Stallion Encounter Part 1

The above video and the two videos below capture the drama that unfolded as we sat on a sand dune on Shackleford Banks watching the two-stallion band of feral ponies I wrote about in the two previous blog posts, see here and here. I had wanted to find this band when we set out on this particular day because I had wanted to see if the mare the lieutenant stallion had chased down the beach (see here) had rejoined his band.

When we located the band, as I had suspected, the mare was not with the band. The other mare that 12N had brought back down the beach was there. She was grazing with the band. We located the band very close to where we had seen them the first time. We sat down on a dune far enough away not to disturb them, but close enough to watch them through our binoculars, and we used the zoom lens on Bernie’s iPhone to shoot the video.
Over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour period, the following occurs, which is mostly captured on film:

1) As the five-member band consisting of three mares and the stallion, and the lieutenant stallion, graze, two new mares arrive. *Note the dark bay mare who eventually integrates into the band may be the young dark bay the stallion chased down the beach, and who we had seen arrive into the band with the pregnant bay mare the day before. I did not think they were the same dark bay horse, but upon further reflection, the behavior suggests this mare is already familiar with and affiliated with this band, so this would make sense. Or she could be a returning offspring of one of the other mares in this band. (Part 1)

2) The bay mare that does not integrate into the herd whinnies and orients to the west as she arrives. She never attempts to join the band and remains just to the east of them, grazing and remaining fairly conspicuous. The stallions never seem to notice her. While the dark bay mare moves in and among the five-member band. She greets the stallions, squeals a little, and starts grazing among the band members. (Part 1)

3) Another stallion appears on the western horizon. He has been standing there just as the mares have first arrived to our east. When the dark bay mare starts squealing as she greets the stallions in the band. The stallion on the western horizon breaks into a trot and comes towards the two-stallion band. He gets as close as he feels comfortable being and starts to graze and sniff and orient to the situation. (Part1)

4) After some time, the lieutenant stallion spots him and runs out to confront him. They greet right nostril to right nostril, posture, shove, nudge, paw, rub faces and perform the dunging ritual that stallions do to share information. The chestnut stallion kicks out and strikes at the lieutenant, but the lieutenant does not have to fight back. The lieutenant gets the approaching stallion to back off a bit, then he leaves, marking his territory some more by adding to the stud piles again and pawing. (Part 2)

5) The lieutenant stallion goes halfway back to his band and stands sentinel on a dune, splitting the rival stallion off from his band. (Part 2)

6) The lieutenant feels a need to go back and make it clear to the chestnut stallion that he must back off. He prances off, swinging his head, re-marks some of the stud piles, and re-confronts the chestnut stallion. They posture, dung and shove each other a bit more. The chestnut stallion eventually yields and turns away; after a moment or two, he walks off. The lieutenant goes back to his band and resumes grazing. (Part 3)

Stallion Encounter Part 2

Stallion Encounter Part 3

Maybe man, in all his arrogance, was not above the beast for the power of his mind like he thought he was, but was the only beast that had not been streamlined, did not know how to fit properly into his role in nature, did not know his place in the universe and how to live in harmony with his world. Perhaps he was the beast that did not understand the universal language but instead stuck blindly to the man-made languages he had learned. So impressed by his intelligence and ability to create his artificial world from nature. He has become obsessed with death because he can not stop it.

He never learned how to fully see, feel and listen like the rest. He got far too interested in just his kind and ignored all the others that made the world whole. Perhaps man is not the advanced beast he thinks he is, but the one in need of learning his place, his role, his way to be in the world.

Most men still look down on the other living plants and animals, but they are the ones who understand how to live in harmony. They are the ones that could coexist in perpetuity if it were not for man. They are the ones who understand in simple terms the importance of the one, not the self.

There are people who know this. Those who have fought convention. Those who live outside of the norm. There are cultures that stick closer to the animals, to knowledge gleaned from direct experience with nature, but they are seldom listened to by the masses. This could be the downfall of man. He is running away from nature instead of towards it. He tries to create solutions on his own instead of listening to the whole.

Man believes he has superiority over other animals, but this belief does not stop there; this paradigm leads him to hold his superiority over other men as well. The human ego steers the ship, causing wars and further destruction of nature through disregard for the whole.

This essay came to me from reflecting on watching the complex, beautiful, deeply social lives of the wild ponies on Shackleford Banks. Horses don’t need us. They need us to know who they are without us, and we need them to remind us who we should be.

For other great episodes of the Creative Spirits Unleashed Podcast click here

About 10 minutes after we had seen the mare 12N marching the bay mare back to her band (for that story read here). We saw the lieutenant stallion appear on the beach just about in the same place the mares had exited. He looked east down the beach past our boat. He was very stiff, with his head held high and his tail lifted. He flared his nostrils, sniffing the wind and continued to look intently down the beach. He whined a few times. Then he broke first into a fast walk, then a trot, then a canter, then a gallop, heading east. He was most certainly on a mission. He came charging along the beach past our boat.

