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Stormy May's Bio
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I started out as most horse-crazy girls, begging my parents for a horse at any opportunity. Finally at age 10, after what seemed like an eternity, my dad was able to convert an old storage yard into a corral for my dream horse. That horse was the first of many that filled my dreams and notebooks. After trying out several different disciplines, at the age of 16 I found the United States Pony Club, an organization with over 12,000 members dedicated to teaching horsemanship to children and young adults up to the age of 21. I quickly went up through the levels becoming a B rated member at 17 and achieving the HA rating, the highest level of horse management testing that is offered during my last year at age 21. Also during that time I became a member of the UC Davis Eventing Team and competed in open eventing and dressage competitions with my Anglo Trakehner mare that I had started when I was 13. I also assisted as a Horse Management Judge at Pony Club competitions and then began to earn a name for myself as a Chief Horse Management Judge and a member of the national Horse Management committee. At the same time I was frequently asked to perform Pony Club ratings, eventually receiving the title of National Examiner.
This is only one side of my story, a short resume that I might have used if I had continued listening to the world of humans instead of the horses. I had the good fortune to be able to see and admit to myself that the life I had created with horses had gotten farther removed from what originally attracted me to them than anything other people suspected. The story of the Emperor's new clothes kept coming to mind. I had a life that looked like a dream; a ranch, horses in training, and the ability to spend all day with the horses as well as opportunities to travel the country teaching and judging. It was the horses themselves who were honest and showed me how empty those achievements were and how naked and vulnerable I was when it came to knowing how to create a true partnership with a horse.
My two greatest teachers along this path were Sudance and Sofi, two mares with opinions of me that would probably make me cry if we could sit down together and tell each other our tales. I began looking for other humans who seemed to have found a way to listen to the horses, who could help me discover my own way into understanding the horses' world.
I found that in order to step into this world, I needed to leave behind my concepts of horse training and what I thought horses enjoyed and to meet the horse in his own environment. It's easy enough to say that but what it really meant was to be brave enough to give up riding and teaching (my two sources of income) for a period of time and to become a student, this time not of man, but of the horses themselves.
What I found is that there's a willingness horses have to do things with us that involves no force or punishment, no restrictions or impositions. I had to find the strength, trust, and patience within myself to follow this path long enough to understand what both I and the horse were capable of beyond the limitations of 30,000 years of man's history with horses. When I come from this space, they are there to meet me as the horses I remembered from my dreams. At this point perhaps pictures can speak more clearly than words.
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