Gosh I’ve had some spirited discussions on this subject. What IS love?
Is it a feeling? Is it the deep warm feeling that little Blondie gives me when I drop into feeling for her? Is it the expansive feeling of sheer yumminess that I get with Rapunzel? Is it the intense feeling of joy in my heart that Bobby was beaming at me every now and again the morning he died?
Is love an action? Is it the things I do for my horses? In the care I give them? In my desire to the best caregiver and best trainer that I can be? (There’s a whole other discussion for another day on the use of the word “trainer”, particularly about who’s training whom, but it will do for now.)
Is it in the things my horses do for me? Is it young Boots the other day, without being asked, spontaneously offering me EXACTLY what Rapunzel and I had been working on in our training sessions? And mannn… you couldn’t mistake it for anything else, because it was a full 360 degrees pirouette towards me. And then just to make sure I noticed the deliberateness of it, he paused, looked at me carefully, did it again. After I’d appreciated the heck out of that for a bit, then I asked for it and he did it a third time.
Is love an attitude? Is it the attitude of not blaming or judging what I used to think of as problems or bad behavior? Is it love, having an open hearted willingness to look at what’s BEHIND the problem, the resistance, the behavior – looking behind each “no” for the reason of it, noticing what’s REALLY going on and taking action FOR THEM?
Is my horse’ s attitude what love is? Is it their absolute willingness to forgive anything that’s happened in the past, no matter how traumatic and meet us in THIS moment, when we are in this moment with them?
If you’ve seen our video the Key to the Kingdom of Horses before, skip to the bit of home movie that Dawn’ sent me a couple of weeks after our lesson – 26 minutes 12 seconds into my video – and feel into what’s happening. Is the feeling pouring from that little wild horse into her heart and flowing from her back to him again – is that love?
If you haven’t seen that video lesson yet, you can register here and if you already registered, but can’t find your access to it, email me and I’ll send it to you. There’s so many layers in there it’s worth watching a few times.
Here’s what I see and feel and know.
From the moment 8 minutes into Dawn’s lesson that day, when she and Joe started bubbling with happiness – that’s when the possibility of love opened up. The more Dawn listened to Joe and the more confidence he got, the more the love grew and it still grows.
I’ll talk more about Joe’s story as a traumatized wild caught brumby another day, but my point is, if HE can feel love for Dawn – after everything HE’s been through with humans – what are you and your horse capable of?
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