HorsePlay by Helga Thorosddsen: Excerpt from chapter 4:
Horses are wonderful animals that can have a tremendous influence on people in a good way. Horses teach us a lot about ourselves since they do not know how to lie, and their reactions to our actions are always natural and an exact result of what we ask, intentionally or not. It is good for personal growth to be around and work with horses. But in order to be fair and successful in our relationships with horses, we must have solid knowledge of what kind of an animal the horse is. We should be familiar with their natural behaviors, how they see, how they hear, and how they react to sound, touch and body language. We should make it our business to know what they need in order to feel safe, trusting, and willing to cooperate when we ask them to perform tasks that to them may seem quite unnecessary. This is our responsibility if we want to keep, train and ride horses. The horse does not choose its life with people, and therefore it is never the horse’s fault if things are less than perfect. Horses touch our deepest emotions, and on our best and our worst days with them, they can drive us to tears for many different reasons. Emotions can rise high when we work with horses and we need to acknowledge these emotions, learn how to react to them.
