What a load of crap. Horses aren’t scared of the wind! They have senses that expand to an awareness of everything around them – an INTERNAL Feel of what’s going on around them. They can Feel a predator’s intention a mile away if they want to – so that old story about they can’t hear predators creeping up on them in the wind is just that – a made-up story.
They’re not scared of the wind and if they’re acting like they are, then something else is going on – they have layers of un-acted on old fears that have turned small concerns into major drama.
What do I mean by that? Fear is cumulative. Each fear that is un-acted upon adds on to the next, intensifying the new fear. Each fear that a horse can’t act on – which usually means each thing that’s scaring them that they can’t run away from – each of those fears adds on to the next, making the next fear bigger and the next fear bigger. Until small things feel like – and are – major drama.
I wrote pretty much that explanation to someone in a Facebook group last week.
And then … snort with laughter… the joke was on me.
After I wrote that post, we had four major weather fronts of very high winds come through here in three days. FOUR! Super high wind weather fronts lasting hours and hours – trees down everywhere, power outages – you name it, it was happening. And Oliver came in on the first “over 100 kilometer an hour wind” (I almost got blown over on the top of the hill and was leaning a long way into the wind to keep my feet!) – and he was dancing sideways at the drop of a hat, with his eyes rolling looking like he was scared of the wind.
“What the freaking heck?” says me, though I wasn’t that polite with the language in the privacy of my own paddock. Because I thought I KNEW that horses weren’t scared of the wind.
I work with my knowing that EVERYthing happens for a reason. It’s not a trite expression for me. I expand my awareness for the Big Picture about every seemingly crappy thing that happens. So here’s me, curious about what the heck is going on here with Oliver looking like he was scared of the wind and yet it doesn’t make sense. We’ve had him getting his feet trimmed in a really big wind, in the hay shed with flapping tin and his lead rope laying on the ground he was so chilled out. (I put a photo at the bottom of the article with a little story about that.)
The answer to “what the freaking heck?” wasn’t immediately apparent. So I took the opportunity while I was feeding up, to connect with him at a deeper level than usual, improving our ability to hold our awareness of each other through the high energy of the storm.
And that was a cool thing to do – it felt useful, felt right, felt good.
The next front came through the next day and in he comes dancing and rolling his eyes again! I could see he was hollow backed and stiff legged, ready to leap and dive around at any moment and that’s not something I’m happy to see in my horse. It’s a crappy posture that hurts physically them – and I mean HURTS them – as in injures them. It jars their joints which causes things like arthritis in the longer term – but even more immediately, the tension in their bodies mean they can do muscle tendon and ligament injuries. And that’s just the start of the crappy possibilities.
So I used that deeper connection with him, to drop into my own body, for us to sit into our butts together for power and to FLOAT with the excitement of the energy of the storm.
….
And Oliver floated away from me in gorgeous self carriage, filled with the excitement of the storm.
Yeah… na… horses aren’t afraid of the wind…
Today’s photo: is one of Marie Richards beautifully captured moments. She’s a professional photographer in New Zealand who as you can see does gorgeous animal work. Her people photography is lovely too. You can connect with her here.
And this is a photo of Oliver doing the best feet trimming of his life up to that point, in high winds, with the tin of the old hay shed flapping in the wind.
I vividly remember the day he let go what looked like fear of the wind. He showed us that, as a tiny newborn foal, he’d been locked in a stable with his mum in a giant storm where she was literally bouncing off the walls in terror. We used our simple Release, Re-Learn and Re-Program technique from Fast Track, that makes it possible to help a horse to release OLD fears to help him release that trauma.
And this feet trimming in a storm just a few days later was the result…
Yeah… na… there’s always something going on underneath, if horses look like they’re afraid of the wind.
Leave a Reply