments were rare, and the other moments built themselves into a nightmarish sequence of tension, pulling, kicking, whipping, and the occasional flight of my body through the air and the inevitable thud on the ground. 

I was still convinced the methods I had learned from my instructors would eventually be a language La Mancha understood. It seemed logical that I needed to use as much force as necessary to down to the softest, often imperceptible shifts of weight and energy. This was the way horses had been trained for hundreds of years, resulting in what I pictured as a horse lightly performing ballet with a rider sitting motionless in perfect mental and physical communion. 

Eventually our rides became predictable. We would begin with a 15 to 30 minute fight about going forward, and then it felt as if a switch would flip and La Mancha would float forward into any gait I chose from only a hint of a cue. It felt like I was being teased; the ecstatic feeling of what she was capable of hung elusively out of my control, subject to something I searched desperately to understand. I was so relieved by the time she went forward that I would ride for about five minutes longer and then dismount, hoping that the next day she would remember those last minutes positively and start out where we left off. That was never to be the case. 

What was wrong? After vet visits ruled out physical problems and the more extreme methods of forcing her didn’t work, I went searching for something different. I read books on natural horsemanship and horse whispering. Most of these were essentially the same techniques I’d studied for years in new packages, with florid terminology and clever exercises mixed in. When they failed to work, I looked for something gentler. I saddled her up and sat on her for hours at a time, without giving even one squeeze, waiting for it to be her idea to move off at a brisk walk or hopefully a nice controlled trot. We stood as still as knights on a forgotten chessboard. In the meantime, my training business was burgeoning and I was ready to start my own horse ranch. I found an affordable 9-acre parcel of land in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California and moved up with my little herd. Soon, a changing menagerie of other horses in for training and rehabilitation filled the corrals.

My new start was when I decided I needed a new beginning with La Mancha. I thought it would help if I changed her name to something that brought up fewer images of futile, insane fights against false giants with big whirling arms, and more images of dancing, lightness, and artistic ventures. Sundance. The name conjured up images of Robert Redford and his popular film festival bringing innovation to the film world, as well as dancing, a metaphor I aspired to in my relations with horses, and of course the sun, that unimaginably big mass of energy that shines on everyone equally and makes life on this planet possible. 

New name and all, Sundance’s days at the ranch continued in the same pattern that had been established at other farms we had lived at. My business partner thought I should get rid of her. He reasoned that she was eating a lot of hay and generating piles of manure and nothing he or I had done brought her any closer to being the riding horse I dreamed of. Eleven years had passed since I first put my leg over her back, and the guilt, regret, and hopelessness I felt competed with the sense of responsibility for her life I took on when I bought her. Even if I wanted to find her another home, who would take an athletic Warmblood mare who clearly expressed what she thought of riding and training? 

I spoke to a fellow instructor who seemed eager when she saw pictures of the well-built purebred mare. She told me she’d like to breed her to her Appaloosa stallion in her quest to develop a spotted breed of sport horses. At the beginning of breeding season, I dropped her off with an assurance that if she didn’t work out as a broodmare, I would take her back, alleviating some of the guilt I felt in sending her away. I took the time to return to my life as a horse trainer without that red mark in the pasture reminding me every day of my failure. After several months and an ultrasound that revealed she hadn’t become pregnant, the woman hauled her back to my ranch. As I saw those red hindquarters emerging from the trailer, I felt the feeling of hopelessness returning, and also an unexpected feeling of relief that my mare was back. 

There are times in a person’s life when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Late summer and early fall of 2006 were like that for me. I had created a name for myself in the United States Pony Club organization wearing the hats of instructor, Chief Horse Management Judge, and National Examiner. I traveled around the country to Pony Club rallies, ratings, meetings, and camps. At home I balanced a ranch full of horses in training and regular clients spread across Northern California. Wherever I went, I would smile and say, “Excellent” to anyone who asked how I was doing. But the reality was different. On my travels, I started noticing the kids and horses were mostly scared, resigned, or expressing a hyper-excitement, seeming to cover either a performance anxiety or fear of the horse they were with. In my own life I had become such an expert at hiding my own feelings, I simply felt a dull repetition of working horses, driving to lessons, and looking forward to a stop at a gas station for a quick pick-me-up of iced tea and chocolate.

