There’s a scene in the 1944 film National Velvet when Violet Brown (played by a very young Elizabeth Taylor) is just sort of gazing off in the distance and saying to herself, “Horses,” in the same tone you’d imagine most teenagers would say the name of some dreamy movie star. For Velvet, horses are romance epitomized and she cannot fathom her older sister Edwina’s1 growing interest in boys. Boys over horses? Really?
For those who don’t know, National Velvet tells the story of a young girl who falls in love with a horse, a rambunctious and beautiful chestnut she calls “the Pi.”2 This horse becomes the catalyst for her grandest ambitions, leading her all the way to the notoriously grueling (and at the time, male-jockey only) Grand National. Her all-too-sage mother, having enjoyed some youthful glory herself swimming the English channel, gives these words of advice to her daughter -
“Enjoy each thing, then forget it and go on to the next. There's a time for everything. There's a time for having a horse in the Grand National, being in love, having children; yes, even for dying.”
Move aside Ecclesiastes. Turn, turn, turn! I suppose not all of us have a time for racing in the Grand National, but point taken Mrs. Brown. This was Velvet’s moment. She found it on the back of a horse, so be it. Embrace it.
I absolutely adored National Velvet growing up, not least because I was a horse crazy kid myself. I’ve written before about my city-born-and-raised mother and how hard she worked to fight her way into the countryside, loving and longing for horses her whole life. This was a gift she gave to me, quite naturally. So every weekend was always at the barn, and I can still recall the exact warm smell of a barn on a snowy day. One of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday afternoon was to run to the field to fetch my pony and ride her back to the barn in lead ropes and halter. Horses were the promise of adventure and freedom - open fields and towering hedges and the great wide somewhere.
I read and reread King of the Wind and Black Beauty and Misty of Chincoteague and every single book in the Thoroughbred series.3 I’m not the only one to think horses are pretty special. Evidently God does as well. In fact he uses the wonder of the horse to silence Job’s existential cries -
"Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane? Do you make him leap like a locust, striking terror with his proud snorting? He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength, and charges into the fray. He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing; he does not shy away from the sword.”
Job 39:19
So horses. Either you have the horse crazy gene or you don’t. Of course as life went on I waxed and waned on horses. I was lucky to ride so early in life - horses were always there. There were races in the spring and hunting on Thanksgiving. There was wild good fun, like when my sister and I sat on our pony Emmy two at a time, bareback, and would wait for a car to come by. Then we’d take off through the field to ‘race’ the car at full gallop.
But there was some drudgery too. Like kids who are marched into music lessons day after day, some of the joy gets sapped by competition and repetition. My teenage years were spent going from event to event, clinic to clinic, lesson after lesson. When I got home from school I had homework of course, but I’d also have the conditioning schedule for my mother’s horse, the one I was borrowing for an upcoming big 3-day event. I’d put on my watch and do trot sets and hills and wait with anticipation for ‘gallop day,’ when I could just let her run and forget myself. It paid off. She won best conditioned horse at eighteen years old.
So in any case, horses lost some of their childhood wonder, some of that Velvet Brown devotion. And as an adult horses have often been a lot of cost and guilt and time.
I started writing this, started thinking about horses, because today I was quite annoyed with my horse. Let me tell you about him. He is a very flashy, handsome gelding (actually he looks an awful lot like the Pi), now inching toward his older years (19 next week). He also completely failed as a race horse, having only two starts under his belt, ones where he never even left the box. Knowing what I know about him now, this doesn’t surprise me. He is flighty, slightly neurotic, easily unnerved, and generally a very sensitive creature. His name is Ketch and I’ve had him for eight plus years now. He was my competition horse when I was getting back into riding after graduate school and he thrilled me with his athleticism and willingness, but he was unlike horses I had ridden before. Frankly, I didn’t really trust him.
I remember one of the first clinics I took him to. It was a cross country clinic and I wore a pinny over my jumping vest when out schooling fences. At the end of the lesson, which had mostly gone well, I untied one of the strings and the pinny slightly flapped in the breeze. This horse acted like a bomb went off. All four legs straight up in the air, rearing and spinning and eyes gone white. I somehow stayed on and quickly refastened the pinny. That was the first time I learned he was going to be a very different sort of ride than I was used to.
