Mental Health – Maeve Birch Home

Winter Horse Activity Levels

It’s dark out at 5pm and all I want to do when I get to the barn is stand around with horses under the stars. I don’t want to ride, I don’t want to set up poles for them to step over, I don’t even want to take them out of the field. I just…
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Changing Worry

I walked Rex for the first time in almost two months and found that I had changed. Between an illness, a new project at work picking up, and leasing a horse again, I had not been able to do more than stop to visit with Rex in the pasture for a few minutes every week…
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Ponderings on Fear

Thoughts for a rainy day. I have several pictures of the Welsh pony I’ve been working with where he’s either nervous or afraid. In one instance, he stood on cross ties in the grooming stall and someone had just started brushing his tail. For whatever reason, this caused sudden fear. His eyes widened, tail clamped,…
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The Pain of the Stoic Horse

I want to talk honestly about the stoic horses. The ones who seem to be stubborn or lazy, when in reality they are hiding the kind of pain that a more open horse would show by bucking or rearing. Instead the stoic horse shuts their eyes and plants their feet and attempts to ignore everything…
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Need vs Gratitude

With autumn approaching here in the northern hemisphere, harvest season right around the corner, I tend to get a bit busy. I grow tomatoes, squash, and greenbeans in my suburban yard. Beans need canned, squash needs discovered before it becomes the size of a bus, tomatoes need picked before the next storm or they’ll split.…
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An Opening

I’ve been busy learning again. It has been a continuous struggle to figure out how to get better at riding horses without compromising on how I want to be in relation to horses. I don’t force a horse to move anymore. It’s so counter to what I’m trying to do in the world that it’s…
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Guilt and Smoke

The past two days have been full of wildfire smoke here on the east coast of the US. What at first seemed like a weird orange sunrise turned into an all-day warning to stay indoors and watch through closed windows as the neighborhood was enveloped in a thick haze. Horses, unfortunately, didn’t have the option…
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Old Paths

Yesterday I was caught off guard by something I thought I had already worked through. It wasn’t a big thing, I just got unusually angry about a situation that shouldn’t have been a big deal. I had to go back and reevaluate why I was so stressed about it. The anger and fear had snuck…
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Check In, Breathe In, Breathe Out

I teach a course locally on how to recognize the very beginnings of a dangerous situation developing with a horse. Part of it is being aware of your own body, it’s relation to the horse’s body, and recognizing how your emotions and the horse’s are interacting. I had to take my own advice the other…
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Not Alone

The past week has been a little chaotic, as a close family member had emergency surgery and is still in the hospital. It’s the first time in my life when I’ve been so directly involved in helping care for a family member. Thankfully I have mentors I can reach out to who have been through…
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Tag: Mental Health