That’s when we saw the younger of the two mares, the one who had arrived into this band yesterday by the side of the mare 12N had just driven back down the beach. The younger mare was standing still, her head high in the air, staring frozen at the rapidly approaching stallion.

About 50 yards out from reaching her, the lieutenant lowered and stretched out his neck and head. His ears were pinned back. His nostrils were flared, and his eyes looked shiny and filled with fury. As he approached her, he veered out slightly away from her and then turned toward her so that he was right behind her.

She lashed out with a double-barreled kick that she did not land, and then started to run down the beach in the direction the stallion had just come from. It was clear that he meant her to go in that direction. It was clear that he had come to get her to drive her home to the band. It was also fairly clear that she did not want to go with him, but had no idea what to do but run and kick out whenever she felt like he was closing in on her. Back down past our boat, they came both in a full-on gallop.

The mare popped over a downed branch, I think hoping that that might slow the stallion, but he was right behind her. Finally, as the mare ran past the place the stallion had entered the beach, he slowed to a walk, and a little further down the beach, she also pulled up to a walk. The stallion re-entered the woods. We could no longer see him from the boat. The mare stood on the beach, standing still for a long time, regaining her breath. I think she was just calming herself down. We watched her standing there for quite a while. We went below to prepare for the day, and when we came out on deck again, we looked down the beach; she was gone.

I knew where I wanted to spend the day. I wanted to find the two-stallion band and see whether both the wayward mares had been incorporated into it or had defied the band members' efforts and gone their own way. It would be an interesting day finding out.

Below is a video of a bit of the stallion setting out to get the mare, after spotting her down the beach. Unfortunately Bernie's iPhone stopped filming for a while when he must have hit the screen. He realized and was also able to capture a bit of the chase as well, which is in the second video below. 

We were just sitting on the boat, sipping our coffee and taking in the morning light, when we saw the ponies on the beach. I grabbed my binoculars and saw that it was the bleached-faced light chestnut mare from the two stallion band. She was the one who had the National Park Service 12N brand on her right hind quarter. She was walking from east to west, which meant she would pass right by us, sitting on our boat, having coffee.
12N was driving another mare along in front of her by holding her head low with her ears back and every now and then thrusting her muzzle forward as if to wave the other mare on. This behavior is known as snaking. The other mare was a bay, and I hesitantly identified her as the pregnant, bay mare we had seen arriving into this same band a few days before with a dark bay juvenile filly at her side.

They had been greeted into the band by both the stallions, the dark bay main stallion and his liver chestnut flaxen-maned lieutenant. I wrote about this in an earlier post, here, where I described the dynamics of a two-stallion band, the arrival of these mares, their acceptance into the band by the stallions, and how they stayed behind as the band drifted off.

It appeared as though the chestnut mare was marching the bay mare back to her band and returning her to their territory. Here on the hilly, forested west end of Shackleford Banks, the stallions are known to share territories a little more than is normal for wild horses and even more so than on the eastern, more open and flat end of this same island, where the stallions do defend their territories.

Even though stallions on the west end of Shackleford defend their territories from other stallions less often, they still seem fairly loyal to a location and still mark their territories with dung piles. It was to this territory of the two-stallion band that I believed the chestnut mare was marching the bay mare. Established mares often work to keep their bands together by driving wayward, less loyal mares back into the band and keeping the young ones from straying too far away.

Although I do not know the story that the humans who know her tell of 12N’s life, I can tell that she is a well-established mare who is very important to the cohesiveness and functioning of her band on the west end of Shackleford. She has the best body weight condition score of any of the ponies we have seen on the island, suggesting she is a knowledgeable long-term survivor.

Established mares are often the ones that make the decisions for their bands about where to graze and where and when to go for water. 12N and a mature dark bay mare are close to each other, and the band’s bay breeding stallion. There was a moment the other day between these two mares that demonstrated the importance of 12N’s opinion to the confidence and feeling of security of her friend, the dark bay mare.

just after the identification, arrival and greeting of the newly arrived mares, first by the lieutenant stallion who set out to meet them, as they were arriving, and then by the bay stallion as they came closer, the dark bay mare walked over to check in with 12N. She gently sniffed 12N’s flank as if to ask in horse-speak if she thought everything was ok. Then, after sniffing her, she let out a series of yawns as if now that she understood everything was fine, she could let go of tension through some big yawn releases.

After yawning, the dark bay mare followed lazily behind 12N and started to graze at her side. Neither mare bothered to greet the newly arrived mares with shared breathing. Shared breathing is when two individuals greet by blowing into each other's nostril to exchange important information. Horses usually prefer to perform this ritual of information gathering right nostril to right nostril, especially with other horses that they do not know well.

