Rewilding a Diminished Champion

I care for a big thoroughbred called Jet who once told me he didn’t know what it was to actually be a real horse. That was disturbing and confusing. He said he’d never had any role models. Upon reflection, it made sense because he grew up in racing. He’s handsome and strong and by winning races he became the mascot for his racing stable, but even horses who are treated well in racing live a terrible life.

He had a friendly, gentle and compliant nature which made it easy for humans to bend him to their will. When I met him, he was very sweet but thought little of himself. He readily went along with whatever was happening. He didn’t protest. In fact he was prone to going out of his way to support others. He was owned by someone else when he arrived and he once said that he recognised how hard she worked to pay for his care and he wished she would ride him so that he could give something back in return. His sentiment was both stunning in its thoughtfulness and heartbreaking in its reflection of his feeling that he should pay his way for existing.

When he arrived in the winter he was diminished and dispirited and needed rugs to protect him from the wet and cold. He settled in at the bottom of the ranks amidst the herd of five. There was a time he shared with me that he wondered who his father was. After some time he was given to me and I promised him he would stay forever.

Sometimes I find myself responding unconsciously to the changing feelings in a horse with spontaneously new nicknames. Jet often became Jetty which is unsurprising but then I kept feeling the impulse to call him Jetty Poo Poo. I didn’t like it. I would try to rework it and call him Jetty Poobah instead to affirm the high esteem I held him in. But I couldn’t make it stick. Jetty Poo Poo was the match for what was surfacing in him and the way he was feeling about himself – like shit. With distance from the racing prison life, he was beginning to recognise the many ways he had been diminished. He was registering how his compliance had been used against him and felt sickened that he had gone along with being used.

He began to snap at me as if to bite when I would say loving words affirming the greatness I saw in him. Like someone who can’t receive a compliment. One day I showed a girl the pair of whorls he has on either side of his neck and she gasped in delight and appreciation of the perfect symmetry. He nipped her. He felt so deeply unworthy of her innocent admiration.

When I needed to halter the horses for the farrier to trim their feet, Jet had always come easily. Then he started protesting by evading the halter and stopping frequently as I tried to lead him from the paddock. I allowed plenty of time on those days so he had the space to properly express himself without being hurried. I always want him to know his own mind and stand up for himself even when it goes against my wishes. Especially then in fact, because that’s precisely when I can offer great assistance in his healing. Allowing him to defy me can be the perfect remedy to help release the pain from all the times he’s been overruled. I can give back the autonomy that was stolen by others. After a good opportunity to dig his heels in, I would gently reassure him that we were only going out to take care of his feet, not for anything to benefit me.

Horses are built just as uniquely in their characters as we are. Jet’s nature is overwhelmingly empathetic. He feels a lot. He feels himself of course, but he has extended himself much further than that to be wide open to feeling an enormous amount from all around. There isn’t a strong boundary between Jet and other horses. What his paddock mates feel, he feels. It’s true for most horses that they are highly attuned to their herd but it is stronger than usual in Jet.

He doesn’t have great awareness of his body. Firstly because he was conditioned from such a young age to obey what humans demanded from his body rather than discover and choose what felt good to him. Secondly, his physical grounding is blurred because the volume of what he is attuned to in others can make it difficult to know where he finishes and where others begin. Many sensitive people feel the same way.

Of all the horses I look after, Jet has always been the most invested in healing. Just like people, some choose it and others don’t. I made it known from the outset that he had no obligations to me, only to himself. And as he’s resolved much of the wounding of his own history, he has grown now to engage his vast empathetic capacity to act as a conduit for the healing of horses all across the earth. Just as humans have a shared collective consciousness that carries the nuanced tone of the present human condition, so do horses. Their shared consciousness exists, like ours, in the ethers all around and creates an atmosphere. Animals maintain their sensitivity to feeling these collective themes of not only their own species but all others, ours included. Jet is much more sensitive to this etheric world than to his independent physicality. He actively engages with it each time he heals each deeper layer of his own story.

This week on one of my morning visits to the paddock, Jet raised his head when I stopped beside him and bent around to touch his back in the place he wanted me to scratch it. I responded. Then to his flank. Then down at the bottom of his back leg. I obediently scratched each time and stood back for him to motion a fourth spot but in a flash he reared up on his hind legs and savagely lunged at me as if to bite. I reeled backwards and cried out with the shock. I’ve never seen anything like it from him before. Thankfully the rush of alarm washed out of me quickly and I was able to reorient to the broader undercurrent behind his actions. I turned quietly to walk away because it’s usually best to allow the horses some private space after they touch into very old, deep issues. The story started filtering in.

Living in contact with the collective pool of equine suffering, as Jet does, sometimes the smallest trigger can usher forth a tidal wave response. At times these waves can come from the collective pain of tens of thousands of other horses. An outpouring from their pent up feelings of being endlessly controlled in their own lives can be released through Jet. As he embraces his freedom with me to react authentically, he acts as a channel to release their repression. If any horse across the world desires to heal what Jet is releasing, they can attune to it in the collective field and join the healing via his lead. He lives as a conduit for so many.

I received a vision of the tangle inside him. As I continued to walk away I saw it dissolving and then the image transformed into one of him rearing again but now extended all the way up to his maximum height with his hooves striking out in front. It was a thrilling demonstration of unleashing mighty power. And with this activation, he simultaneously ushered forth a swell of participation from the unknown horses he feels from far and wide around the planet. The tears of their collective transformation poured through me.

In keeping with his own personal mission, Jet extends himself to help all horses who desire to awaken beyond domestication to the discovery of their real selves.

I’ve never seen him as savage as he was that morning. But I trust him. I feel confident he would never hurt me on purpose. (I do have to watch so he doesn't step on my feet when he's eager for contact). He does get impatient though. The other day he swung his head around at me like lightning in a mock bite. I felt his teeth ever so slightly brush my arm and in the moment I feared that he would grab me. But it turned out that the impatient impulse was expressing a desire for something very sweet. For years he’s seen me wrap my arms tight around his best friend’s head and cuddle it to my chest. Jet had been head shy since the beginning and I’ve been very careful to avoid even patting his face let alone hugging it. But we’d been making recent inroads and suddenly that day he decided he wanted the proper embrace. His shift in desire was so fast that I didn’t catch it. He snapped to let me know. So we went from his near bite to me gently cradling his head in my arms for the very first time.

Aside from nipping the admiring girl, Jet is a sweetheart with strangers who visit the paddock. I feel sure he only acts the way he does with me because he knows I champion his every effort to become the real horse he longs to be, whatever it takes. I welcome the excavation of every trouble and torment that has kept him from his wild naturalness. He trusts that I am oriented beyond the purely physical and that any seeming ‘bad’ behaviour can offer a direct path to liberation. I’m not afraid of him knowing more than me and of him being in control of himself.

At times I wondered if I might need to find some brumbies so he could have contact with the real horse role models he had lacked. But he’s proving very capable of doing a fantastic job on his own. It’s the same for humans – even though it can be difficult to find great role models, it’s still possible to grow ourselves into extraordinary human beings if we desire it enough and apply ourselves.

Jet has told me recently how capable he is. Deeply capable in the core of his being. If I had tried to put a winter rug on him last season he would have been absolutely appalled and offended at something so demeaning to his blossoming wild horse nature.