The love of a horse
Every horse deserves the love of a little girl
Having a horse is one of the childhood dreams I have achieved in my life. I can still remember having a ride on a white pony at a school fête when I was at primary school. I was besotted with horses but as a child of a single dad, from a council estate, horses were a world away. So the closest I ever got was petting them over a fence occasionally.
Star wasn't the horse I necessarily thought I wanted, she was the horse I needed to have in my life though. I had visions of this safe and sensible plod around the green lanes of the village, what I ended up with was a horse who had been terribly treated, the internal scars of that treatment leaving her unpredictable and difficult.
A lot of horses like Star end up euthanised because they can be hard to handle and that's generally because of their treatment by humans. We had some terrible times the early months, Star would get anxious and distressed about any number of normal things. My riding her didn't really last long, the two of us had a few accidents and she would get distressed just being tacked up so I decided not to ride again.
I remember one time she let me brush her just a little, brushes were, and still can be, an issue. I told her she was a good girl and offered her a minty treat. Just seeing her face she didn't understand what I meant, she didn't know what love was. Riding was out so I started to take her on little walks with me leading, and we would spend hours wandering about, Star grazing the ditch sides.
We gradually formed a friendship of mutual understanding, a sensitive owner and a sensitive horse, my soul horse. She began to trust me and I started to trust her, we became a partnership, learning from each other as we went along. I had a lot of people laugh at me because I used clicker training to teach her to do the basic things I needed to do to take care of her, but it worked and it worked well.
Horses are an incredibly spiritual animal, you can see the world in a horse's eyes. I love all animals but horses have something extra special. Just an aura, a feeling. And they teach you about energy, something that's sorely neglected and dismissed by many people. A horse will reflect your energy back at you in a way I've certainly never experienced with anything else. You become very aware of yourself because they show you what you are inside.
I always joke Star is better than any life coach or therapist and she is. She's my best friend, my confidant and my world. I'm there for her and she's there for me. She has got the love she deserves, from the little girl who is inside of me.
