The Home Barn and Separation Anxiety

May I brag? I have that strange career where I travel a lot, see beautiful country as a routine part of my work. I never underestimate the importance of the land when working with horses. Horses depend on their local environment and so do we. The farm girl inside can’t look away, whether it’s the desert southwest or the verdant forests of the Southeast.

I have seen the corners of the world traveling by air, but that feels more like time travel. It’s still an unreal experience to sleep in a cramped seat, a stranger next to you, and wake up in a foreign country. It’s a road trip that’s reality. Every mile unfolds slowly, change is ever constant, and it takes the time it takes to arrive. Road trips are like training horses.

As a rule, I don’t see the tourist sights when I’m on the road. No fancy dinners downtown or shopping in the art district. I visit barns. Some have miles of white fence and an indoor arena with stalls newer and cleaner than my house. Others are small, practical, and designed for horses more than people. Some farms have acres of green pastures, while others have shared dry lots, like my farm.

The partnership with a horse includes the environment, whether it’s a gallop on the beach or climbing a mountain ravine. Whether riding in an indoor arena on good footing or strolling through your pasture. Our engagement with the environment matters because horses don’t separate themselves from parts of the environment. They take it all as their life. We make it paradise or not. Call it air quality.

Training is important to horses, but not nearly as important as the lifestyle of the barn. Friends, forage, and freedom, as the slogan says. But it’s so much more than that. It’s the barn culture. Is it a place of peace, as natural as we can make it and without the city drama of human life? Do we lose the things we seek for our horses by micromanaging their keep? I know I harp on calming signals, but one listen with the horses will tell you all you need to know about the farm.

So, we create a home barn. It’s a country club for introverts who don’t want to leave home. It could be private, or it might be shared with like-minded horsepeople, but a barn is a place where we put the culture of safety, welfare, and putting horses first above negotiating our desires.

At clinics, the question of separation anxiety always comes up. Horses like home and herd. Humans want to go and do. We think that just being with us should be enough for a horse to leave what they know behind. Travel away from the herd is stressful for a horse, and as much as we wish, humans will never replace the herd. Never to be complacent, traveling with a horse is the truest test of trust. And separation anxiety means you’re getting it right at your home barn.

This month I’ve taken two trips around Colorado, my home state. I crossed the Rockies in three places, bounced down dirt roads and took miles of switchbacks. Driving through places I hadn’t seen in thirty years, I did not miss the speed of the freeway, not once. The tourists didn’t bother me because all the years of Affirmative Training have worked. I just see what I like and ignore the rest.

When people find out I live here, they get a dreamy look in their eyes, and I correct them. “No, not that Colorado.” I live on the flat, windy, treeless part. There is a beauty to the prairie, but it’s subtle. No rocky crags, no sparkling rivers. And as much as I love the mountains, I don’t want to live there.

Yet, there is something so very therapeutic about a walk in the woods. To sleep in a place as quiet as the stars. Even just driving alongside a river is enough to rinse the drama out of my ears. But most of us live near urban areas, and some version of the untamed land is not always available. But maybe that’s what we love about horses. They bring nature to us by being forever a bit wild.

We need to love their wild; not squash it. It’s a reminder of who we were before the cities took our world, too.

As much as I love travel, the best part of each trip is turning toward home. My voice wavers when I say the word. Pulled like a magnet to the place I fit. To the land that holds me and mine safe. You see, I’m a hypocrite. As much as I train others about separation anxiety, I’m the one who is barn sour.

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