A Moment in Time

I wanted to share this with all of you the instant I watched it. It's a moment in time that few of us who love animals and life ever get to experience. Turn up the volume (I hope you have speakers on your "puter".)

For those of you who know "horses" and what it took to get this performance from a young 9-year-old horse, it will awe you. For those of you who don't, let me give you some inside dope.

Every move this horse is making is unnatural. It goes against every instinctive move it makes. It takes years of training to achieve this with a very "willing" animal. It takes an extraordinary amount of trust to achieve it through humane methods.

There are ways to do it through cruelty and torture. Tennessee Walkers used to be trained with chains around their front hooves that were tightened to the point where the horses would lift their feet to avoid walking on the painful chained hooves. It was eventually outlawed for various reasons. I'd like to think it was outlawed because we were kind-hearted.

Horse Sense is an old-fashioned term, but it applies to life more than you may ever realize. Getting a horse to act against its own best interests takes a great deal of love on the part of the rider and trust on the part of the horse. If the horse doesn't trust you and can't get over its fear of you -- well, let's just leave it at you'll be walking or finding another means of transportation.

You can "force" a horse to act against its own best interests through pain and suffering, but you will never, ever get a performance like the one in this UTube and you might lame it in the process.

This basic life lesson is brought to Americans with a lot of love for this country and FReepers, because I admire a spirited animal -- human or otherwise.

I don’t know a great deal about horses but I know that they’re amazing, intelligent animals with a lot of personality.

When I was a teen I had a girlfriend who rode a horse all the time. Every time that horse spotted me it would make a bee line for me at a full gallop and slide to a stop nose to nose with me.

The girlfriend said that the first few times were a dominance establishment thing but once the horse decided that I was it’s equal it became a game of tag.

I think the name was “Blue (something) Maxima”. She’s a sweet dapple mare, isn’t she? All the horse shows I ever attended seemed to have a dapple mare that loved to strut her stuff. They’re usually small in stature, but always showy and a crowd pleaser. Confirmation is usually excellent. Some of them used to get “happy feet” so badly, they’d trip, but it wasn’t because they weren’t giving it all they had.

When the rider raised his hat at the end, I knew it wasn’t for himself — it was for her.

You know, I haven’t really concentrated on that aspect. I just saw a handsome young man and a beautiful animal in a very, very blessed performance. I don’t keep up with the shows anymore since my dad passed. He was the equestrian in the family. I was a sack of potatoes who managed to win some barrel races as a girl. He was the “gentleman”.

He started out breaking mustangs when they’d round them up in the early 1900s and ship them to St. Louis. He’d go down to Missouri Stables and hang on until the poor creatures gave up or threw him in the creek. I know where he is now he’s with his mare, “Gypsy”. She was the one little filly (before my mother came into his life) who tamed his wild heart.

Yes, there are very good horsemen all over the world, many -- like your father -- in this country.

I have a son-in-law who tells of his Grandfather from the Ukraine who had the ability to get horses to do non-horse-like things. (e.g., balance a see-saw.)

I only pointed that out because the Lipizzaners have been performing exactly this kind of act around the world for many years.

Yeah, my father ALWAYS got tickets to see them perform when they came through town. Amazing animals!! Their size and the strength of their back legs are the key. I took my son to see them when he was little. He fell in love at first sight. I had to explain that times (for me) had changed, and there is no such thing as a “free” horse. I was having difficulty covering our “free” puppy. Eventually, he got it.

He still asks me what I’d be doing if I didn’t have to work so hard (just last month, in fact). I told him I’d be brushing down a mare in the sweet, smelling stable and saddling up again for a day cantering over the fields of green. He just looks at me like, “what planet did you fall from?” I want to say, “Heaven,” but I still don’t think he’d get it. ;-)

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