When is a horse not a horse...?

...

When seen as a toy or machine

In the eyes of humans!

When cossetted and clothed

In the hands of humans!

When fed bowls of junk food

To the order of humans!

This might seem a little harsh but the truth can sometimes hurt and facing the truth of how we live our lives and keep our horses is very much a theme of Essy'swishes.

There is a famous paradox in Chinese philosophy posed by Gongsun Long around 300BC.  My interpretation is a kin to the metaphysical question "if a tree falls in the forest without witness does it really fall?"  Long was asking questions about the colour white - is it a colour or not and if it is not, and if it's on a horse - then does the horse exist?

Is it a horse?

Leaving that quickly for others to debate, today's blog is prompted by a text exchange with my dear old mum.  A text that made me wonder where do seemingly random thoughts come from?  And, why do we impose our human way of thinking upon animals?

My mum, is 76 and is a very recent 'fan' of my horses, having always been scared of all horses, until last year.  She now comes to visit us most weekends armed with treats for the horses (carrots which I quickly have to ration then discard once she's left) and cakes for us horse owners, (NOT rationed or discarded but devoured)!

This weekend, she visited on Saturday and followed up on Sunday with a 'how are they today' text?  I reported back a small detail that Essy had come in from his new field (with lots of grass) and had a lie down in his stable.

My mum's reaction caught me by surprise viewing his lying down as an indicator of him feeling his age...
 

...Where did that come from I wondered!

Is Essy feeling his age or is my mum feeling her own age?

It hit me how strange it is for a person to relate a horse's age to how he must be feeling, as we as humans do! After all, the horse doesn't know if he's old or not: Essy doesn't know his age; doesn't count up his birthdays.  Who says 22 is old anyway?  Some horses tragically die aged 5 or 10.  Others go on to be 30 plus.  Who is to say Essy doesn't have another 20 years ahead of him?

How do we leap from statements  like "he must have been tired", to therefore "he's feeling his age this winter"?  Based on the speed Essy gallops around the field and menage each day he's feeling anything BUT OLD!

We humans are so quick to not see the animal before us.  (Wood for the trees syndrome). We find  complexity in simple things. Our ability to simply comment on what we see without interpretation, seems rare as rocking horse poo!

When I want a drink in the evening (G&T's my tipple) it's not because I'm depressed, boosting Gin sales, on the edge of alcohol addiction or anything other than - that's what I feel like!

Our development and awareness needs us to be able to watch our horses, be witness to their existence and behaviour.  To see their health or behaviour change, to notice, ask questions and think, versus leaping to conclusions based on how it might feel to us.

• Changing our mind set and thinking paradigm is hard! Until we have a new purpose.
• Getting out of our own mind and nature is hard! Until we try.
• Admitting our habits and faults is easy; changing them is hard...at the beginning!
• Acknowledging what we know and don't know about our horses needs hurts. But it's only our Ego wounded!  

How we interpret change, setbacks, observations or criticism is our individual choice. Choice is the act of choosing between two or more possibilities.  Our challenge as loving, empathic horse owners is to keep searching out possibilities - ones that allow our horses to be more of themselves. In doing so we reduce their stress AND ours!

There are those of us who ride and work our horses as if they are machines that will keep going, regardless of their physical state or needs and our own willingness to meet those needs with compassion.

There are those of us (still myself in the winter) who act as if we believe rugs work better than the horse's coat and skin!

There are horse feed manufacturers thriving financially by producing sugar filled feeds foreign to our horse's system, impairing their health.

Knowing all of this, realising it, and deciding to do something different as a result will help us to get closer to our horses and let them exercise their true nature.

For a horse to function as a horse his lifestyle and our attitude are entwined. It seems for many domesticated horses their human's way of thinking is the main factor in do we have a happy healthy horse or not.  That starts with seeing him  as a horse and not a toy, machine or human being in a big fury coat!

It's time to celebrate YOUR horse and the nature of that horse!  It is after all the year of the horse and that can't be a coincidence for horse owners reading this blog.

The time to change something for the better, for your horse, is right now!