The Horse In the Cattle Guard Incident

    Summers during college I taught riding at a day camp.  One morning I arrived driving a Volkswagen busload of kids to see Blackjack, a horse I’d bought at auction the day before, stood screaming, one of his legs jammed down in the cattle guard. 

Note:  Examples may be used more than once.  I cannot keep up with what I’ve used in a current clinical session or reported here.     Uncle.  Defeat.  Can’t do it.   

     Okay.  Back to Blackjack, the big, old, raw-boned, hundred dollar horse that was perfect for carrying beginners for a few weeks.  Unfamiliar with the cattle guard, he’d stepped through the bars and was ramming his bloody hoof upward, over and over, in an attempt to escape his problem.  He was clearly in terrible pain and desperate to improve his circumstances.

    So why didn’t he do what would work instead of doing the SAME THING, which clearly did not only NOT WORK, but was causing more and more DAMAGE? 

    If Blackjack could have called on his THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM, he would have have thought . . .  “Hmm . . . if I got my hoof down between these bars . . . if it fit going down . . . then, if I slow down, study my situation, and THINK . . . I can get my hoof back up through the bars. 

    But Blackjack didn’t have access to his THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Later that morning he was put down.

    Now, we’re not ”putting anyone down” here, but how often do we do to ourselves what Blackjack did to his leg?

    When we worry about events we can’t control?  When we can’t stop bickering?  When we drive too fast?  When we hold a grudge?  When we refuse to apologize?  When we can’t stop apologizing?  When we get into someone else’s business?  When we complain and complain    even though we know we’re bringing other people down and turning them off?  When we say negative things about someone else?  When we say negative things about ourselves? 

     When we can’t say clearly what we will do and won’t do?  When we can stop criticising? 

     We are pulling a Blackjack.  We are being a Blackjack.   

    More tomorrow on being more in charge of your reactions.