Grassy Munchies all!

During a hearty munching session recently I found myself pondering on how different humans and horses are – literally worlds apart.

Despite this my pals tell me again and again of how horses and humans manage to become best of friends, creating unique partnerships and bonds with each other.

To stay alive horses live completely in the moment – all our senses tuned into the world around us at every second of every day. Our humans keep telling us only horses living in the wild need to worry about this. Try telling that to our genetics!

On the other hoof, humans seem to dwell on the past and future, paying little attention to the present. As most humans don’t need to spend their ‘here and now’ trying to stay alive, strikes me they could be enjoying it a bit more.

Worlds apart couldn’t be more true when it comes to our intelligence.

Humans are equipped with a high level of reasoning and self-awareness. Whether they choose to use this is another matter, but let’s not dwell on that.

Because horses are so different humans can sometimes think we’re not clever, but we are – just in a very different way.

Horses have a superior emotional intelligence with refined intuition and instinct. Bit of a nifty sixth sense actually. From a distance we can accurately understand the intent of an approaching animal. A sleepy lion, full up on it’s latest victim, will have a very different intent to a starving lion desperate to eat!

We horses can also sense the emotion of our humans. Often from a distance and sometimes before they have any idea what they themselves are feeling!

Just for the record, we really like hanging out with humans who are calm, consistent, true and trustworthy. A human bringing all the baggage of a bad day to us can quite honestly turn around and try again tomorrow.

Left to our own devices, we can spike our stress and adrenaline levels in seconds to take flight in a life or death situation and drop them back down in equal time – using stress for it’s intended purpose.

As I say though, this is left to our own devices.

Humans seem to carry far too much stress around far too much of the time, which they unintentionally pass on to us. Keeping us confined too long, isolated from our pals or generally never allowing us to be what we are – horses! – adds to this stress, creating an overload.

Horses are congruent by nature – my vocabulary is really coming on isn’t it! Anyway, this means we can look calm and content on the outside, but inside we might be unhappy and stressed. We need this characteristic to avoid showing any weakness to predators.

When we do start showing our stress with so called ‘vices’ or ‘bad behaviour’ it means our stress levels have peaked. Instead of seeing this as ‘bad behaviour’ it would be really helpful if humans considered it as ‘information’ we’re trying to give.

This horse below used to live with us in our field until her human moved her to a field on her own. I feel very sad for her and cross all my hairy feathers that Kat will never do this to me. Being alone can make us extremely stressed and unhappy.

To sum up my grassy ponderings, I reckon that humans are probably light years away from truly understanding how we think and feel. In turn, we horses are light years away from understanding the sophisticated human intelligence.

It seems to me that with patience and understanding our opposing characteristics combined has the ability to create something truly extraordinary. And, I hope me and Kat are on this path.

Although, she could try a bit harder. I mean, a few more hay cobs wouldn’t go amiss. And, perhaps a bucket of grassy munchies twice a day instead of just once would help?

GMFN

F x