This preference is called a hemisphere lateralization preference. Like in people, the different hemispheres of the brain are specialized for different tasks and emotional uses. In horses, there is a general right-nostril preference when smelling emotionally arousing stimuli, suggesting specialized processing of sensory information.

The bay mare that was being marched down the beach by 12N did not look pleased with her. She had more of a look of surrender than peace and confidence. My thought is that this bay mare and her filly (or younger companion) are displaced mares that are not yet loyal to another band and are being claimed by the two-stallion band that 12N is an important member of.

We watched 12N and her charge until they left the beach through a tangle of low trees headed in the direction we had watched them grazing in a few days before, the area I believe to be 12N’s loosely held home territory, the one her stallions mark with their stud piles.

I took a swallow of my coffee and felt pleased with this snippet of these ponies' lives that we had just witnessed without leaving the boat. Little did I know that this was only the start of the pony drama, which would continue to unfold over the course of the day ahead. Stay tuned for what happened next.

The bleached, clean skull of the young mare stuck in my mind since I first saw it the day we stepped off Grit and onto the Shackleford island. I wanted to have it, but it belonged to the ponies and to the island. Besides that, and rightly so, it is illegal to take the bones off the island.

I wanted to go back and see it again. Get more of the story it could tell of the being it had once served. I wanted to feel its smooth, weathered feel. I wanted to run my fingers over the teeth, feel the points and the wear they had endured in life.

I wanted to look again at the stages of the molars, which had helped me guess at the age at death of about 3.5 -4 years old. I wanted to look again at the pointy, little wolf tooth next to the first cheek tooth on the upper left side. I wanted to check again that there were no canines present, which would have made me think it might have been the skull of a stallion instead of a mare. I wanted to feel the weight of the mandible. I wished to observe again the fine, long vomer bone and the delicate lace-like ethmoturbinates that are so important for olfaction.

I wanted to look again at the suture lines that make up each of the distinct plates of the skull. I have studied equine craniosacral, and we memorize these sutures so we can lay our hands on them on live horses to influence their minute movements and help them heal.

We traced our steps back to the skull for a second look. It was, unsurprisingly, right where we had last seen it two days before. I felt it, turned it over and ran my hands over the plates and teeth. I admired its beauty and feel. I counted and named the teeth, incisors, wolf, premolars and molars. I thought about the being it had belonged to.

I was just finishing photographing and handling it when Bernie noticed a little spider hiding just inside the upper right cheek tooth. Bernie zoomed in on his iPhone camera and took a photo. Then he took his fingers to the phone and spread them to enlarge his photo. The spider that had been going for a rather eventful joyride in my hands was a black widow.

With all the observing I was doing. This was not a great thing to have missed, but at least no harm had come to the spider or me. I put her skull back where I had found it, making sure it was in the same orientation it had been in when I picked it up, in case that mattered to her and thanked her under my breath for not having bitten me.

What a mess being bitten by the skull's guardian could have been in the late afternoon alone on Shackleford Banks in March, here by sailboat, not another soul around but me and Bernie. I don’t think many people actually die from black widow bites, but it was an experience I am glad I got to miss, although it would have added to the drama of this fantastic adventure we are having out here on Shackelford Banks among the wild ponies, both the living and the dead.

What a trip it's been. A true experience doesn't come without the harder moments as well as the highs. We've been blessed with very few other people on the island, mostly none and no flies. We have also ridden out one lee shore gale with gusts right at 40 knots, which blew its heart out for 24 hours. We ran into Beaufort to escape a second one.

Tomorrow, we will head back out to Shackleford to keep studying the pony bands we find. We left our beautiful anchorage a quarter of a mile east of the west end to go see what the far east end of the island looked like. It was a windy place while we were there, and quite a paddle to the shore.

The ponies we did see on our trip to the east end shore seemed more vigilant than the ones on the west side. They would quietly tuck in to the treeline when they saw us even though we were quite far away from them. We did not have much time to explore this part of the island or to sit and watch the ponies, as we needed to get to Beaufort before the next north-east gale came in.

Our trip has been amazing so far, full of insights the ponies have shown us. Thanks to Bernie, the cook and captain, the meals have been delicious, and the boats, Grit and the kayaks, have stayed afloat. This, though, has not been an easy task. There have been some hairball moments of dread, including a motor that died on a tide wanting to sweep us into the Graveyard of the Atlantic, a ramming by another boat, an anchor that would not come up, and two sunken kayaks that almost could not be pulled aboard. To read these stories, go to Bernie's site riverearth.com . 

My last post about observing a two stallion-band on the western part of Shackleford Banks can be read here at  twostepway.com.

Below are some photos from the trip so far.

