Learning About Horses

I’m nearly done with two days of living in the field and I’ve definitely learned a thing or two about horses while I’ve been out here.  I feel like I am gradually getting into the vibe of how things are done out here.  Yesterday I was wondering to myself why I decided to stay out for 4 full days, surely 2 would have been fine.  But today I am realising that I need to stay out the full four days in order to really click into things out here.  I am coming from a very different world than the one Hazel and Pollyanne inhabit and it will take a while to leave it behind.

The first thing that I was wondering about when I came down here was should I do all the time.  Should I walk around with them, sit down or whatever.  Well, what I have realised is that the only important thing is to stay within about 50 metres while Hazel and Pollyanne are grazing.  It doesn’t really matter what I do but I need to stay within this zone in order not to be disruptive to the girls.  If I wander out of this zone they wonder where I am going, what I have found or seen and they may follow me or just look at me.  They do not graze particularly closely to each other, the closest being about 3 metres but more usually they are about 6 to 20 metres from each other.  If one of them moves beyond the roughly 50 metre zone the other one will follow.  It doesn’t seem to matter which one it is that leads or follows.

Yesterday I decided to take some photos as a way of entertaining myself and I started trying to take a close up shot of Pollyanne.  I was about 1.5metres from her and I suddenly felt as if I was being incredibly invasive.  As I said, when grazing they never seem to come closer than 3 metres and here I was, during grazing time, 1.5 metres from Pollyanne.  What was I doing?!  I did not get the slightest sense that Pollyanne was feeling threatened by me, but I felt that she was wondering what on earth I was doing.  It reminded me of being on a computer at home or in an office, typing away.  If some one, anyone, comes up behind you and just stares at the screen it is some how quite off putting.  I do not feel as if I am going to be killed or severely endangered but I do feel uncomfortable.  I am not expecting the person to do this and I am not sure what response I should have.

There is a lot of talk about the fact that horses are prey animals and if we are to believe it it seems like they are living in a perpetual state of fear, where everything is that proverbial lion in the bushes.  I really do not believe this but I am beginning to see why we may have misinterpreted things.  I could sense that I was being invasive when I was too near Pollyanne and I could have easily put a predator-prey slant on things when explaining this, but it is quite easy to find an equivalent situation between two humans both of whom are supposed predators.  Does this mean that I feel like a prey animal when my husband looks over my shoulder while I’m on the computer?  I don’t think so.  I am not in fear but I am registering behaviour that is undesirable, because when I am stared at I start to type badly. Some how it is inappropriate, not expected. There is a difference between something that is annoying and something that is perceived as life threatening and I think that horses can tell the difference.  There is not a lion in every shrub as far as they are concerned.  If one came out of our hawthorn bushes they would sure as hell run, but if a faint rustle is heard in there, they may take a moment to see what it is and wander along again.  Same as me.

For now I’d better go over to Pollyanne.  She is snoozing and during this time the distances between us all seem to shrink to about 1.5 to 5 metres.   Hazel has just sat down so I think I will do the same.  Bye for now.

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