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October 27, 2021: The Fourth Dimension

Today, I rode, tended to, and interacted with all four horses. I took Tinni for a walk around the loop, then on the trails. I also rode all the mares on the trails. It was snowing, for real, intermittent, large flakes falling slowly from the sky. You could focus on one and watch as it slowly made its way to the ground.

The time spent with the horses and the snow falling softly out of the sky, this was conducive to contemplation. What subsequently came to mind was my friend Terri’s thoughts about horse communication – an individual doing sacral-cranial work told her what her horse Joe was thinking. Terri had recently come off of him and suffered a concussion. She’d gone out riding with three individuals on arena-trained horses. One was spooked at the sight of a sleeping bag on the ground. Joe bolted when the horse rushed up behind him.


Terri on Joe


The body worker told her that Joe said that he didn’t like going for trail rides with green horses. Terri added that the body worker had no knowledge about what exactly had happened.

In thinking about this, it occurred to me that horses are in the fourth dimension, which is a space where they are in the present most of the time. It can’t be said that they aren’t in the past because horses remember many things.

Animal communicators like Terri’s friend Kristen are intuitive, so they are able to better understand those who are not intuitive. No surprise, most animal communicators are women. In fact, I don’t know of any males who profess to be animal communicators.

Here’s where they (and the rest of us) fall short. Horses communicate to us what they are feeling. The problem is, animal communicators then interpret what they are told by animals to other humans. They of course do this through the use of language. It’s sort of like reading the translation of a book. You get the idea, but the book doesn’t read the way it might if it was in the original language. In other words, it falls flat.

Temple Grandin, who wrote Thinking in Pictures, thinks in a more imagistic fashion than most. She does not profess to communicate directly with animals, but the images that come to mind do provide her with clues as to what might be amiss in the animals’ environs.

And so, if a horse is outraged, angry, irritated, or content, and this information is relayed by one person to another, the message loses something in translation.

I think that it’s up to each of us, then, to clear our minds of the babble when we are with our animals, this allowing us to feel what they are feeling. Of course, they do give us clues – for instance, ears pinned back, this is a clue.

This afternoon I opened the enclosure gate – Tyra was on the far side, and Raudi was standing next to me. Neither horse was moving, or going to move. I was starting to get frustrated. Then it occurred to me – ask Raudi to back, ask Tyra to move forward, and when they move, give them a treat. What I later realized was that they’d both decided that they weren’t moving until I figured out a more equitable way of going about solving the problem, which I did. Quite clearly, I did not hear them at first because the stream of consciousness got in the way. Of course, this is my interpretation, so it must be taken with a grain of salt.

298. 10/28/21: Night Outings

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