This morning I was going to walk to our local shops to get a news paper. As I often take the horses with me I decided to take Eclipes and Mel (my father leading Mel).
It was very intersting to see all of the new sites and how he reacted to them, there are some large rocks along the side of the road that his mother used to be scared of and he went up to them and licked them. We went under the subway and he never batted an eye lid at it, when we came out in a housing estate whilst still being calm he decided to stay closed to his mother as until then when she stopped for grass he just carried on (and I was just staying with him walking beside him).
The only moment he spooked atall was when a car went past quite fast but the next time a car went past he was fine. At the stop a little kid came over to say high and stroked him whilst Mel enjoyed her recently bought Polos.
When we returned home I thought he would have been tired with all of the excitment from the outing but instead when I came in I watched him having races out back by himself, boy is he fast!
I went back out this evening to stroke him and noticed his ears were back alot, and then I had a BFO (Blinding flash of the obvious) I had somehow in the last week rather than wait for permission to enter his space / touch him I had got wrapped up in him being "cuddly" and had with out meaning to stopped respecting him properly. My PNH instructor had said to me years ago that I should respect the horse first as a Prey animal, then as a horse, then a breed of horse and lastly as "Mel" or whatever the horse in question is called. I have realised that whilst I did this to begin with and he was ok with me, I seem to have made an assumption that because I "own" him and I love him it must be reciprocal and I had somehow stopped respecting his views as a horse and a prey animal. I had failed to uphold my responsiblity to think like a horse, and he was there for not acting like a partner. Well I'm on a journey to be a horseman and I guess this is all part of the route ;-).
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