Good night from aboard Grit at Shackleford Banks. Soon I will write more but now it's time to sleep. The ponies made us smile today. The water is now calm. The moon shines. All is well.

My husband Bernie and I have sailed to Shackleford Banks to study the ponies for two weeks. We have been in our anchorage, about a quarter of the way down the island from the West end towards the east, for 5 days now. I am currently sitting in a 24-foot sailboat off Shackleford Banks, NC, riding out the tail end of a gale that came in without warning last night. The winds reached 40 knots at their worst, but today, it was still blowing hard enough that I didn't want to launch a kayak to get to shore to continue observing the ponies. We thought we’d just write instead, but even that has been tough as the boat is jumping around a lot on the anchors.
Watching the wild ones with questions in mind is the best way to learn.

These ponies are amazingly tough and well-regulated. They live in small, very cohesive bands. They have, over many generations of harsh living on this island (400+ years here), developed very zen demeanors. Certainly not shut down or numbed in any way, just chill and ready to respond to whatever the moment brings. If they feel pressure from the weather, they move into the thick, short, live oak forests. If the bugs get too bad in summer, they file along to stand in the breeze on the ocean side.

Much here has made them who they are. They reflect tough. They reflect secure. They reflect steady. They reflect resourcefulness. They have never witnessed an abundance of food. Yet they appear closely bonded and peaceful for the most part.

I wanted to come to Shakleford Banks with a plan for how I would observe these ponies and the kinds of questions I wanted to ask of them.

The first thing I note every day is date, time and location. These things are good to know, as sometimes you start to see patterns in when a band might rest, eat, and drink.

Then I note a general location where I spotted a band. The total population of horses on Shackleford right now is around 102 horses. The horses organize themselves into bands. There are harem bands and bachelor bands. Harem bands are made up of a lead stallion and his mares plus their offspring, and maybe another non-breeding stallion. Harem band size on Shakleford ranges from 2 to 13 members.

Most bands are smaller. The non-breeding bands, mostly made up of young and non-breeding stallions, are called bachelor bands. Some of the harem bands have established territories that the stallions actively manage with dung piles and also defend from other stallions.

Other researchers have noted that harem stallions in the western part of the island share territories, while those in the middle and on the East tend to defend their own territories. This is primarily due to the flatter topography and better grazing in the eastern and middle parts of the island. The density of horses is also greater in the middle and on the east end than it is on the West side. In all, there are 25 harem bands and 7 bachelor bands currently on Shakleford.

The next thing I do is identify the bands I see by noting the number of band members and the type (harem or bachelor). Then I describe each member that make it up. I note sex, general age, like yearling, younger horse, mature adult and older horse. I also note the facial and leg markings for identification. I describe the stallion in as much detail as I can. Sometimes mares or young horses leave their band, but the stallion always stays until he is defeated by another stallion, which does not happen very much on Shakleford. That’s why it’s important to identify the stallions really well. For wild horses, these horses do not seem to challenge each other as much as some other wild herds do, so the band members are usually fairly stable.
The mares that have been sterilized with the PZP vaccine tend to change bands more than others, but not that often. Last year, 11 mares on Shakleford were darted with the PZP vaccine. This should keep them from having foals for the next 1-3 years. This is necessary to help manage the carrying capacity of the island and to keep too many ponies from starving due to a lack of available nutrition.

I also use the Henneke Body Condition Score to describe each band member’s condition. A 1 is very emaciated, where you can clearly see the whole skeletal structure under the coat, to 9, which is obese. With wild horses, you really only ever see scores on the low end, 5 and below. So far, on Shakleford, just coming out of a rather tough winter, we have only seen a high score of about 3.5 on a few stallions. Most of what we have seen is quite thin right now.

I then note the primary activity they are engaged in during my observation. Most of the time, it’s eating, but we've also seen them resting, playing, and nursing. When eating, we are trying to note what it is. The four major types of vegetation the ponies eat on Shakleford are Spartina marsh grass, sea oats, salt meadow cordgrass and centipede grass. They also eat some aquatic plants.

Then I watch for incidents of the two questions I am interested in observing in these horses. One is the behavior around novelty. Novelty, in this case, is anything out of the ordinary that will cause one of the band members to look up and orient. Orienting is when a prey animal assesses its relative safety. I am interested in what this response looks like. What eye or front on view the horse orients to, and what the other band members do in response to his/her behavior. Who orients, and what is the novelty that caused the reaction?

I am also interested in observing how horses seek and receive attention from other herd members, and what they ask for, such as play, grooming, nuzzling, companionship, or close proximity for resting or grazing. I am interested in the eye they approach each other with, as, like humans, horses show eye lateralization preferences based on emotional states.

This is all observational data and will not be made into any kind of empirical study, but it gives me a nice framework for my personal observations and will help me to understand the horses I work with even better, as both attention-getting and seeking, and orientation are very important in the lives of all our horses.

