Teens work through pain by taming horses

SMITHFIELD, Va.

Steve Edwards and his riders leaned into the metal horse pen and pulled it from the mud.

December rain had pooled on the Smithfield farm, leaving a corner of the round enclosure mucky and thick. Riders wrestled the pen onto drier ground and raked wet hay from the dirt below.

Soon the pen would be ready.

Edwards – dressed in jeans and boots, a woven poncho slung over his shoulders – watched the riders work.

“We’re not going to rush anything,” he said.

Today, if all went well, Ashley Meyers would ride her colt for the first time.

For months she’d been preparing her horse – first rubbing his coat to show affection, then moving him around in the pen, finally easing a blanket and saddle onto his back.

Ashley didn’t think the ride would happen. Her horse had reared on his hind legs weeks earlier when she worked on despooking him by shaking a bag filled with plastic bottles, called a monster, all around him. Now, she thought, she’d be the ultimate monster.

But Edwards had confidence. A good horse trainer is calm and collected, just like Ashley, and able to show she’s in charge while making the animal feel safe. It’s a relationship built on trust, and this horse trusted her.

Edwards had matched many kids with horses over the years, seen them gentle wild mustangs.

He’d seen the kids change, too.

____

Edwards is an assistant commonwealth’s attorney for Isle of Wight County, where he prosecutes nearly all cases involving juveniles. Kids who’ve been abused often clam up when questioned by nurses and cops.

But they talk to Edwards.

Ashley was 17 when she met him in 2012. He was sunburned, rugged-looking.

“He didn’t look like a lawyer,” she said. “He looked like he needed to be out in a field doing something.”

She had reported her stepfather for sexual abuse, notifying police after he took out his cellphone to try to record it, she said. At that moment, she said, she knew she had him.

As Edwards often does with young witnesses, he brought Ashley to his farm, Mill Swamp Indian Horses, where open pastures provide a more relaxed environment for talking about cases.

At Mill Swamp, roosters crow and an ever-growing population of piglets roams free. A 700-pound hog named Amos eats from his trough, and a dog named Lydia scrounges for food scraps near the tack shed.

About 40 horses – including mustangs from Corolla, the Shackleford Banks of North Carolina and the western U.S. – live at the farm.

That day, Ashley wanted to walk to the edges of the lot and hear the horses’ stories – horses with names like Manteo, Tradewind and Red Feather.

There was Comet, part Appaloosa and part Arabian, the first horse Edwards trained using natural horsemanship, an approach in which the trainer uses the animal’s body language instead of subjugation to communicate.

And there was Edward Teach, a Corolla stallion that came to Mill Swamp after a wild hog attacked him, biting flesh from his neck.

As they walked through the pastures, Edwards turned around, and Ashley was gone.

He spotted her in the distance, her arms wrapped around a half Corolla, half western mustang: Bear Coat. That surprised Edwards.

What’s his story? Ashley asked.

“The story is, nobody can touch him,” Edwards said.

 ____

A petite, century-old home called the Little House sits on the farm. Behind it rests a red barn, a quote painted on its side: “We are not weak like pups of seven sleeps, but strong, like grown horses.”

The house is where Edwards’ mother was born and where he spent the first few years of his childhood.

Edwards was about 5 when his family began taking in foster care children here.

He remembers overhearing his mother talking to a reporter about why she did it. She said her father had been a binge drinker and that she was drawn to help children who faced challenges in their family life.

From a young age Edwards was exposed to social problems many children never see. He noticed foster care kids got shuffled around a lot and how that hurt them and their foster families.

“It doesn’t have to work that way,” he said.

As a child he decided he wanted to become either a politician or a lawyer, so he could fire bad social workers who made things worse for the kids.

Edwards, 54, estimates his family fostered more than 100 children. They adopted eight.

One of those was Lido, a 5-year-old with cerebral palsy. Despite their 30-year age difference, Edwards and Lido grew close.

Lido loved taming horses with his adopted brother. He’d climb on mustangs that had never been ridden and declare them ready for a ride in the woods.

Once, while trimming horse hooves, Lido spotted a monstrous bull close by and laughed.

“You know what we’re about to do,” he told Edwards.

It was the only chance they’d have to ride a bull.

“Help me up,” Lido said.

 ____

Edwards got his first wild horse in the late 1990s from the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada. Within a few years he was holding demonstrations on natural horsemanship.

Soon parents were asking if he would teach their kids to ride.

Then came more horses. And more kids.

Today, a long line of cars frequently can be found parked along the farm’s bumpy dirt driveway, kids arriving for lessons or just stopping by to see the horses. Edwards also runs a small breeding program, in an effort to preserve Corolla Spanish mustangs.

He keeps track of it all on his daily blog, Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views. There he muses about the horses and the riders, about training, about life, and even Lido.

For the last year, the farm has partnered with the Hampton Roads-based nonprofit Together We Can Foundation to teach horse whispering to teens who are considered at-risk or in danger of dropping out of school, or who are in foster care or otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it.

The foundation funds a teen program and also has helped pay Ashley’s tuition at Christopher Newport University, where she is a sophomore.

The idea is that those who are bullies might be humbled. And those who are shy and reclusive, or who have been victimized, might find confidence and strength in learning to tame wild horses. Over the years, those who have spent time on the farm have said there’s healing in horses.

