I love living with horses. Not riding, petting, grooming, learning from…. Ok, I lie, of course I love all that stuff too, that is a given, but there’s something about the day to day living with them and the unexpected gifts that come from the basic, routine, on-going being there and caring for them that still takes me by surprise.

Like tonight, when it was getting dark out, freezing cold actually, and I have just finished putting a blanket on my grouchy 20 year old appendix mare, Gypsy, who doesn’t always love to be touched or bothered with when she’s eating from her round bale in her paddock and she let’s me do it anyway without a kick or a bite, thank god, (just some ear pinning). I like to blanket her because she is super sensitive to cold weather and will violently shake all over without one, so I am thinking somewhere deep down she gets that she’s better off with one than without. And even just the completion of that act and the knowing that she will be all toasty warm no matter what the weather brings tonight makes me feel so peaceful and grateful inside. Wow, something so easy but which brings such a sense of well-being and pleasure.