According to the 2025 Annual Report from the Cape Lookout National Seashore, 20 ponies (17% of the herd) died on Shackleford Banks in 2025. This mortality rate was significantly higher than the 6% average from 1999 to 2024. The deaths were primarily due to a lack of available resources for some of the individuals.

Shackleford Banks, being an island, has limited grazing for the population of horses. The National Park Service and the Foundation For Shackleford Horses have a federal mandate to keep the herd between 110-130 individuals at all times.

They do not manage the herd with supplemental feeding or vaccinations. They are allowed to let the numbers fall below 110 individuals if it is due to natural causes and not management culling. There were seven foals born on the island in 2025. One died, and two had to be removed for care and rearing off island as they had somehow come to be separated from their mothers and their bands.

The bands we have seen so far are thin and grazing like crazy on the new grasses sprouting. These are tough ponies, and they have now come through the winter; most of them should be able to start putting on a little weight.

There is a scoring system for horses called the Henneke Body Condition Scoring System, which ranges from 1 to 9. One is extremely emaciated, and nine is extremely fat. The ponies we have seen so far run from about 1.5 to 3.5. A score of 3.5 is thin for a horse.

The interesting thing is that the two stallions we have seen so far are in better condition than the mares, with scores around 3-3.5. The mares we have seen have scores around 1.5-2.8. The two yearlings we saw, also look a little better than the mares, 3-3.5, like the stallions.

We have seen one mare that is still allowing her yearling to nurse a little, which is probably a bit taxing for her at this time of year. The yearling is also eating grass, so a little milk is a few extra calories for him. I read that wild horses, particularly those on Shakleford Banks, allow their foals to nurse for much longer than domestic horses. Yearlings on Shackleford will nurse mostly for social bonding until they are almost two or until their mother has become pregnant again. This prolonged nursing is one of the reasons there are such stable and cohesive bands on Shackleford.

It's a tough place to live. I think of these amazingly tough ponies surviving the storms and cold on this island in winter, almost everything stops growing, the body demands calories to survive the cold, and somehow, they manage. At least the majority do, and have for 400-plus years.

Back to the ones who don’t. We found a pony’s bleached bones remains on our first day on the island. We observed the teeth set in the skull some more to let them tell us a bit of the story. Probably a mare, absence of canine teeth. She was between 3.5 and 4 years old as the last molar was just coming in. I’m guessing she died from what the NPS refers to as “a failure to thrive”. You have to be a strong pony to make it to old age out here, and plenty do. A mare lived to 34 and a stallion to 29. Many others make it into their 20s. These are extraordinary ponies in a majestic, magical yet harsh setting.

more photos and stories at riverearth.com

Second day. Awoke aboard the good vessel Grit. The sun was shining, the water sparkling. Several pelicans flew overhead as I stepped out of the companion way to greet the day and the island. Our red percolator bubbled and steamed. The cabin smelled of rich French roast. Bernie saw a dolphin swim up the channel right next to the boat.
We were planning to paddle to the island and walk east to find some ponies to observe for the day, when Bernie got a text from his friend Keith, who wanted to pick us up in his beautiful classic cruising motorboat and take us out to lunch in Beaufort. There was also a promise of a shower, and even though the offer was sooner than I would have preferred, I knew it would feel great and that we would have a fun visit with Keith.

Keith brought his cute cattle dog, Dulce, with him, and much to her delight, she got her own hot dog sitting right with us at the bar of the Royal James.

On the way back to Grit, Keith’s boat ran gently aground, and Bernie was able to push us off with a long oar. Then, as Keith was leaving Grit, he got stuck on the sand again, as finding the channel in this area is rather tricky. Bernie paddled out in a kayak and got aboard Keith’s boat, and he used the long oar to free up Keith’s boat as Keith steered.

Once we had waved Keith and Dulce off. I got myself organized and paddled over to Shackleford to find some ponies. I followed hoof prints to the edge of a brackish lagoon, where I assumed they had gone to get some water. I then walked up to the top of the nearest tall dune to scout for them. But I saw no ponies, only a tough landscape for ponies to live upon. This gave me a moment's pause to think of their flinty capacity to survive here. Not only the storms, but also the sandy, nutrition-poor landscape. The flies, the wind, the exposure, and yet, supposedly, the stupidity of some tourists is their greatest downfall.

Bernie joined me, and we walked towards the ocean from the bay side. On our way, we found the bleached bones of a deceased pony. The skull was very interesting to look at. The Shackleford ponies have deep jawbones and short muzzles, and the skull showed this feature. I could also clearly see all the skull sutures I had learned studying craniosacral. For those who do not know, a horse’s skull is not one solid bone but made up of different plates that have suture lines between them.