You see, I had been very lucky, having a mother who naturally chose quite safe horses for me.4 When I was in my heyday of competing I primarily rode her horse, a big percheron/thoroughbred mare named Ellie who was unnervingly smart. She was the lead mare back at home and let everyone know it, but she was kindness and gentleness itself with me and my sister, who had been running between her legs and piling on for bareback rides since we were very small. I look back at old videos of me riding and I can see my position is often quite sloppy. I really shouldn’t have been jumping the size fences I was but Ellie, you can see, compensates for my wiggly core. She takes the right stride, she keeps me steady, she keeps me safe. I trusted her.
The other horse I rode was a steady quarter horse named Denny (who I wrote about last year when he died quite unexpectedly after 28 years). He had a stubborn streak and did annoyed little bucks when I tried to make him partake in a dressage lesson, but he never spooked, he stood still in the aisle, took me out hunting with hounds, and gamely jumped whatever fence I pointed him at. He was even-tempered and quiet around children (he was my daughter’s first ride). I trusted him.
Now I had a horse I adored but who I didn’t trust. I would say it took me about two years to get Ketch figured out, and for him to learn to trust me. It was the first time I really had to earn a horse’s trust. I had always been the passive one before. The one who basically said, ‘here’s the job, I’ll try to stay on!’
Now here was a horse who wanted to be ridden every stride, who needed to hear calming words, and wanted, more than anything, for me to spend most of my time grooming and fussing over him. When we started eventing I realized he truly wanted to be talked to through all 28+ fences, every mile, every stride. So I did. I would watch his small ears wag back and forth, listening.
We competed well together. And I have some very thrilling memories coming off a cross country course when we were truly, truly in sync. We won awards for best horsemanship and safest riding. It was obvious we were a team. We never placed too high up in the ribbons. He is an elegant mover but dressage isn’t my strong suit and if he was having a nervous day, dressage is usually where the nerves came out. But we found our stride out on cross country, which is really saying something, because this is a horse who was often quite frightened out in the world, and here we were, alone at full gallop clearing fences, crashing through water, both of us thrilled.
But back to today and my annoyance. I rarely have time to ride anymore. I don’t mind - as Mrs. Brown said, ‘There is a time for everything.’ And this is truly not my Grand National time. This is the time for little kids and interrupted nights and after dinner bike rides and garden planting and reading and writing and working. Horses are at the periphery and I hope I am able to give my daughters some of the joy of these beautiful animals, but they are frankly quite low on my list of priorities.
Even so, I’d like to enjoy my horse when I can. After all there he is munching hay day in day out, chasing our little pony Max, demanding treats and grooming and splashing in puddles - essentially living a grand life as a glorified lawn ornament and frankly not seeming terribly put out by his less intense lifestyle of late. But as pretty as he is and as nice as he is to look at out in the field, I do like the animals here to have a job even if that job is glorified companion (looking at you dogs).5 So I have my former trainer coming out to give me a lesson next week and I thought I ought to hop on him today to see how he’s feeling and to see if we could get into a at-least somewhat regular rhythm of rides now that it’s turning toward pleasant spring weather.
Well, sugar-heavy first grass and a grey warm wind and the distant sounds of dirt bikes over the hills had my handsome red-head incredibly distracted. He was jumpy and darting around and I decided against getting on him. I have a much more mature sense of mortality these days and I pick my battles. So I lunged him instead, letting him kick out and trot forward and snort. After I felt he had gotten a decent bit of exercise I took off the lunge line and knotted his reins and let him follow me around the ring. Now, this is truly what he likes best. This is when his full-on puppy-dog self comes out. Without even the promise of a treat this horse will follow me in zig zags and over poles. He will stop and back up and really just go wherever I go, his nose softly snuffling my shoulder.
As we walk around the ring I see that he is relaxing. His ears aren’t pricking listening to the wind anymore. Instead they’re wobbling back and forth. He’s making soft smacking sounds with his mouth and even yawns at one point. He’s a different horse than when we first came in the ring.
So, yes, at first I was annoyed. It can take a lot of planning with the kids for even a thirty minute ride, and he wasn’t having it.
