Sheila & Vie
Sheila has joined the participant membership to explore how mindfulness techniques can help develop a stronger relationship with her herd.
Sheila already has a very strong and grounded relationship with Lucie, the Carmargue, and Seraphina, the Fjord. Both horses have been in Sheila’s care for many years and all understand each other. Then Vie joined the family.
Why expand the herd?
Sheila’s husband had an intention to ride with Sheila and wanted a horse that he could ride easily. He is not an experienced rider and needed a steady horse. As with all these type of intentions things never work out quite how you want them to, only how they are meant to. Sheila was offered Vie, a steady, easy going, uncomplicated mare, and she decided to take her on.
Vie arrives
Vie arrived with Sheila during the Covid lockdowns, so moving Vie wasn’t as smooth as Sheila would have liked. Sheila didn’t get too many opportunities to get to know Vie before she arrived.
There was then the time needed to enable the herd to settle into a threesome. Vie soon took over leadership from Lucie. Lucie willingly gave this over as she is not as healthy or young as she was. Lucie still maintains a wise mastery of herd leadership which she shares with Vie.
Seraphina (Fina) accepted everything with grace. She has no desire to lead or fight her corner, always willing and accepting. Vie’s arrival has been particularly good for Fina, as Vie likes to move her body a lot, so she herds Fina about, which is keeping Fina a lot fitter than she had been in the last couple of years.
Vie had a little bit of emotional holding so the first couple of sessions exploring mindfulness with Vie enabled those emotions to be released. This was about ‘loss’ which is normal when animals change homes. They have established environments and families that are suddenly gone. There is always a process of grief to go through at these times. Even if the previous home was abusive (which wasn’t the case here at all) an animal will go through a process of loss and grief while they settle in to a new environment. We should always remember to allow these feelings to come up and acknowledge them.
The Journey starts
Vie has settled into the herd and the herd have established their patterns of how they interact with each other. When we started this particular journey though, the patterns of interaction did not include Sheila. Sheila had a way of ‘being’ with Lucie, and with Fina, but was struggling to find this same bond with Vie.
Vie’s energy levels are different from the other two,and so the conversations will be different and how she learns will be different.
Vie would probably respond well over time to natural horsemanship techniques but Sheila has decided to incorporate the Trust Technique and other mindfulness techniques into how she develops her relationship with Vie.
At the time of writing this we had already carried out a Trust Technique Creative Reaction Consultation with Fina, to show Sheila how she can bring a non-thinking feeling (the Present Moment) to her horses, and how to see reactions to that offering. This session was the first step, and the journey with Vie then starts to unfold, and always includes the whole herd.