Day 243 and 244 – The Death of My Horse Part 2 - The Journey to Life

This is a continuation of Day 242 - The Death of my Horse Titan Part 1

Leila wrote a cool blog on the events of the day here – Day 146: Death of a Horse (Titan)
and continuation on her point here - Day  147 and 148 - Aftermath Death of a Horse
Also to see the process of horses here with us and their process stuff in general, check out the interviews from Eqafe, really cool.

Birthing a new Life through the Eyes of a Horse - Part 1
Birthing a new Life through the Eyes of a Horse - Part 2
Birthing a new Life through the Eyes of a Horse - Part 3

Continuing from this Part: “We eventually got it all to stop as Cerise and I and others helped, we ended it and got Titan back into Isolation from the others.”

The first Day with Titan was quite a experience for me. It was a emotional and Physical experience, I had to face many points from within me to act and direct myself to help Titan, Titan had to be introduced and we had to find a stable point for him on the first day, it is the only way.

So after we got Titan out of the field where he was chased and kicked and got a bite or two, we got him to the stables, we all then started assessing what is happening, though the events that happened we could learn a lot from Titan.

We were able to get perspective on Titan and his past though his current behavior and interactions, because horses in general are leaders, they seek leadership and they change leadership according to situations/moments, it is quite fascinating how they can give such a position over to another in a single moment of testing.

A Horse will test other horses through little things, like if one horse wants to see if he can be the leader he will go to one horse at a time and see if he can move that horse, and seeing what the other horse accepts and allows, this way they can take the lead or follow, depending on the outcome and accordingly they will have a leadership line, if one horse ahs to be sick then the next one in line will take over.

So with Titans introduction there was this conflict of him being new first of all, so he had to be tested – and ALL the horses tested him and he fell, Titan did not stand up for himself and this was a weakness to the rest, and they all went ahead and showed Titan his weakness, not standing up for himself and being accepting and allowing abuse.

This is what gave us the perspective of Titans past with Other horses and humans in general, it showed that he had been though extensive abuse, to such an extent that he simply accepted and allowed it to happen to him.

So when we got Titan back to the stables and we then had a chance to take a closer look at him while he stabilize and get calm, to calm Titan down I took a brush and started brushing him over his body, I for one felt insecure to brush a horse, like I was intruding Titan, I could not handle the Idea of brushing a horse, I used to judge myself as being too cool to do these type of things.

But I had to do it because it would help and there was no choice, Titan was my responsibility, while I brushed him Cerise got a carrot from the feeding room to give to him, he enjoyed the carrot and ate it quite forcefully.

Cerise also then started investigating Titans body and I started noticing things on Titan’s Body while brushing him.

The first thing I noticed was that his ribs was showing a lot and it was uncomfortable brushing over it, the wooden part of the brush would hit his ribs if I would brush normally, so I started brushing slowed and higher, secondly I saw that there was a lot of Bald spots on his body where there was no hair, and some of it seemed like old Bite marks and the other ones simply seemed like anything could have caused it.

Cerise investigated his Hoofs and his body in general, Titan was not well fed and underweight, he seems tired and weak in his body, like he has been struggling for months, we then went on to the Hoofs and this is where the fright came in, his hoofs was the worse I have ever seen for myself, obviously not the worst that has ever existed, but it was bad.

His hoofs was split in the middle all the way to the top of his hoofs almost and his hoofs were halfway flat, this is not Good or normal at all for a horse, it can be deadly for a horse, imagine a horse with their big bodies are supported by four tiny hoofs on the ground, so no need to imagine, it is a fact that their hoofs are extremely important. The other scary part that made me really angry was that the guy we bought Titan from was a Farrier; a Farrier is a guy that does horses Hoofs for a living and makes money from it.

This guy had Titan for a couple of months in camp with no grass, just dust, and he took Titan back because of a money point – the person he took Titan back from want looking after Titan and he did not pay for Titan yet, so after Titan went through all of that this guy takes him back just to fuck with his life even more, put him in a camp and neglect him.

I was furious and knew that all I could do was work with what is here, and Titan was here and I have responsibility for him now.

I found that seeing within what is here and existent within people and what they are/can do to animals and what life people give to animals within this money system that runs everything - that we are pure evil, it is the saddest thing I could realize and this motivated me, the understanding, the seeing with my real eyes – because Titan just made it all real for me, it wasn’t something out there and distant from me.

WE then had to find a solution for the situation, Titan wasn’t going to integrate like the other horses any time soon, we decided to keep him in the stables with a horse next to him.

This way they could have contact and get used to each other and there cannot be any harm done as the stables give distance and security.

We changed horses from time to time till we found one horse that Titan was okay with and that hey other horse was okay with Titan.

