Thanksgiving: Our First Horse Was a Dog

Meet my dogs, Preacher Man, Mister, and Jack. They’re in the doorway to my writing studio. It’s Thanksgiving night, which is always on a Thursday. So, for the last thirteen years, every Thanksgiving evening (and every other Thursday night) we meet here to write my blog. It’s usually the All-Horse Channel, as I share what I know about understanding horses and training. It’s free advice from a professional and my way of giving back for what horses have meant in my life.

Want to know a secret? My best writing is always about the “Little Men.” Dog essays never get the reader numbers the horse blogs do, but I keep writing them anyway. I owe a debt to my dogs, not that they care. Look at that photo again. No one looks at me like they do. It isn’t about treats or baby talk or being lonely. We are a team, in the horse sense. We pull together like thundering Clydesdales. I can’t do what I do without them. So, maybe tonight won’t be so funny. It’s time for a love letter.

The Corgi imposter sitting with folded ears is Jack. He’s thirteen and is only jumping two feet high now. A Corgi rescue sent him to evaluate. I have no idea how he passed as one, but he’s sly. A kind woman with a show Corgi adopted him. She got sick, and he came back to me off and on while she was in treatment. I didn’t want her to give him up, though she thought it would be best for Jack. We made a deal, and he stayed with her. When she died, he came here to stay. No dog would ever brag about being a rescue, so he prefers to be called an inheritance. Treasure passed on.

This year, Jack got promoted to the cat half of the house with the Dude Rancher and his feline friend. It was a little too quiet after the old cat died. A reactive dog who gets to pretend he’s an only dog is almost indifferent to gravity. The Dude Rancher takes him for walks on the farm and Jack makes sure the Corgis bark at him. Dog applause. Jack believes the old wives’ tale that cats steal breath from babies, so when the Dude Rancher naps, Jack positions himself on his chest. Peach, the cat, sits inches away on the armrest, staring, which is the same thing as threatening murder. Jack folds his ears and quivers a bit, but holds his ground. He is that brave.

Several times a day Jack comes back to the Corgi ghetto to gloat, not that the other Little Men care. Preacher and Mister know they are already only dogs. And they have a yard to protect. Just last summer, a herd of extremely pregnant deer stood beside the fence as they barked, not at full volume, but still ferocious. The deer stared back in a silent dare. The dogs ran to me for praise and then back to bark. The deer, who looked like watermelons on toothpicks, were clearly mocking the dogs. It wasn’t fair.

For readers getting ready to leave because I haven’t mentioned horses, wait. Calming Signals! My Affirmative Training methods are firmly based in understanding a horse’s calming signals. I write about them constantly, but did you know the phrase comes from Turid Rugaas and the dog world?

Preacher Man is also thirteen. His dental bills could fund a college education, he has old-man lumps, and he barks as much as ever, which has been non-stop since 2014. It used to be a piercing, fingers-on-the-chalkboard, machine-gun yip. I know how he got that way, so I tell him he’s a good boy. The bark has dropped a couple of octaves as he’s aged. Some days he is calm enough to sleep on my lap without tearing off buttons and ripping out earrings in the process. Now his bark is more of a moany, singsong, yowly blues anthem. Almost a whisper bark. Fair warning: the older Preacher gets, the less I’ll travel for clinics. I promised him.

Does anyone know what it is about Corgis and cat beds? I bought a nice new hammock bed for Mister so he could stretch into a nice reverse sploot, but he won’t sleep on it without his cat bed. He and Preach fit into cat beds like a fifty-eight-year-old beer-drinkin’, junkyard-cussin’, multi-sport fanatic fits in a midriff tank top and skinny jeans. Oh, tell the truth. You think Corgis have better backsides, too.

Mister is the new dog, only here two years, but he’s traveled over 20k miles with me so far, going to clinics coast-to-coast in our A-frame trailer. He stands guard on picnic tables for the height advantage. Relaxes me after work by letting me rub his belly. And if he hears something at night, he straddles my chest. I slap the bed, a move I learned from dating a wrestler when I was in high school, but he keeps me pinned. It’s how he herds me, not by nipping my heels. It’s easier to just sit on me. Fewer precious calories burned and using gravity as a weapon is common sense.

I’ve been self-employed since I was twenty, and I think the main reason was so I could bring generations of good dogs to work with me.

What a luxury to cast Mister as the leading man in my recent travel memoir, Undomesticated Women. It was like eating dessert for breakfast to get to say so much about him, but a challenge to do him justice. I couldn’t have gone a mile without him beside me. Harnessed and clipped in for safety, his head resting on the console, he watched me drive. He’s not overtly affectionate, but he held me with his eyes, like we’ve known each other forever. He’s Keanu Reeves cool, if Keanu had better ears.

What Mister means to me, what each of my dogs has meant, is like trying to describe the air I breathe.

Horses are my passion, but dogs are family. No shade on cat lovers, but for most of us, our first horse was a dog, the animal we had while whining for a horse. They trotted along as we cantered in our tennis shoes and nickered and dreamed, never taking it personally. They were animals that could come into the house. Okay, not until I left home, but still. I don’t throw silly words like rescue around because I’m not doing them any favors. Any dog will tell you it’s the other way around. Rescuing humans is hard work, especially one that wanders off like I do.

Dogs are much better human trainers than horses will ever be. They get us to smile when we are mad at people and ready to give up. They let us cry on them and then keep our secrets. (Think human calming signals.) Dogs excel at making a big deal out of simple things, wagging to remind us of our fabulous good fortune. They walk us through our lives, good days and bad, with a loyalty that is incomparable.

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for so many blessings in my life. But even that, I learned from dogs.

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Available Now! Undomesticated Women, Anectdotal Evidence from the Road, Mister’s new travel memoir. Ride along with us on a clinic tour through 30 states, 2 oceans, and 14k miles with me and my dog, Mister. It is an unapologetic celebration of sunsets, horses, RV parks, roadkill, diverse landscapes, and undomesticated women. Available now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and signed copies from me.

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Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.