Horse Lovers Goals May Be Simple

Yesterday I spent the day with a friend whose mare has just foaled a pretty filly for him by HH Redrock. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. The barn where the mare and foal reside is located in the unlikely middle of a busy suburban area south of Seattle.

The owner of the barn and I chatted about the upcoming show season and I asked her if she was planning to show this year. Her response to me; she wasn’t sure she would bother with the competition. She went on to say that what she really enjoyed was just being around her horses and watching them. Learning how to improve her horsemanship skills and even cleaning stalls and keeping her small farm up.

Her enjoyment was simple…being around her horses. Her horses don’t have to be top show horses or even a particular breed for her to find pleasure in them. She doesn’t have to have an expensive horse of top bloodlines and her horses don’t have to do anything but be. They bring her pleasure by being there and doing just what horses do. Eat, poop, roam around and look for a bit of attention once in a while.

It reminds me of how we as humans often look for purpose and meaning in our lives when really to God and our parents, children, grandchildren, wife or husband- all we have to do is just be…to bring them pleasure.

But I digress from my purpose which is horses and how they don’t have to do or be anything but horses for a real horse lover to find pleasure. We may choose to show our horse or we may choose to just let our horse hang out in the pasture and pet them as we go by in our day to day chores. It is often times the simple things that bring us the most joy.

Horses Helps Us Heal and Live Better Lives

Often we get so focused on competition with our horses that we forget all the other great things that horses give us and teach us rather than us teaching them. Be sure to watch this video for a reminder of the horses power and ability. Read more

The Power in the Horse Human Relationship

A Horse Has Powerful Physical Force but Even More Emotional Force on the people whose lives they touch.

I’ve been involved with horses for many years but it was a long rainy winter some 6 years ago when I really learned the power in the horse human relationship.

When my 4th sister, Ruth, died I retreated from life. While I didn’t make a conscious choice to retreat I retreated just the same. Life was dull and gray and I  no longer thought about the future and meeting goals or building a career or even building and maintaining relationships. I simply existed moving through my day to day chores only because I had to or my horses would starve or at the very least be left in dirty stalls.

For several months following Ruth’s death I went through the motions of working my horses while hardly paying them any real attention. But gradually I began to sense and feel them on a deeper level than I had before.

I knew about body language and that we communicate with horses and humans with 80% body language and only 20% verbal language, so that was no surprise. What was a surprise was finding out they responded to my body and mind energy.

I learned that even my thoughts carry energy and as I think it my horses respond to it. I began to learn a whole new way to communicate with my horses and with people.

Day by day my horses began to teach me about a higher level of communication than I had known. They began to soothe my very soul and taught me that life here on earth in the physical form is after all only one form of life, but not the only form of life.

They began to lead me instead of me them and they began the process of taking me down an entirely different path than the one I had previously been on.

Did they help me to heal? Yes but more than that they taught me life is more than what we see and even feel. We can’t see a horse’s instinct but instinct exists. We can’t see this whole other realm of being, communicating and living but there is a higher level of life.

While I’m not sure how to explain it and what words to use, I do know that it exists and my horses helped me to get in touch with it that long winter.

If they can do this then how much more can they teach each of us. It’s a good thing to slow down and find out.