MUD PONY

Baker’s debut memoir follows her attempts to train a willful horse on the Northern California coast.

The author always imagined her first steed would be a purebred Arabian. Instead, it turned out to be small, dirty Mud Pony, a “mutt” of a horse. A lifelong horse lover, Baker had been hoping to have a close, almost spiritual connection between herself and her animal, but Mud Pony wasn’t interested in being ridden. Baker received the orphaned creature for free from a rancher’s wife, and since Mud Pony had never been trained at all, Baker found that her first task was to acclimate him to the presence of people. She didn’t imagine that this would be as difficult as it was; she thought that she could easily draw on experiences from her day job teaching high school in San Francisco, where she was used to winning over defensive or standoffish students. However, the process of “breaking” Mud Pony was so arduous that Baker bought a second, pre-trained horse to help things along. This memoir is an account of what the author learned during her yearslong relationship with Mud Pony, who, over the course of the story, effectively becomes a symbol for the gulf that exists between man and beast. The remembrance also serves as a reflection on the author’s relationships with the land and the weather, the changing city of San Francisco, and the many colorful characters that populate the horse-training world. Baker details the ways that humans and animals interact, what they might learn from one another, and what each may never understand.

Baker is a sharp observer, and her prose is filled with succinct, poetic passages that will likely stop readers in their tracks: “Carter, my husband, thinks the first human who rode a horse must have raised a foal and tamed it. ‘At least that’s what I would do,’ he says. But I imagine it a singular, spontaneous moment—private, quick, no witness—and only after much waiting and watching.” The memoir has the feel of a diary, and Baker does note in a postscript that it was drawn from her journals from the time. As such, there’s a slightly hesitant, searching quality to the narrative, with accounts of making progress little by little along with plenty of second-guessing and trial and error. When rare successes do arrive—such as the first time that Mud Pony permitted Baker to sit on him—readers will share the author’s excitement, knowing how hard-won these moments were. This is a book for readers who are familiar with horses but will also interest those who simply aspire to be. Many of its pleasures come from Baker’s descriptions of ranches and trails, the personalities of people who spend time around horses, and other elements of equine ownership. Readers who give themselves over to the minutiae of it all will find that the book offers a wonderful meditation on an endeavor that’s nearly as old as human history.

A quietly rewarding equestrian remembrance.