Continuing The Ride: Rebuilding Confidence from the Ground Up

By Crissi McDonald

"Back in the saddle" isn't just a cliché or a metaphor. For Crissi McDonald, it describes where she's spent four decades of her life, and a challenge she wasn't sure she'd still be able to meet.
On an ordinary sunny afternoon in 2014, Crissi's world falls apart. Waking up in the hospital after a freak accident with her horse, the doctors tell her that a small bleed in her brain has stopped and that she's dodged brain surgery.
As the news sinks in, she realizes the facade of her confidence has crumbled. She’s at a crossroads: either find ways to overcome the fear that now engulfs her or give up on horses.
Adrift in uncertainty and pain, she discovers that confidence unchallenged is a fragile notion, and that strength can be found in the rebuilding of it. She confronts the reality that if she wants to get back to what she most loves doing, the room of her fears must be smaller. Each day is a choice between giving in to doubt or taking steps toward getting stronger.
Continuing the Ride chronicles the lessons she learned and the horses who helped her return to the life she loves. Whether you’d like your confidence to be more robust or you’re looking for a good horse story, you'll find this a satisfying account of healing inside and out—and how to get back up after falling down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crissi McDonald
• Release date: Dec 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781732825840

Crissi McDonald

Crissi McDonald, who now calls Colorado home, spent her Arizona childhood looking for horses to ride. As a teenager and young adult, she traded barn work for riding lessons and spent summers on cattle ranches and running horse programs at a Girl Scouts of America camp; along the way, she earned a BA in philosophy from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. Now a trainer and a certified Masterson Method equine bodyworker, she travels with her husband, Mark Rashid, offering clinics nationally and internationally.Along with horses, Crissi has had a lifelong interest in writing and photography; her articles have been published in The Bark, and her photographs have been used in several of Mark Rashid’s books. Through her blog, she connects with those looking for ways to build deep and trusting relationships with their horses. "Continuing The Ride," is her first book.

Book preview

Continuing the Ride

Rebuilding Confidence from the Ground Up

By Crissi McDonald

Foreword by Mark Rashid

Lilith House Press

Estes Park, Colorado

Copyright © 2019 by Christina M. McDonald

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without written permission from the copyright holder. For more information, please contact the author. crissimcdonald.com

ISBN 978-1-7328258-3-3 (Softcover)

ISBN 978-1-7328258-4-0 (E-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915407

Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional medical or therapeutic advice. The ideas and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with appropriate and trained professionals. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

Cover and interior design: Jane Dixon-Smith/jdsmith-design.com

Editor: Susan Tasaki

Cover and author photograph: Lindsey Tedder

Printed and bound in the United States of America

For Mark, who has my heart.

And to all the horses and their people who let me into their theirs.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward.

—Amelia Earhart

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

One: New Horse, New Lessons

Two: Becoming a Detective

Three: The Unscheduled Dismount Club

Four: Finding the Herd

Five: Under the Rug

Six: It’s Not the Fall, It’s the Landing

Seven: The Pink Rose Cane

Eight: The Conversation

Nine: An Unruly Tomato Plant

Ten: Breath as a Bridge

Eleven: Ally Finds Us

Twelve: Homecoming

Thirteen: A Curious Mind

Fourteen: Hearing the Body

Fifteen: Fear Is Temporary

Sixteen: The Power of Movement

Seventeen: Pick a Direction

Eighteen: Continuing the Ride

Nineteen: Helmets

Twenty: Setbacks as Comebacks

Twenty-One: Changing Fear to Curiosity

Twenty-Two: Little Positives

Afterword Full Circle

Thanks

Resources

Foreword

A couple of years ago, Crissi mentioned, almost in passing, that she was thinking about writing a book. She said she wanted it to be about how to emotionally recover from a serious horse accident. I thought, who better to write that book. After all, not only had Crissi experienced such an accident, but she had also spent years finding practical and effective ways to recover, both physically and mentally, from a fall that was serious enough to land her in the hospital.

Crissi began work on the book a short time later, and you are now holding in your hands the finished product, Continuing the Ride.

I remember thinking, after reading her almost-finished manuscript one night, that a lot of people are going to like and be helped by this book. Not only is it very well written, one of Crissi’s trademarks, but it’s also funny, thought-provoking and empowering. It’s an amazing reference for folks looking to regain their confidence after an unfortunate horse mishap.

While this book is, indeed, all of those things, I believe it is actually much more, something deeper, something more like a love story. Let me explain.

Crissi and I met almost twenty years ago at a clinic I was doing in Arizona. She had brought her horse, Jack, a gray Missouri Fox Trotter that she rode bareback for her sessions. Jack was, how shall we say . . . a bit energetic. Still, one of the things I remember most about Crissi from that clinic was how much she smiled. If Jack was throwing himself around, she was smiling, if he wouldn’t stop, she smiled. If he would stop, she smiled. If she wanted to walk but he would gait, she smiled. If she wanted to gait and he would canter . . . well, you get the picture. On top of all that, not only did she smile whenever she was riding, but at least for me, that smile was contagious.

Throughout the weekend, Crissi asked a lot of questions. How do you. . .? Why do you. . .? How does the horse know. . .? Every question was accompanied by that same smile, and I remember thinking That woman not only loves horses, but she loves everything about horses!

From then on, Crissi would often show up at two or three clinics per year, and during that time, we slowly struck up a friendship based around our mutual love for horses. I would often find myself marveling at how Crissi would light up anytime she would tell me a story about Jack, the horse she had planned on buying and selling but ended up keeping for nearly twenty years, or her horse Zephyr, or any number of other horses she knew or had known.