You will often hear people talk about the emotional intelligence of horses. You will hear about how attuned they are to your mindset, to your gestures, to your mood. Equine therapy is a real thing and it is very effective. All of this is true.
But what people don’t often talk about is how we also have to learn these animals, their quirks and their personalities, their moods and their needs. And in learning, and valuing, the very uniqueness of the animal in front of me, I somehow become a bit more at peace with myself - with my own flightiness and anxiety and failure to trust.
So today’s afternoon was not my ideal of a jaunt in the country on my horse, but it was full of gentleness and calm and peace. There was a point in our meanderings around the ring where I walked to the edge of the fence and simply looked across the way at our neighbor’s pond. Ketch stood next to me, breathing in and out, watching too. I saw two ducks paddle and dive. I saw a crow swoop on a favorable breeze.
“I come into the peace of wild things,” Wendell Berry wrote.
I remember the day before I was induced with my second daughter, I went down to the barn late at night and leaned into Ketch’s shoulder, breathing in that soft, dusty horse smell. He lowered his head and blew out, horse language for ‘hey, it’s okay.’ I remember praying to take this steady animal presence with me, to trust in the simple ‘being’ of that moment, to see me through the trials of labor.
In National Velvet the story isn’t really about Velvet trusting the Pi. We all know he’s a wild horse with a lot of talent, terribly flighty and always jumping out of fields and causing a ruckus. It’s how she ends up with him in the first place.
Really, the story is about the Pi trusting Velvet. And in becoming someone worthy of this noble animal’s trust, Velvet becomes brave, steady, and strong. She becomes who she’s supposed to be. Her horse won’t tolerate any less.
So perhaps really, this whole horse-thing, this whole dreamy, far off state I can still find myself in during steeplechase season or when watching Rolex6 or even just while sipping coffee in the morning and seeing a horse in the field in the early morning light, is less about what horses can give us - all those promises of speed and freedom and adventure - and more about the people we become when we give horses what they need. Love, patience, kindness, steadiness, calmness, consistency, presence.
When I went down to the barn today I was humming with work and to-do lists and anxiety. When I left I was calm and steady, peaceful and still. Ketch’s own anxiety had demanded it of me. I had to be the still point, the center.
May we be worthy of these animals entrusted to us.
Hi, I’m Katie, a writer and podcaster and I believe that literature, art, beauty, theology, and wonder are worth our time and attention. This essay was free for you to read, but took time and research to write - consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work I do.
I’m co-leading a pilgrimage to Ireland in October 2024 with
! Literally the land of horses. In fact I was so obsessed with this NatGeo documentary “The Ballad of the Irish Horse” Ireland became the place I needed to visit as soon as possible. It’s as magic as they say. Come join us!Download the brochure / Commonly asked questions / Sign up!
Played by Angela Lansbury! This movie has it all.
rejecting the name “Pirate” as too mean-spirited
Okay, I just looked it up and there are 72 books, so maybe not all, but I swear pretty close.
I say this with the exception of my first devil-pony who I absolutely adored but who also took off with me in open fields, kicked, refused fences, and generally caused mayhem. She also, in this stubborn way of hers, taught me how to actually ride. I always say everyone should be so lucky to have a bit of a challenging pony to start out with.
The reason our two rescued mini donkeys found a new home recently (a very posh, lovely one I should add).
I refuse to call it “Land Rover” or “Defender” - it’s just too weird.
I’m not a horse person but we have some retired ones living down the road and I love visiting them and always hope they will come to the fence to say hello.
Ketch sounds like a sweet handful! I love that he has the opportunity to a quiet, peaceful life after the racetrack.
After wanting a horse for years my MIL, finally was given an old trail horse, Teddy. He’s practically bombproof which is a must for all the grandkids that visit, but he also has that touch of spirit that makes him fun for my MIL to work with. The first time I got to work/ride him was the first time in 15years I had been on a horse. I was was so nervous and excited that Teddy immediately tried to get away with ALL the behaviors! 🤦♀️ It took awhile for me to realize that it was my attitude and inexperience that was feeding it. What really enforced this was when my calm, rock steady husband (who had never ridden or worked with horses before!!!) got Teddy to do exactly what he wanted during work in the round pen and while riding. So now, I always work on calming myself before I approach Teddy.
Do you also read the Black Stallion books or Saddle Club?