How this Journey Started
On May 2007 myself and my boyfriend, Chris, made the decision to buy Stella, a three year old black cob. The need to buy her came up out ofthe blue and and we had the luxury of about 1 hour to make the decision. It was an easy one however, one that I think was already made for us a few weeks before when we met Stel la for the first time at the organic farm where Chris works once a week. This friend, Jim, had had her on trial at his farm for about 4 weeks and was hoping that she would be able to pull a carriage for him. She had come from a very abusive background and was very thin when she arrived at the farm. The picture on the left shows her, already looking a lot better, three weeks after she arrived at the farm . She was extremely nervous and hostile and so I offered to do some healing on her in the hope that she would have a better chance at staying at the organic vegetable farm and having a happy life.
I have been interested in healing for a long time and I am a qualified Reiki healer, however I have always just practiced informally on my friends and family, their pet dogs and cats and the occasional wild bird or mouse and even a butterfly. I originally became interested in healing as I searched for a solution to my own health issues and it was definitely a life saver to me and since then I have known that at some point I will become a professional healer. Stella was the first horse I did healing on and I developed a strong bond for her while she was still on trial at the farm. I knew in my heart that she would be important in our lives but I had no idea just how important! I was hoping to see her regularly and so I went back several times to do some healing on her and knew that some how she would end up helping me too.
But on one of the days that Chris was out there working on the farm Jim told him that he just couldn't keep Stella. He would be using her around children and he felt that she would not be safe as she was so jumpy and uncooperative. Even though the healing that I had done had helped he felt that she had avery long way to go and there was no guarantee that she would improve enough. With a heavy heart he told Chris that she was to be sent back that evening. Devastated, Chris phoned me to tell me the news. I went to meet him on his way home and within 2 minutes of meeting we had decided that we must buy Stella. We both knew that it was the right thing to do even though we had absolutely no experience with horses, not much money and no where to keep her. We just knew that there was no other option. We had both felt a strong connection with her and we could not let her pass out of our lives and into one which held certain misery for her.
We tried to ring Jim to tell him about our decision and not to send her back that night but we couldn't get through. Eventually we decided to drive out to the farm again as time was running out, but when we got there the pick up and horse box were already gone. Chris got out of the car to have a look around anyway and thankfully the horse box had just been moved up to the horse shelter. Jim and his son didn't want to send her back either and had been very slow in bringing her down from the field and as a result were way behind schedule. We found out that Stella would actually have been brought on the next buyer that evening. That buyer would not have been a good destination for Stella and so we were very relieved that she was still there. We talked about our decision and asked Jim what he thought. He said that he could think of a hundred reasons why we shouldn't buy her but he also knew that it was the right thing to do. He said he would help us as much as he could and so it was decided. Both him and his son had very big smiles on their faces as Jim went to ring the horse trader to tell him they wouldn't be coming after all.
Once the decision was made we then had to figure out how we could actually make it happen. We went home and sent an email to anyone we knew appealing for assistance with buying Stella and we were amazed at the response. I'm still overwhelmed with the generosity of our friends and family both financially and in terms of their verbal support for our crazy mission. It would not have been possible if it were not for them. Thank you again.
The next day, we were the new owners of Stella and so began a very surreal and stressful period for us as our lives changed completely and we struggled to cope. Jim, true to his word allowed us to keep Stella at his farm for three weeks until we found some where else to keep her. He gave us our first halter and all the horse books he had. We ploughed through those and then got more from the library and so we had a good grounding in what we were supposed to be doing. The biggest problem for me was that I was afraid of Stella. I was nervous around any horse and this horse was nervous around any people. We didn't know what to expect and so it fell to Chris to learn to walk her in hand first. He was also nervous but he knew that some one had to start getting used to handling Stella and so he ploughed ahead with her, getting pushed into hedges, pulled all over the place and stood on as he struggled to bring her up and down to the field every day. But she gradually began to get used to us, and to come over to us when wea rrived and we took this as our first mile stone of success.
Eventually we found her a place where she would have three friends and a huge field to roam around in and from then on things started to settle down. She quickly made friends with all three geldings and it became easier and easier to approach her as she gradually adjusted to her natural life style.
Since getting Stella we have been trying to understand her and to help her and it has been an amazing experience so far. We promised her at the start that we would never get angry at her or loose our patience with her. In her young life she had experienced more pain and misery than we can possible imagine and we knew that our job was to find a way to understand her and to wait for her to engage with us when she was ready. She has brought us into a new world, one that I hope we go further into, and she has taught us so much about horses, ourselves and life in general.
Unfortunately, Stella had to leave this field in the winter of 2007 as the other horse left the field to go into stables as the field became waterlogged and unsuitable for horses. We were unable to find anywhere else within a reasonable distance which had other horses to keep her company. So for a while she lived on her own until we found Misty and moved to the countryside so that we could live right beside them.
Stella has turned into a different horse in the year that we have owned her and she is now an affectionate and generally wonderful horse to be around. She still struggles with basic tasks such as lifting her feet but in comparison to what she was like when we got her she is an angel. We are still learning about how to look after horses in the best way possible but unfortunately in Ireland this is very difficult. There appears to be very little natural horse care here even though there is a huge horse "industry" in Ireland.
One year on Stella stood eating a hazel bush as we walked through the woods and my boyfriend declared that that would be her new name. It seems right to acknowledge that Hazel is transforming and becoming the horse that she always should have been. She responds better to this name and every time we use it we imagine the beauty that lies within her and so hopefully it comes out just a little bit more. And the more it comes out in Hazel, the more it comes out in us.