Fast-forward a few years . . . Crissi and I found that our mutual love for horses had actually turned into a mutual love for each other, and eventually, we married. We have been through a lot together since that very first clinic all those years ago, but through it all, Crissi’s smile, and her life-long love of horses, has never faltered.

That love was never more evident than in her actions following the accident that, quite frankly, would probably have been enough to stop a lot of people in their tracks. But not Crissi. With her, it became very clear very early on that her love for horses was going to outweigh the worry that was a by-product of her fall.

I watched in wonder as, only weeks after her fall and still walking with a cane, she insisted on getting on one of our old trustworthy geldings—bareback, because sitting in a saddle was still too painful. I watched as day after day and night after night, she sat at her computer researching brain science, how trauma affects the brain, how that translates to the body and most importantly, what to do about it. I watched as she tried acupuncture, chiropractic, physical therapy, and any number of other modalities of healing designed to help her regain both physical and spiritual balance, all just so she could get back to her one and only lifelong love: horses.

There is power in a love like that.

As time goes on, this book will undoubtedly come to mean many different things to many different people. Of that, I have no doubt. But to me, this book will always be just one thing . . .

A Love Story. One that began many years ago with a little girl on a borrowed pony, and continuing on to this day with Crissi, still smiling, living a life filled with horses.

Mark Rashid

Estes Park, Colorado

Introduction

When I was still in diapers, I met a Shetland pony. From the look on my face in the picture, it was love at first sight. Like my smile, I may have inherited my love of horses from my mom. She remembers a boy she liked and galloping with him across the desert on one of his family’s ranch horses. The freedom of that gallop and the horse she rode has outlasted the memory of the boy.

As I grew up, I sought the company of horses. I rode my bike and pretended it was a horse. I found horses not far from where I lived and snuck grass to them through the fence. It was liberating to discover that they didn’t care about the things I saw reflected in my peers’ eyes; they didn’t judge or assess or withhold their regard because my clothes weren’t trendy or I wore glasses or had a last name they could make a joke about. They responded to silence. They sought out kindness. They smelled good. I was, and still am, hooked.

The descriptor horse-crazy is endearing when applied to a pre-teen girl. When said about an adult, it can mean something else entirely. As in, no one understands, and thinks you must be more than a little crazy when you keep going back to these big, lightning-fast animals after enduring stepped-on toes; broken bones; hitting the ground; and, in some cases (like mine), a brain bleed. Or worse.

What I’d like to offer you with this book is essentially a blueprint—a way to begin to get off the ground and untangle what has happened as a result of an accident with a horse so you can help yourself feel better. What I share are guidelines of sorts, things I’ve found interesting and that were helpful in my own steps back to confidence. Take or leave anything, or use these ideas to forge a different path for yourself.

Woven into the story is what I’ve learned about trauma, brain function, and how to make the best of what you’ve got. One of my more important lessons was that feelings of intense anxiety and fear aren’t permanent. They don’t have to interfere with enjoying horses, and they especially don’t have to stop you from having horses in your life, unless you choose not to.

From my personal experience and the experiences of the people I’ve had the honor of instructing who also are frustrated by fear, I cannot say that what you will find here will enable you to ride fear-free. Maybe there is such a thing, but that has not been my experience. Riding with less fear, however? That’s well within the reach of us all.

Much of my life, I’ve let fear dictate what I do, or avoid doing. But I recently turned fifty and have decided that as I move into this next phase, I’d like to take the bullhorn away from my fear’s blabbermouth. I’m okay with maintaining a healthy sense of caution around horses, but fear can speak with its inside voice now.

I’m not a therapist and haven’t any plans to be one. What I am is stubborn and curious. These traits have generally served me well, never more so than when I had to face the long road back to feeling joyful and at ease with horses once again.

I hope that within these pages, you’ll find something that helps you as you rebuild and rediscover your own confidence.

One

New Horse, New Lessons

February 4, 2014

I’m dreaming of silver-gray fog and horses running through it. Their tails are tendrilled clouds, their heads are high and nostrils wide. I hear the echo of a whinny. I feel their hooves drumming the earth through the length of my body.

I thought it was morning, and I was waking from a dream of horses.

It was mid-afternoon, and I was regaining consciousness after my mare flipped over backward, crushing my right leg beneath the saddle and her panicked hooves.

Five Years Earlier

Standing in the round pen was a delicate bay Arabian mare. She had a bushy black mane and eyes that were squinty and hard. She wasn’t interested in the person at the other end of the lead rope and this got me wondering what was troubling her.

She was seven years old, and from what we could gather, was mainly ridden at a canter or gallop around a local track. Owned by some older folks who needed to disperse their herd of Arabians, this little mare needed a new home.

Our friend Carla had borrowed her to bring to a clinic Mark and I were teaching. Carla didn’t plan on getting on a horse, or going fast when she did get on, so she wisely decided to practice groundwork with the mare. After four days of watching our friend work on skills that were new to both of them, we came to admire the horse’s temperament—she didn’t get upset even when she was unsure. Mark and I thought that with time and education, she might turn out to be a pretty good clinic horse. We decided we could take her; after the paperwork was done and she was standing in the paddock with our other two horses, I named her Breagha (Bree), Gaelic for lovely.

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A clinic horse’s job isn’t as easy as it appears. If you attend one of our clinics, you would see quiet horses going through their day,