The Session
We arrive a bit early this Sunday afternoon and the horses aren’t in the arena yet. We are to interact with the three horses from the first session — Cassidy, Sandy, and Frost — for a session called, “Heart to Heart.” Only three of the students could make it today, so I’m anticipating more time with the horses. Cassidy and Frost are led in and their leads are taken off. Hay has been set out in a few places but the horses each walk by our area where we’re sitting on chairs. Cassidy greets Ann.
After a few minutes of enjoying watching them eat, Frost suddenly stops mid-chew and walks over to the main gate, causing Cassidy to follow. They realize Sandy is not coming. We’re told it’s strange because Sandy is usually the first and most enthusiastic to come in for a class. Sandy is not doing well — these are old, rescued horses — and she doesn’t want to do anything but eat grass. Patty goes to double-check if Sandy wants to come in, but Sandy still is more interested in eating grass and another handler is leading her around in the yard.
Frost starts to whinny for Sandy. It’s a friend calling to a friend, maybe saying, “Where are you? Are you coming?” Another whinny sounds more like, “Are you okay?” They’re no longer interested in the hay; hay continues to hang from Frost’s mouth.
Cassidy and especially Frost go to the side opening and anxiously try to see Sandy over the metal gates. More whinnying. You may remember that Frost seemed concerned for Sandy in the first class. We start class and I wonder if Frost will calm down enough to participate. The premise of today’s class is that the heart has a zone, like the awareness bubbles, and it’s possible to talk heart to heart. A kind of syncopation occurs between and among animals when they are close together.
To get us ready to talk heart to heart, Ann guides us through a meditation to focus on our own heart and our breathing. We silently reach out to the horse in front of us and ask if we can talk heart to heart. Even when we’re standing a few feet away, the horses begin to calm and focus on the human in front of them. I’m amazed at how quickly Cassidy lets me walk up to him and soon I have one hand on his withers and the other on the front of his chest. We are silently together. Are we communicating? To me it feels like there could be an exchange of feelings: I feel like he is borrowing calmness from me and I am borrowing his beautiful strength.
Ann doesn’t say much while we are standing close to our horses, but at one point she says, “They’re feeling their impending loss.” Sandy. My eyes tear up. I feel something, worry or grief or sadness — is it coming from Cassidy? I keep thinking to Cassidy, “you are so strong.” We stand for many minutes.
When my turn to go to Frost comes, she has already shown she is willing to calm and connect with us humans. I think perhaps I will give calmness to her as I felt I had with Cassidy, but as I approach her and put my hand on her, she turns away and does a circle. She comes back to me and we stand for a long time very close but not touching and all I think is, “I understand, I hear you,” basically a mantra to quiet my mind. She lets me touch her again and all I feel is that she wants to be heard. Molly, one of the handlers, said afterward that Frost, who had her ears trained to the outside to keep an ear on Sandy, once looked out the side door once but then turned back to look at me. I know I looked into her eyes a couple times, but I kept my bringing my thoughts back to, “I understand.”
I was mesmerized by the closeness. Smelling nothing but horse and feeling the softness of their hair and the warmth of their being alive filled my senses as I stood next to them. After I walked away from Frost, I could see that her bottom lip was hanging down goofily and so was Cassidy’s. They were totally relaxed and maybe a little mesmerized themselves.
The relaxation lasted a little while, and Frost and Cassidy stood close to our semi-circle of chairs while we finished up talking. Wesley the cat may have broken the spell by chasing a mouse across the entire arena into one of the piles of hay. Or maybe our starting to think about heading home broke the spell. Frost and Cassidy wanted to go to Sandy, who was still being led around the yard so that she could munch on grass. We walked to Sandy and she didn’t pick up her head from the grass. Frost and Cassidy were in the paddock they shared with Sandy and they were eating again because they could see their friend.
Afterwards
I filled out an application to volunteer at this rescue for simple and selfish reasons: I want to learn more about how to care for horses and I want to be around them.
Pledges
Please, consider pledging to this substack, A Good Spot, as it would be greatly encouraging and well, simply, AWESOME. (Pledging is not paying right away; a subscriber pledges to become a paid subscriber if and when I turn on paid subscriptions, which I don’t plan to do for a long while. When I do, every thin dime will go directly to rescued animals.)
And, if by the end of 2023 I have five (just 5!) people pledging support, I will donate $100 to one of the animal rescues I talk about (but I won’t turn on paid subscriptions to do that).
I just love these posts.
I can smell, see, hear and feel. Only the thousands of miles between stop me touching.
That's pretty powerful.