By Cory Armstrong-Hoss / Herald Forum
There’s nowhere to sit.
Two summers ago, in late August, we park on the gravel, get out and take it in: the barn tucked into a hillside, horses grazing up and down the steep slope, the summer-sweet smells, a mixture of wild grasses, hay and manure. Then we meet Susan.
Our then 8-year-old daughter CeCe remembers: “My legs were shaking, like a lot. And I felt like I had a rock in my stomach, like butterflies or something like that. I could not stop my legs shaking, they were so nervous.”
Susan showed us the upper stalls, the indoor covered arena and the outdoor open arena. Women were working — adults, teens and a couple girls CeCe’s age — cleaning stalls, pushing wheelbarrows of manure, training horses. No fancy clothes, no phones out, no place for parents to sit. No displays of medals or shelves of trophies. No makeup. And Susan: tough with kind eyes and a quick smile, a grandma who still rides, her words as spare as her dusty barn.
CeCe had never met anyone like her.
“Susan’s famous in horse life,” she said. “She has gotten first-place awards, and she’s really good at barrel racing with her horses. I’m actually riding one of her horses now. She’s nice and she teaches really good. Like, it’s clear and she makes it really safe.”
CeCe’s first impression of the barn: “I probably felt a little bit off because I remember I was wearing a purple tie-dye shirt and no one at the barn wears colorful stuff. So I felt like the new person there, but I’m pretty sure I’d only been to like really, really nice barns [with Grandma], where they take trail rides and earn a lot of money.”
“At my first lesson I was shy and nervous because, I don’t know what their rules are. And I just remember that I was on a lead line half of the lesson because Susan didn’t know me and I’m pretty sure I didn’t talk.”
Susan arranged for CeCe to ride June, a smoky-gray, smaller dun horse, with a dark stripe down her back and darker face and legs. “She’s energetic, short, sassy.” CeCe began practicing how to “walk, stop, turn. All that stuff. Then trotting. After we learned the controls, we started on events and walking.”
During the dark months CeCe would train in the indoor arena. “It’s very cold. Very, very cold.” Her hands would start to freeze, even with gloves on, but she’s found something that works: “If you just put your hands under the saddle or under June’s mane, it’s amazing how warm it is.”
Over the past year CeCe has improved at stopping, controlling. “Just knowing your horse and when they’re gonna go, and memorizing what to do, and using more of my legs; pushing my inside leg to go to the wall and stuff like that.”
These days she loves Key Racing: “You have four poles in a rectangle. Like it’s skinny and tall on the sides. You run through them, you stop, pivot and then you run back through the poles.”
It’s not just the physical exertion of riding that makes my daughter healthier. The barn is a place of “biophilia,” where kids can meet their innate desire to connect with nature and animals, the benefits of which we’re now starting to understand. Back in 2014 Washington State University used saliva samples to prove one benefit of equestrian activity for kids: “New research…reveals how youth who work with horses experience a substantial reduction in stress” compared with a control group. Researchers at WSU provided a 12-week after=school program at a barn that included handling, riding, horse care and more.
Lead researcher Patricia Pendry shares: “We found that children who had participated in the 12-week program had significantly lower stress hormone levels throughout the day and in the afternoon, compared to children in the waitlisted group.” It turns out that kids active in an equestrian program don’t just benefit when they’re riding; the biophilia benefit continues through their school and weekend days.
Maybe that explains why, a couple months ago, CeCe asked if she could go to the barn early or stay later to do chores. She’ll clean June’s stall: scoop poop and wheelbarrow it down to the pile, fill up her water bucket. “I wanted to be helpful. I wanted to be more like a horse girl.”
She asks us if she can spend more time at the barn, add another day a week, even if she can’t ride but is just helping out. We can’t manage it now, and she understands. She’s got plans to get to the barn more often when she gets her license. In six years.
For now, she’s thankful for the barn. “I’m so grateful for everyone at the barn because horses are like really really expensive. And Susan is so nice. We always go over the hour, like a half an hour over, because she spends a lot of time on us.”
Because of our schedules, my wife is now watching this kid grow up a little at the barn each week. Happy to stand and watch at a distance.
Cory Armstrong-Hoss lives in Everett with his wife and three kids. His kids have played a number of different sports. He’s a lifelong athlete, and he’s served as a coach, referee and youth sports administrator. Find him at substack.com/@atahossforwords
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