We also passed many stud piles as we walked through the interior, going from the bay to the ocean side. Stud piles are mounds of dung that the stallions make to let other stallions know their territory. Stallions spend a lot of time making them and sniffing them for information.

We got to the ocean, sat down, and drank a beer. No ponies but no people either. So extraordinary to be able to just sit vastly alone together with the long beach, the ocean, the dunes and somewhere close by some of the Shackleford ponies.

On our way back to the boat, we found the same band of ponies we had seen the day before. The old dark bay mare, the chestnut stallion, and the two yearlings. This time, there was also a sun-bleached dark bay mare with them. I do not know where she was the day before, but it now makes sense why we had seen two yearlings. I could not figure out why there were two foals the day before. We watched the dark bay mare nurse her foal. They all grazed.

Then they filed off in the setting sun. We went back to the kayaks in the orange-saturated light and paddled back to Grit. What a beautiful day it was.

Bernie is also posting about our trip to Shackleford. To read his posts go to riverearth.com.

Bernie and I left Oriental, NC yesterday under sail and arrived to our anchor off Shackleford Banks. We arrived at low tide in the late afternoon. As we were figuring out the anchoring we saw our first band of wild ponies stepping from the woods. It was a group of four ponies. They romped a bit, picked up a canter and headed down the beach away from our boat.

Today we launched our kayaks paddled to the island. We tied the kayaks up to some downed trees on the beach and set out to explore with a knapsack containing a lunch of devil ham sandwiches. We walked from the bay side to the ocean.  In between the bay and the ocean are dunes with juniper trees and grass. It's a mix of low forests and grassy dunes. We walked to a high dune near the ocean beach and saw a bunch of dolphins.

Then we walked to another high dune and saw the ponies down below grazing in a little valley of very short grass. There was four of them, a chestnut stallion, a dark bay mare and two yearlings. The mare and the stallion looked thin. They have just come through winter.

Bernie and I watched them graze for a while then we walked back to the bay side and ate our lunch in the shade. After the lunch we walked back to the kayaks and went back to the sailboat for a nap. After napping we rowed back to the island to pitch our tent so we now have a land base as well. Below are some pictures of the trip up till now.

It was a great year for which I feel a ton of gratitude. I have allowed myself 4 images per month to review its texture and richness. I must say I had to leave out so much.I hope you enjoy this glimpse.

* PBS Swan Song , * Two Step Way, REIN Rescue,  Equine Balance, Leatherwood Mule Days, Tryon Equine Hospital

Today, I tried talking to a tree. First, I got present, then I listened to the tree, and the tree said that it liked the gentle wind. The gentle wind made it feel alive and connected. It also informed me that stronger winds were necessary to keep trees healthy. Adversity, like a strong wind, clears out dead wood and encourages new growth.

It seemed a storm might be coming, and the tree was happy, with a type of anticipation of getting something it needed, which was the rain. The tree also told me that it liked everything that was connected and knew that it was. It said to me that it didn’t mind being killed if it was still supporting life but objected to being used in other ways. It felt that humans often lack gratitude for all that the trees, plants and animals provide them with. They sense humans have a lot that they might have forgotten.

Trees really enjoy the company of other trees. They love the connection of sharing the wind, rain and sun. They know how to endure and how to thrive when given an opportunity. Soil holds them upright. Soil connects them. They deeply revere it. They said it was important to know and love the things that connect you and keep you upright.

I said thank you to the tree and wished it the rain it was anticipating. I will listen to a tree again. They are wise and full of wisdom lost to humankind because we think it ridiculous to talk with trees and rocks. But behind the wall of imagination lies the truth. The wind blows, the tree limb bows, and maybe this time, you look up and take note. Opportunity is on the breeze that waves the limb. Look up and listen.

We know that if we become fearful or upset, we can significantly amplify our horse's feelings of insecurity and trigger a panic response. What is less known is the effect our calm, present minds can have on our horses. This is particularly true these days with the level of distraction brought on by cell phones and uber-busy lifestyles. There are seldom moments of stillness and presence in our lives unless we are aware and make space and time for them.

Recently, I was helping a client with an active startle reflex get more comfortable being around horses. I wanted her to experience the feeling of stillness and presence, the kind of stillness and presence I like people to have when working with their horses, because it opens up a deeper level of communication and connection between horse and human.

I picked a meditation that Ryan Hallford had given during Shea Stewart's recent Craniosacral course in Fort Worth, Texas. My client and I did this meditation on the deck of my hay barn, which adjoins my horses' and mules' yard. When we ended the meditation, I explained the importance of observing the feeling of presence and stillness created by the meditation and of trying to learn how to hold on to it to use when working with horses. All of my herd laid down and went to sleep, as they were deeply effected by our calmed nervous systems.

