Buck Brannaman is a Wyoming-based horse clinician who admits that sometimes he helps people with horse problems and sometimes he helps horses with people problems. One of his quotes worth sharing is, “The horse is a great equalizer. He doesn’t care how good looking you are, or how rich you are, or how powerful you are. He takes you for how you make him feel.” If you follow this article, I hope you aren’t too surprised to learn that this is just another way horses can make us better humans.
How we go through life with our interactions is more than a learned behavior, more than habit, it is a reflection of who we are and what we’re made of. People have similar reactions as the horse when it relates to how we make each other feel. A difference between horses and humans is that the horse won’t hide those feelings when not they aren’t treated well. They also won’t find themselves willingly returning to relationships of abuse without expressing their own displeasures as only a horse can. Their live in the moment mentality reminds them life is too far short and precious to waste efforts on a human whose motivation is based on fear and aggression. Being a mirror to your soul, the horse will respond accordingly with equal fear and aggression and only those who are open-minded enough to receive this information reflected to them will begin to accept a less tormented path to a better relationship. Perhaps it is possible to develop a partnership in which each party will have better memories of how they make each other feel.
Many people claim the horse to be a divine being, a sort of conduit from a higher power to our existence. No matter your belief, here’s another one of Buck’s quotes worth remembering. “I’ve often told people who ask if there is a God: Get around enough people with horses and see what happens. See how they survive in spite of all the things they do, and you’ll become a believer.”