Within the first six months of my process here on the farm I was in a depression, the depression was facing myself as who I have accepted and allowed myself to be and seeing this for the first time and actually looking at it.

Within the depression I slept allot and I did not want to move or be active unless I was forced to. And now I have a horse that is my direct responsibility which means I cannot have choice to when I want to be with him or look after him, I had to work with Titan, he became that one point in my life where I was forced out of my limitations since I did not take self responsibility for myself, I did not stand up for myself, I accepted and allowed the mind to direct me.

So for the next three months I had to do Titans Stables everyday twice as much as everyone else, because Titan was staying in the Stables all the time with different horses, obviously in the mean time we tried getting him into the group and getting him to stand up for himself and be an equal leader, we had to give Titan the opportunities to learn and to stand for himself, he has never done it in his life before, OR he has and always failed and this led to him always just running away and giving up.

While working with Titan and being with him for a long period of time in the stables I have learned a lot of him and from him about myself.

Titan was stubborn – while I would work in the stables I had to move him around to get to the poo and to clean out the hey and to give him water and so forth, and I have to clean his hoofs and take care of Titan over all.

So what would happen is, I would start with cleaning Titans hoofs and the process of this is to ask him to give you his hoof, it is a team work thing, otherwise there is no way.

I have to take my hand and run it down his leg and then place pressure on a certain spot behind the leg which a horse “reacts to” and then lifts us his hoof for you, with Titan this never happened, he did not lft up his hoofs for me, I had to take his leg and Pull it with force from the ground, If I did not do this I would not have been able to clean his hoofs, he did not give a shit for Humans in general.

When I had to move Titan out of the stable or to do anything where moving him was required he just never worked with and I soon discovered why, there are a couple of ways that we have learned from professional horse people on how to move a horse, you have a level of working with them, it goes from ask/show/make.

So when I want to move Titan I would start with asking while giving direction of course, he did not even give the slightest attention to me to what I am asking, so I start showing him, this requires me to tap him or give some physical indication of what I need him to do, I never asked him to do anything unless I had to, such as cleaning his stable, moving him into fields or any other practical thing, so I was really not asking a lot or un-necessary things. And then I had to go to the next stage of making him do what I am asking.

This is where I started facing myself as well, because making Titan do what I asked was like abusing him for me, it was like I was now going to the same level of those that abused him, that probably made him the way he is.

I had a lot of resistance, I did not want to do it, it was wrong to me, I had a lot of self doubt within this point, so I allowed someone else that had already worked with a horse to do it instead, I did not want to fuck up, I did not want to be the hand that abuses, Let someone else be the abuser and I will be the one that enjoys the end results instead.

So I saw what I was doing within that, I allowed others to do what I knew I had to do just so that I did not have to feel bad, but yet It was okay for me to let someone else do it and feel bad and then I can have the fruits of their work, so I decided to take responsibility for this point of having to go there, to see what we as humans have created as the consequences.

Because I used a bit of common sense, I had to be self honest, Titan has been abused all his life probably and that means he is used to being moved and asked to move a certain way, he does not know anything else, he will not respond to anything else, Not YET though.

So I had to use what he was used to, I had to use force to move him – and that is what I started doing, obviously with a difference, I did not do it because it was personal, I did not do it because I was angry at him or because I reacted to him or because I took him as who he is personal, I did it within the starting point of helping him and to bring about equality within our relationship.

So I had to move Titan with force, I had to literally hit him with a stick to move left or right or forward, and he would sometimes Still not move, Titan had built quite a tolerance for violence against him, I had to cry at some stage because this only showed me what has already been done to him and what he has already gone through in his life, that he was able to handle a stick smacking him and he would seem like he wasn’t reacting or even feeling it at times at all.

After working with Titan for a couple of weeks with force there was a change, because while I was working with Titan I though this point I saw that I could beat him with a stick or with slapping him or whatever way I could to move him, that what was needed at all times was intention within physical movement. NO emotions/feeling or any internal bullshit or Titan would get aggressive in resisting what I was asking. 

I had to be his leader no matter how much I resisted it or did not want to do it or where ever I was experiencing, working with Titan, whatever I experienced he immediately made it all invalid till he could see I was here physically working with him, because he knew that any internal movement within me any fear and emotion any experience is what create the abuse he already went though and he knew that if he gave that internal reality/experiences validation it would make another monster because once energy is given a way out to flow, it will consume and it will require something to constantly fuel it, where Titan stood still and did not move or react back and only showing me to me in those moments, the energy went away, because I was only able to move him once I was here and clear physically breathing. 

I could see Titan was walking two different points, one with Horses and one with Humans.

To be continued.