A calm mind is a powerful tool for down-regulating a horse. You can learn to use it to help horses relax, rest, heal, sleep, connect, and be well.

If you would like to learn more about how to do this, please contact me.

“Over the past few years, I have really made listening a big part of what I do. Personally, it’s not easy. You really have to change your judgments of every situation, and you also have to be able to lose your expectations. The only goal is to have your horse feel as if you’re on their team, so they know you can recognize when they become concerned and help relieve that concern. In order to listen fully, you must also be more present, and just from that mindfulness, I have seen a huge change in horses that I work with.” Warwick Schiller 2022

“Many people struggle to be in the presence of their horse without doing something. If there’s a problem, they want to fix it. if there’s not one, they want to fiddle and groom and touch… Many times these well meaning owners… are doing a lot of work to try to resolve their horse’s anxiety issues, and many times the incessant fiddling and grooming and touching is part of the problem.
Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is be a human being, instead of a human doing.” Warwick Schiller 2025

These two quotations above from the illustrious horseman Warwick Schiller really sum up the essence of working correctly with horses. It is not, as Warwick points out, “about the doing,” but it is about the being and the seeing. We must be present, and we must be aware of the horse’s every concern and have them know that we are. In these two steps, the horse finds not only the partner he seeks but the security and confidence he needs.
When we look at our horses deeply, trying to understand their inner state, our mirror neurons help us feel and sense our horses in our bodies, which communicates to them on a feeling level that we get them. Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that fires both when a person or animal performs an action or when they observe another performing the same action.Being present helps us to be aware and grounded. We should strive to be our horse’s rock, not their rabbit hole.

“First, you go with the horse. Then the horse goes with you. Then you go together.” – Tom Dorrance

First, you really see your horse. Then, the horse finds security in your presence. Then you have connection and go
together—the Two-Step Way.

Two important concepts to think about when introducing something new and potentially frightening to a horse are titration and pendulation. Both terms were coined by Peter Levine who developed Somatic Sensing, which has become a popular therapy for helping people overcome trauma. Titration, when applied to horses, is a way of introducing something scary or novel to a horse in a piece-by-piece way that will not overwhelm him. Pendulation is the concept of moving between a feeling of activation and one of safety to broaden the horse’s comfort zone.
The following video gives a nice little example of both titration and pendulation as it applies to horse training. In this video, I am working with a previously wild Mustang named REIN’s Infinite Hope. Fin for short. I am helping him to get more comfortable with haltering.
You can see in this video that I have broken the haltering process into small pieces so as not to overwhelm him. Fin is not comfortable with having someone stand at his side and stroke him, so I do that for just a moment, keeping him within his tolerance. I step forward to engage him. I am only asking him to stick his nose in the noseband of the halter and allow me to rub the sides of his nose with it. This is enough for now. When I started with Fin, I only rubbed him with the halter. Then, when he was fine with that, I asked him to put just the tip of his nose in it. Now he puts his whole nose in the nose band and lets me rub the sides of his face. He is not yet entirely comfortable with this step, so for now, we will just do this step until he gains more confidence, and then we will continue slowly. This is the titration.
Notice how Fin puts his nose in the halter for a while and then withdraws it. I allow him to pull his nose out of the halter and go back to where he feels safe. He then tries again, putting his nose in the halter, by allowing him to remove his nose whenever he wants. I am helping him to build his trust and confidence in the haltering process. This is an example of pendulation. Going slowly and using these concepts in your training can make all the difference.

