Mommy Can I Have a Pony?

Girls, Horses, and Growing Up

The magical, mythical and very real bond

What is it about girls and horses? Ask most little girls what they want for a present, and at some point, most of them will ask for a pony. It’s almost a cliche.

Nothing else matches the love between a girl and a horse. Studies examining the magical, mysterious relationship between girls — especially adolescent girls — and horses concluded that spending time with horses teaches girls responsibility and coping skills, and improves self-confidence and self-esteem. Working with horses can teach trust, respect, honesty and communication. Spending time with horses can help an insecure girl become a confident woman.

I spent my childhood riding, cleaning, cleaning up after, and dreaming of horses. Now I realize that those wonderful animals taught me important lessons about life and work.

Persistence and Resilience

Adolescence is enough to make you want to crawl in a corner. Teenage girls are a tough crowd. Everything a girl wears and or says, how she does her hair, who her friends are, even the kind of phone or computer she has or the schoolbag she carries, brands her social worth.

Remember the movie Mean Girls, with its cliques, backstabbing, and rigid social strata? My high school looked a bit like that. Girls lived under intense pressure to wear the right clothes, say the right things, and even protect our textbooks with the right covers (made from brown paper bags, on which we had to draw only the right sort of doodle with the right kind of pen).

Add in her changing body, hormones, evolving family relationships and responsibilities, and the pressure to do well in school or get into (the right) college, and it’s no wonder that, as Roni Cohen-Sandler PhD writes, adolescent girls are managing ‘ the sort of juggling expected of corporate CEOs.’

Horses help them deal with these stressors and develop the resilience they need to grow into self-assured adults. They teach girls to get up and get on with it, whatever tries to get in the way.

Stuff happens, over and over again: Horses make manure. Every day. And every day you have to clean it up. Whether you hate the job or not, it’s important and must be done. Getting frustrated about something you can’t change doesn’t make it go away. Clean the barn efficiently and move on. Sounds like adult working life, doesn’t it? Horses teach girls that life is not a fairy tale. Sometimes you have to deal with the cinders.

Fall off? Get up and try again! I can’t count the number of times that I fell off a horse and into mud, dirt and water. My horse spooked, or maybe I wasn’t ready for the jump. I had lots of bruises and sore muscles. None of it stopped me from riding. Getting back on the horse and jumping that fence or riding past the scary flag teaches girls not to give up easily. They need that when life hands them lemons.

Confidence and Accomplishment

With peers cutting them down for every misstep or difference, their bodies changing and expectations piling up, girls lose self-confidence even when they perform well academically. If you know any adolescent girl well enough for her to confide in you, I guarantee that you have heard some version of ‘I’m not good enough, I’ll never be good enough’ from her, whether whispered or screamed. Riding helps overcome that. It teaches girls that they can excel at something that their school peers might be afraid to even try.

Professor Meg Toukonen, author of a study on the relationship between girls and horses says, “Interacting with horses can have a powerful impact on the development of adolescent girls’ self-esteem. For some girls, having a relationship with horses can provide a means for affection and a sense of connection. This relationship can also help girls deal with stress and can give them a feeling that they are really good at something.”

Many scary monsters aren’t scary up close: I once rode a horse that spooked at everything: puddles of water, blankets on the fence, parked cars…he once spooked at himself in the mirror of the indoor barn! I had to be ready for anything, and ready to let him stop, look at the monster, snort and dance around. Sometimes we had to try 3 or 4 times before he believed that it wasn’t going to eat him. He taught me to anticipate problems, and to be patient and creative in dealing with them. That’s a lesson we all need to learn these days, as the world changes around us in ways we would never have expected.

Working hard feels good: After a long day of riding at a show, barn work, and putting the horses to bed before going home, I was bone tired. I fell asleep over dinner, or skipped it in favor of a shower and bed. Despite the fatigue, it felt great. I won ribbons that validated my expertise. I learned to like the feeling that came from giving my all, regardless of how it turned out. And I learned not to beat myself up for mistakes. As one girl put it, when she wins ribbons she is “in with the big time people.” That kind of internal validation build self-confidence.

Competition is good for you. Competing against the same girls month after month, a girl learns that no one can win all the time, and that hard work pays off. She learns to compete fairly, to honestly congratulate others for their success, and to be inspired to try harder the next time. Compassion, confidence, and resilience, all packed into one busy weekend after another. Who says only boys learn from competitive sports?

Girls with confidence grow into women who pursue their goals and have a better chance of reaching them. They learn the confidence to speak out and speak up.

Care and Compassion, for Herself and Others

Taking care of a horse, and developing a close relationship with it, gives adolescent girls a ‘safe space’ to experiment with her emotions. Whether she laughs or cries, the horse will not laugh at her. She can tell the horse her deepest secrets knowing that they will stay hidden, and learns that she can survive saying those secrets out loud. She learns to care for another living being by grooming, cleaning up, exercising, and feeding the horse, and receives affection in return.

Help Each Other: The horse-crazy girls I knew worked together at the barn to help pay for lessons, and even as we competed against each other at shows. When I groomed for Karen, I did my best to make her and her horse look perfect for their classes. When Karen groomed for me, she did the same. We took pride in each others’ success. That lesson about generosity stays with you.

Have compassion for others. Caring for a horse that is injured or lame, or just tired after a long day, a girl learns to put herself in the horse’s place, to be compassionate. She learns empathy, how to want to help and then how to actually be helpful.

Remember those girls I competed against every month? Sometimes I won, sometimes they won, and sometimes none of us won a ribbon. We learned to commiserate about a difficult course, a bad round, or a tough judge.

Compassion holds society together. We need more of it right now, rather than the divisiveness that has become so prevalent.

Do what feels good: Have you ever watched a horse roll in the dirt? They have a wonderful time! A good roll scratches all the itchy places, and it’s so much fun! Sure, they get a little dirty, but a good shake takes care of the worst of it. Watching them, girls learn to laugh and to take care of themselves. If laughter is the best medicine, horses show girls how to give themselves the occasional dose.

Riding the trail to adulthood

Growing from a girl to a woman can be confusing and frightening as well as exhilarating and fun. Girls who learn these lessons use them every day to navigate the twisting path of adolescence and on into adulthood. As I look back on my life’s twists and turns, I am grateful to Brownie, Missy, Tiffany, Copper Penny, Misty, and all the other horses, the coaches and the fellow riders of my youth. You helped make me the woman I am today.

And if your daughter is horse-crazy, and you can manage the cost, consider some riding lessons. You’ll be glad you did.

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