I kept returning to Sundance with a mix of desperation and quixotic hope. While searching for solutions to my problems with her over the years, I had compiled a short list of people whom I considered to be equine geniuses. Their books weren’t what I would classify as natural horsemanship; they had more of a horse conscious focus, considering the horse as a source of wisdom and guidance in their lives. I applied their ideas with varying levels of success, but still nothing seemed to make Sundance fit into my Olympic-sized box. 

The Olympic dream slowly faded and I started noticing another dream asking to be born. Seeing Sundance in the pasture called like a siren, begging me to jump into an unknown ocean with the promise of unity if I could survive the swim to the other side. The form of the dream, the Olympics, became less important than the moments I was living with my horse. I asked myself what it would take to enjoy being with her. Was it possible to find real harmony between horses and humans, or was that sentiment made of the same cloth that made up the emperor’s new clothes, visible only to those who are afraid of being thought a fool or poseur? Was it just a fantasy we created to justify our own human agendas? 

Something told me these people on my list had found deeper answers that hadn’t been conveyed in their books. I decided to make a documentary about the search to find a real partnership between horses and humans. It was a good excuse to meet the people on my list and do some detective work, not only for my own benefit, but also for others who were at similar crossroads in their lives with horses. But how was a horse trainer with no film background going to pull this one off? 

After looking into grants and corporate sponsors, the problem of funding was solved when I took stock of my own assets, which were tied up in the ranch I had bought three years earlier. I looked ahead 30 years and envisioned I could still be teaching the same lessons, training new horses to do the same things, talking about the same topics, and paying the same mortgage. Or, I could sell the ranch and use the money to fly around the world trying to unearth a secret from people I’d only read about. 

During the course of filming the documentary, the secret did start to unfold. My first trip to Russia was the point of no return. I remember the moment clearly, as my guide Georgui sat on the floor looking at a laptop computer propped on the seat of a wooden chair. Georgui was a photographer for the Nevzorov Haute Ecole magazine, which was published by the man I had come to interview, Alexander Nevzorov. Georgui was excited about putting his photographs together in a specific sequence so it would look like a stop-action film. He showed me how he had already started putting them in order. His excitement was incongruous with the pictures that flashed on the screen. These pictures were taken at horse shows. The horses were of different breeds, different colors, and with different riders representing different disciplines. Yet the common subject in each photograph was a human causing a horse pain. These were not the slick magazine photos I thought were an accurate representation of horse sports. These were those same riders in other moments. The scenes were ones I recognized. The photographs showed terrified animals with stiff necks, bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, mouths wrenched open, tongues askew, and saliva streaming. I had seen some of the pictures before on Alexander’s website so I thought I would be prepared for more, but now I found myself sitting in a dingy Russian apartment with the photographer who had witnessed these events, busily telling me how he was going to make a short film to teach people how to capture the moment with a digital camera. “You took all these photos?” I asked, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

“Yes,” he replied, “I go to competitions almost every weekend.” 

“How can you stand to watch the horses being treated like that?” I asked, wondering if he had a sadistic streak in him. I knew I was wrong when I saw sadness expose itself from underneath his chattering. His voice lowered and grew unsteady as he said, “It’s really horrible. It makes me sick to see, but it must be documented, so I’ll take these pictures and show the world. I know I won’t be able to do it much longer so I’m going to teach others how to do it.” When he finished, I felt for a moment the wounded heart of this young man, standing back and witnessing those crimes through the lens of his camera. It felt like he was a war journalist documenting human bodies in the throes of the most intense pain, but helpless to intercede in the name of objective reporting.

I knew I was guilty of contributing to this microcosm of pain and suffering in the world. I had even directed it toward those beings I said I loved the most – the horses. I realized the only thing gentle and horse conscious about my own methods were they weren’t quite as extreme as other people used. I could say those other riders were cruel, but we were all cut from the same cloth; we had learned how to use horses to make us look and feel good about ourselves. At that moment, I knew that Georgui’s cause was now mine as well. I sat beside him feeling the immensity of the task ahead. After a timeless moment, he closed the computer and started talking about where we were going to eat. 