A straight-laced IRS agent once told Edwards that being on the farm had changed his family’s life.

A military veteran with PTSD looked around the farm in late fall – the pastures muddy, the trees stripped of their leaves – and called it beautiful. He said it was the most peaceful he had felt in America.

Edwards frequently tells his riders Mill Swamp is about building better people.

“I don’t understand at all what this place – and these horses – does for people,” Edwards said.

“All I know is I see it all the time.”

 ____

On Dec. 29, 2008, Edwards received a phone call.

There had been an accident involving his brother Lido. He had been hunting with a friend when his gun accidentally fired. Lido was killed at 17.

Edwards called his wife and one of his adult riders named Rebecca. He was about an hour away in Southampton, where he then worked as a prosecutor.

He told his wife and Rebecca to make sure everyone had finished crying by the time he arrived. He didn’t want all the sadness.

When he got to the house, it was packed with riders waiting to support him.

A music festival held in Lido’s memory helped pay for the funeral. Edwards gave the eulogy. The church was full.

In the years that followed, Edwards began to change. He tried to keep himself from getting too attached to new people in his life.

“No more loss from death or even just moving away,” he would write years later in his blog.

“One cannot lose what one has never had.”

 ____

The few times Ashley came to the farm, Edwards was struck by her ability to connect with the horses, even nervous ones like Bear Coat. She could embrace Peter Maxwell, a scared young horse who wouldn’t let Edwards touch him.

“She could pet him and rub all over him, and he would look at me like I was made out of spoiled cheese,” Edwards said.

Now 2 years old, Peter is a shrewd and mischievous colt, known to stick his head through the round pen and pull. Around Ashley, though, he is calm.

Edwards saw qualities of a horse trainer in Ashley. She had real wisdom and judgment, insight beyond her years.

He decided that when she turned 18 – and when her case ended – he would give her a horse. He had never done that for someone involved in one of his cases.

Ashley’s stepfather pleaded guilty to his charges –three counts of forcible sodomy and one count of object sexual penetration. In August 2012 he was sentenced to serve 19 years and eight months.

Ashley still remembers Edwards asking her to meet him that day.

“Peter,” he told her, “is now yours.”

 ____

Nearly two years later, Ashley was at the farm to ride Peter for the first time. The pen had been rescued from the mud, and training began as it always had – with small steps.

First came a warm-up, so the colt could burn off stress.

He ran circles in the pen as Ashley stood center-ring. She trained her eyes behind him, her right arm extended. She hit the ground with a whip. The horse changed directions.

From a chair outside the pen, Edwards noted the colt’s circles were getting smaller, inching away from the fence and closer to Ashley.

“That’s because he’s so attached to you,” Edwards told her.

When it was time to stop, Ashley shouted: “Whoa!”

She turned away from her horse and dropped her head and shoulders – making herself look as relaxed as possible. Peter stopped running, lowered his head and started chewing – signs he felt comfortable.

For the next hour and a half, she eased Peter forward. She worked incrementally: tugging at the stirrups so the horse would know what it felt like; putting a foot in one stirrup and then taking it out; standing up in the stirrup and then coming off; hoisting herself up and over Peter without sitting on him.

Then came the test.

Edwards told her to sit on Peter, with her feet through the stirrups.

“If you have a problem,” he said, “jump in my direction and put your arm around me.”

She pulled herself onto her horse. Peter didn’t flinch.

Edwards smiled.

“A good boy,” he said.

She climbed off and nuzzled her face beside Peter’s.

They would try again, Edwards said, and if the horse was ready, he might have Peter walk.

Ashley eased onto her horse once more and rubbed his neck.

“I’m going to step this way,” Edwards told Ashley.

Peter took a step.

Ashley climbed down and rubbed the horse’s neck and forehead. She kissed Peter’s face.

They would try it again, and Peter would again take steps. He wobbled a little awkwardly, unsure how to balance a person on his back, but that was to be expected on his first ride.

“Baby, it couldn’t have gone better than this,” Edwards said.

It will be about a year before Peter would be old enough and ready for a hard ride in the woods, but this was a good start.

As Ashley gathered up her gear, Edwards mused about what Lido would have said about the day’s progress.

Open the gate, Lido would have told them.

Time to put Peter in the woods.

 ____

Ashley impressed him, Edwards wrote the next day on his blog, but she hadn’t surprised him.

She was smart, tough, knew how to listen. She worked with a calmness that reminded him of one of his most experienced riders.

In fact, he wrote, the way she worked with trust and patience reminded him of Lido.

She was relaxed. He didn’t have to correct her movements.

“We were both able to focus on what really mattered, the horse,” he wrote.

A few weeks later came the anniversary of Lido’s death.

An afternoon ride had been rained out, but Edwards thought about going anyway. His riders had taught him that he didn’t need good weather, he wrote on his blog. Just a good horse.

They had taught him much more, too.

He continued:

“So now it is raining and Lido died five years and twenty minutes ago.

“And I feel better than I have on any December 29 in the past five years.

“In fact, I feel pretty good.”

Margaret Matray, 757-222-5150, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com

____

about the horse farm

For more information on Mill Swamp Indian Horses, visit www.msindianhorses.com. For more on the nonprofit Together We Can Foundation’s Equine Youth Challenge program for teens, contact program director Kelly Crockett at 757-472-4722 or kellyleigh3@cox.net.