The horse is a flight animal with long legs to carry him away at speed. In the wild, he flees from danger, only fighting when he is trapped, for a resource, breeding rights or seeking dominance. He is a vigilant animal with wide-set eyes that enable him to see predators approaching. He has a big nose with wide nostrils to help him smell things on the wind. He has a long neck and tall ears that help him get information about things approaching. He is a herd animal and relies on his nervous system and the nervous systems of the animals around him to keep himself safe. Everything about his biology, physiology and behavior is primarily there to keep him safe from danger.
He is always aware of his safety. That’s what makes a horse so sensitive to pressure. A direct gaze or a straight-line movement towards him is enough to move him away or freeze him in place if he has nowhere to go. The activation of the fight-or-flight response in a scared rider’s nervous system can also really unsettle a horse and make him want to run away.
When we have a horse on a rope, when we are riding or when we are holding one in a contained space, we are taking away their feeling of mobility, which they rely on to feel safe. We are taking away their main way of protecting themselves from perceived danger. They do not have unconditional access to their legs or to their flight. This immobility makes horses feel vulnerable and fearful until they have learned to decouple fear from the feeling of being restrained. We often forget to consider deeply enough what this feeling of vulnerability must feel like to them.
We can help our horses learn to decouple fear from the feeling of immobility placed upon them by our ropes and bridles by making sure we are aware of where they are in their nervous system when we are working with them, by making sure we take the time to keep them below their threshold of fear for tolerating new experiences and objects. We can help them by making sure our nervous system is anchored in the present moment, a place where we are grounded, nonjudgemental and not overtaken by strong emotions. We can help them by letting them know we are paying attention to their feeling and going with it enough for them to understand we are with them. We can help them by being patient and remembering that if they are not “getting” what we are trying to teach them, we need to change how we teach them. We can help them by being clear with our asks and our responses to their tries. We can help them by titrating their exposure to something that scares them instead of overwhelming them with too much all at once. We can help them grow by pendulating between increasing exposure to the thing that they find frightening and a feeling of safety.
If a horse becomes too panicked without being able to flee or fight for their safety, they disassociate, they freeze. They do not learn anything new in this state. They are truly incapable of it. If they are forced to do this too much or for too long, they shut down. The energy that is generated for them to flee gets stuck in their bodies and minds. This can make them mentally and physically sick and lame. They can become tense and hypervigilant, or they can become depressed and shut down from what is happening around them. Their eating habits can change, and they can develop coping behaviors like cribbing, head swinging and stall walking. Their minds withdraw, and their postures change as they struggle to deal with their stress. They become disconnected and unable to really trust people or their environment.
It’s important to understand that force is never the answer. Not only can it truly break a horse’s nervous system, but it will also break their spirit and their trust. We know so much more than we once did about the mammalian nervous system. We understand that tonic immobility is often a big part of the development of PTSD in people. Why should it be any different in a horse, an animal that was born to run?

The most excellent cowboy horseman, Tom Dorrance, used to say that he liked to let the newborn foals approach him and make the first contact rather than walking up to them. He described how first after a few days old they would start to shyly look over at him from the far side of their mother. Then, a day or two later, they would be brave enough to come around the other side of their mother for a better look. Finally, one day, on their own decision, they would walk up to him and make the first contact by reaching out to touch his hand or sniff him on the head if he was bent down. Tom Dorrance said that this subtle difference in allowing the foal to approach first on his own time made for a much better horse, one with more confidence and interest in humans and the human relationship as they grew up to be riding horses.
By letting the foals approach him first instead of going right up to them and touching them, Tom was letting them find their confidence and curiosity enough to want to engage with him. The foals were coming out of their sympathetic nervous system state (flight, freeze, flight) from the novel experience of his presence and entering the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system that is responsible for social engagement as well as rest and digestion.

By waiting for them to build their confidence in his presence, he helped them to want to engage with him. If he had approached them, perhaps they would have tried to get away, or they might have frozen with fear as he made contact. The experience of the first contact would have looked much different for the foals had he not waited for them to approach him first. They would have felt fearful, stiffened by the action of their sympathetic nerve, and they would have remembered this experience and associated it with him.

Done the waiting way, the foals were feeling curious and friendly. They enjoyed the engagement and remembered it as a positive experience with a relaxed muscle tone. When minds are calm, and the sympathetic branch of the nervous system is low enough for social engagement, learning happens. Tom was choosing to start his foals from a place of finding their will instead of just their surrender or tolerance. This is an important concept when working with horses. It always makes a better connection, bond and partnership when you have their will.

We are often in such a rush that we may not be aware how much of our horse’s will we actually have on a daily basis. A good place to test this is when haltering them. Does your horse come to you, or do you go to him? Does he look at you when you approach, or does he look away? Does he tip his head towards the halter, or does he move it away, put it in the air or tip it to the side?

Altering your haltering practice can establish a better relationship with your horse. If he comes to you and tips his head right into the halter, you have his will; if not, you have some work to do. The moment your horse so much as looks away as you approach him with the halter halt, stay still for a moment, make sure that your energy is low and that you are present without a lot of agenda. Wait for the horse to look back at you. When he does, you can take another step towards him. If he looks away again wait. Keep doing this until the horse has either come to you or allowed you to approach all the way by not looking or moving his head away from you.

Open the noseband of the halter and invite him to put his nose in. If he moves his nose away, retreat by moving the open noseband away by the same amount of space. This will cause the horse to draw towards the noseband again. Keep playing this game until the horse puts his nose in the halter. If he starts to pick his head up away as you try to bring the halter up towards his ears, wait and slide the halter back down by the same amount he has moved away from it. Do this until he allows for the haltering without any objection and by actually making it easy for you to halter him.

This method of haltering really helps to build connection, as the horse understands that you are aware of his feelings and are taking them into account. This feeling of security switches on the horse’s social engagement and makes him want to interact with you.



This simple haltering method can change your relationship. Your horse will start to respond to your presence and interactions from a place of will and curiosity rather than just compliance. You can add this way of interacting to all the things you do with him, not just haltering. Let your horse know you see and respect the being inside of them by taking the time to wait for them to be ready to engage with you.