A few days after returning from Russia, my internal clock was still half a world away as I went out before sunrise to feed the horses. After finishing, I noticed a full-grown bird, a robin, standing on the ground near the bales of hay. There was something un-birdlike about how he was standing, so still with ruffled feathers and blinking eyes. I gently folded my legs and sat on the ground about six feet in front of him. He seemed content to simply stand and rest and watch me a little. After what felt like 10 minutes, he started walking toward me, then he circled away and then back toward me. He was a little unsteady on his legs, but otherwise, I could find no explanation for his behavior. We sat about two feet apart for another period of time, and then he walked closer until he was six inches from my left knee. He turned and we sat side by side, like friends looking out at the scenery. I wanted to hold him in my hand, but in that small desire I perceived the seed of forcing myself on another being. 

I chose to do things differently. Instead of what I wanted, I asked myself what he needed, what could I do for this bird? I made myself just sit and be with him, to become as quiet as possible inside myself. The thought of him sitting in my hand kept returning, so eventually I wondered if we shared the same sentiment. Instead of reaching out toward him and picking him up, I put my empty hand out flat in front of me and after several minutes he walked around from my left side and stepped into my hand… and then closed his eyes. We stayed that way for quite some time. I cupped him in my hands and he was very still. Over an hour passed, and my legs began to cramp, so I put my hand back down, wondering if he’d like to go. He stayed still, although I could see his balance wasn’t good. I tenderly carried him with me to a nearby chair where we could sit and catch the first rays of sun. Another few minutes passed and I noticed him beginning to twitch. He was getting ready to die. I held him comfortably as he went through the death process, then buried him at the foot of a nearby tree.

Soon after, I called my students together and showed a videotape of one of Alexander’s students. I told them I wouldn’t be teaching in the same way as I had in the past, but I offered to continue coaching if anybody wanted to stop riding and start working horses without restriction or force. The uncomfortable silence in the room confirmed my suspicion; this step was too far for most people to even understand. At that point, it didn’t matter; it was my path. The peaceful feeling of being there with the robin confirmed what could happen if I let go of my personal agendas.

A new clarity told me this is where Sundance had been trying to guide me all along. Grace had knocked at my door in the form of a fiery filly. After failing enough times, I began to understand the control I desperately sought moment by moment had become my addiction. I saw human life as it truly is, not a safe movie with a predictable ending, but a constant yet fragile movement toward some things and away from others. By seeing and accepting Sundance’s authentic expression, I was able to uncover what was happening inside myself, seeing beyond the struggles of trying to be safe in the world. She had consistently shown me exactly what I needed to know in order to be with her. In truth, all along I had been the student, and she my teacher. I moved my home into a spiritual community as I was putting the final touches on the documentary a month before its release. My herd moved to a large meadow situated in the center of the community’s houses. I settled into a new life without the pressure of lessons or horses in training, and with enough money left in the bank to wait out the period needed to determine if the film would be profitable.

I walked in the pasture several months after the completion and release of the documentary with its accompanying flurry of sales and complimentary reviews. It was a beautiful late fall day with the sun slanting down, nearly touching the treetops, illuminating the coats of the grazing horses. I felt leaves still crunchy under my feet where a light rain had not penetrated. The smell of wet bark and moist earth entered my nose like gentle, smokeless incense enveloping my thoughts. I took one step toward Sundance and paused as her head turned almost imperceptibly away and her eyelids flickered and tensed. I stood still for a moment, and then stepped back. As I did, Sundance’s head turned toward me, and her eyes relaxed. As I stepped further away, she let out a strong snort into the prickly brown grasses surrounding her nose. Still backing away, I softly walked an arc toward her hindquarters and she turned as a dancer following the cue to face her partner. I took one more step back and she picked up her nose. With a soft eye and pricked ears, she closed the distance between us, lifting her head high above mine, exposing her chest for me to scratch. As my fingernails found the old familiar grooves, she stretched her neck and leaned into my hands. This was our dance of grace in the last rays of sun, the stadium a grassy meadow, our spectators a pair of twittering bluebirds