The horses have moved in. Since we brought horses into our lives, they've been living at Cathy and Mike's, who are dear friends of ours. There were great advantages to this, because the horses had tons of roaming ground and Cathy always took excellent care of them. Still, we often dreamed of what it would be like to look out our window and see them for ourselves. So we made the decision, cleared some old dead trees and old fencing, and brought them here to stay with us.

                             These ponies aren't so very little . . .
They've been here most of the week, but it's still a shocking and delightful experience to look out the window and see huge, black animals moving through the woods. To be able to pet, groom, or ride them whenever we like is tremendously rewarding. Still, it's a big new responsibility, and it was a bit scary to venture out from under Cathy's wings into the wide world of keeping horses by ourselves.

We never cease to be amazed at how horses demand complete honesty out of you, and that's especially true when they are 'up', such as when they move to a new place. On-guard, their already superb senses are on high alert, and they'll sense your nervousness, fear, excitement, or calm. Recently, we read a study where a horse and rider were asked to ride twice down a length of field. In the middle of the field was a person with a closed umbrella. The rider was told that on the first ride, the person with the umbrella would do nothing, but that on the second ride, the person with the umbrella would open it, potentially spooking the horse. Heart-rate monitors were placed on both the human and the horse, and the experiment began. On the first ride, everything was fine – the person on the ground with the umbrella stood there quietly, and both rider and horse showed no increase in heart rate.

On the second ride, however, something remarkable happened. Despite what the rider had been told, the person with the umbrella did not open it – they just stood there quietly once again. However, the rider, anticipating the open umbrella and subsequent spook, experienced an increase in heart-rate. And amazingly, the horse's heart-rate increased along with the rider's. The conclusion was that the horse was sensing the human's stress, and that the horse's stress increased because of the rider's tension.

It made us wonder how much humans can sense such things in each other. Our senses are much keener than we believe, and it's not too far-fetched to consider that some 'psychic' or intuitive phenomena are really nothing more than brief experiences where we uncover the full potential of our natural sensing abilities.

All this speculation aside, we're just enjoying the 'neighs' and 'whinnies' and the occasional earth-shuddering pounding as they run up the hill, their hooves kicking dirt behind them.
 

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