Country Songs and Percherons

I had a country music channel on through this morning of 1000 trips taking one of three potty training kids to the bathroom. Racing by the screen a horse caught my eye (let's all take a minute now to marvel at the wonder that is DVR, how did my Mother do it...) and I had come back to watch the whole thing, kind of caught off guard by how strong the emotions it brought up were.

That got me thinking about what horses mean to people. About how often they are used to represent spiritual guidance, teachers, tortured souls, and all sorts of human afflictions.

Freud had a theory that horses represented father figures to little girls. Braitman figured that girls were attracted to the speed and power like men are to cars. Other philosophers go back to the old stand-by that a horse is unconditional love and stability.

Obviously whomever wrote that last one, about stability, never knew a girl in love with a mare. I'm just sayin...

The smell of a clean horse, hay, leather, warm grain all mix together to a cocktail completely intoxicating for thousands of, otherwise sane, girls.

A lot of us horse crazy kids grow into women and leave horses behind, or at least step back and let our daughters pick-up the reins resigned to our status as holders of the poop fork.

Set down like old Nancy Drew books, we walk away from horses and let husbands, kids, career fill that hole that horses used to occupy in our soul. Maybe sometimes wondering what it would be like to again be staring face to face at eyes that can see through all the stuff time has put up in front of you that isn't the real you.

Whisper has put me through some deep questions, freezing fear, and been there to challenge me to be real at all times. It's impossibly hard, sometimes physically painful, and like flying with wings she shares with me only every once in awhile.

Why am I out there covered in dirt and sweat, night after night, when the rest of the world is enjoying happy hour that the kids are in bed and the day is done?

Riding the three-beat gait around the ring last night on Scooter I let the reins out giving him complete freedom. He stretched his stride and all I could feel was the wind blowing back my hair in swirls. God is in that and for a split second, is almost tangible. And horses bring us there.

That's why horses are always going to stir deep emotion in us that can't be reached as easily any other way. Why they will always be in art, music, movies, and our imaginations.

That's why women love horses. 

Well, that and that's where most of my boot wearing girlfriends hang-out.

"Four things greater than all things are, Women and Horses and Power and War"  Rudyard Kipling