I was blessed enough to have some of my best lessons on life, the meaning of true strength, fairness, instincts and unconditional love.... from Horses. In my case, they were American Saddlebred horses. I was honored to learn from one of the finest breeders and trainers of horses and people on the planet, Mrs. Alice Neihardt Thompson of Skyrim Stables. Now, in her twilight years, Alice is still one of the building blocks of my life's foundations and I will be forever grateful for her facilitating my lessons with and about my equine relatives. One thing this process taught me was that Nature and Her beings of all shapes and sizes can often teach us better than people do. I'm grateful for these particular lessons, so I'll share a litte piece of my experiences here.
My learning about the head conformation of a horse, I learned some things about how people learn too. Long space between the burr of the ear and the eye socket indicates, in a balanced head, the ability to learn the highest functions of thought on a horse level. Too much space and the horse tends to be spacey, inattentive, easily distracted and sometimes easily frightened. Too little space for the brainpan and they simply don't learn as easily as other horses and are sometimes, the equivelent of "learning disabled." A broad space between the eye sockets, or being "wall-eyed" shows a horse that can't focus well on tasks or training and is often easily frightened. These were the types of horses that blinders were originally created for, because -- like glasses for people -- they focus the horse's attention ahead of them rather than on all the things at their sides. Too narrow a space between the eyes and the horse - or person - is narrow sighted, inwardly focused, often selfish and greedy, especially if combined with a small eye socket. It is what horse folk call a "pinched" face. Eyes too large for the head or face denote an easily excitable horse, often a bit flightly and high strung and eyes too small gets back into the pinched look and perceptions on the world around them. A "good head" consists of balanced proportions, plenty of room to grow and think but not so much they fly off the Universe. You want eyes that see the world, can look properly in all directions, but aren't so large they take in too much information to throw the concentration/focus. Can you have a good horse with odd features? Sure... just like people, horse personalities come in all shapes, sizes, types and "colors." But are these guidelines helpful to show you approximately what you're getting in the baselines of the horse's ability to think and learn? Yes, reliably so and repeatedly proven.
One horse I had the privledge to work with was a "special needs" horse. He was born a rarity in the horse world, an RH factor baby (see google for what RH factor does in humans if you're not aware -- does the same thing in horses, its deadly for most) and so he was carefully hand raised from the moment of his birth and was, therefore, attuned to humans as "family." As he grew, Tornado Night was a gangly kid. All legs, big gates and high flying tail fanning out behind him with joy in the pastures, but if he'd been a human, he'd have looked like that carrot-topped kid with freckles and bare feet that was a bit of a klutz, easily embarrassed to a bright red face and always kind of "Doo doo DEE do!" in the mannerisms. Simple, but so sweet you couldn't resist him. As a 2 yr old, he got into some blooming jimpson weed and was partially blinded by the pollen (this is why most horse owners mow weeds down in their pastures and spray against this particular one in alot of places). He could see shadows and large movements, but his direct sight was gone. We were heart broken, but like most people in this circumstance, he overcame. However, his depth perception wasn't good, so if he stayed in the stall while a human was working, the human often got stepped on by mistake for which Tornado Night felt horrible, always, but being painful for humans, we worked out a team system. One of us would take him out for exercise on a lunge line while another cleaned his stall. Without fail, every single time he was brought back into his stall after a cleaning, he would sniff about to see who had done the work for him and the next time they came into his stall, he would wrap his big head over their body and pull them to his chest, hugging them in gratitude for his home being clean, so it wouldn't hurt his feet. This same horse adored having his tongue wagged for him. He would stick his velvet nose out of his stall's grain feeding opening and loll his tongue out to the side, just relaxing it and looking "silly/stupid." He would flip it until a nearby person grabbed hold gently, but firmly and wagged it for him. He thought, for some odd reason, this was a GREAT sensation! You could almost hear him chuckle when you did it and *you* most certainly did by the time you were done.
I was also honored to know a pair of equine soul mates. I'll tell their story another time. But, suffice to say, I learned what love was at the age of 10 by watching a pair of horses in a relationship so unique, I've never known its like before or since, even in stories. Thank you Alice and all my horse friends from Skyrim, that to this day, remind me how to treat my fellow beings with compassionate, strong and loving touch whenever possible.
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