wild horses – Page 3 – THE LEGEND OF THE GREAT HORSE trilogy

The horse is prey and never forgets it: his motto is to ‘run away to live another day.’

Horses are built for speed over distance, and with a good headstart he is safe from his natural predators.

The only hole in the equine’s survival program is the time it takes to reach top speed. To solve this problem horses come “fully-loaded” with highly advanced bio-technology to detect predators.

The Super-Human Horse

An equine’s sense of hearing and smell rivals that of a dog, with additions of swiveling ears and a canyon of a nose that sifts the wind with every breath. Their eyesight is much different than our own, featuring extreme motion-detection ability and a field of vision of almost 360 degrees, with only a few blank spots right behind and in front (which is why you never walk up behind a horse, and why jumping is such a challenge).

Equine abilities extend beyond the human experience. A horse’s legs serve as a sounding board to feel ground vibration, and can even recognize a person by their walk. Horses also have an amazing “photographic” memory and are able to see well at night.

Horses don’t see the world as humans see it

As you ride, the horse has mapped out the robin in the hedge 100 yards away, noted a freshly-painted mailbox and the spot where a dog barked seven years ago … even as feels the rumble of a distant train and responds to your cues.

We don’t share the outlook of horses, the same mind or same senses–we hardly share the same world. Yet somehow, implausibly, a close partnership was made … and is still kept.

Photo: Bureau of Land Management / Wikimedia / Public Domain

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Copyright © 2010 John Allen Royce, Jr.

“The Legend of the Great Horse” trilogy is a journey through history by a modern horse-rider. The story begins with a foal being born to a family with a horse-crazy youngster, Meagan. This horse carries Meagan on an adventure through history.

The new foal, Promise, is actually a Great Horse of legend with the ability to travel back to its previous lives. A mishap occurs and a frightened Promise bolts with her young rider back into time, galloping far into the distant past and leaving Meagan alone with only her horsemanship skills to help her survive.

The first horse of history that Meagan encounters is a small wild broodmare in a band being hunted by humans circa 20,000 BC. The reader knows this, but Meagan must make her own discovery that she has gone back in time.

Now, the wild broodmare isn’t talking (other than time-travel, the story is realistic and fact-based). The mare connects with Meagan through its natural curiosity, an important if perhaps unexpected trait of the species. Meagan remembers her own grandfather’s opinion that horses were the “nosiest animal in Creation.” He called curiosity a fatal weakness of the species … well, that and a fondness for oats.

The fact that a large prey animal would be so naturally curious is part of the mystery of the equine soul, but it is something we share in common. An interesting note is that the horse Meagan meets is not very different in character from the horses she knows from her own modern experience some twenty thousand years later. Horses are a much older species than humans, and their instincts as prey animals still survive.

The independence of the “wild” spirit of horses meant that mankind was forced to adapt to the horse in order to obtain the animal’s strength and speed. It is our genius as humans that we can “see” things from another’s perspective, and it was this ability that made our close partnership with horses possible. In the case of horses, we have not changed them: they have changed us…

Tag: wild horses

Little Horse on the Prairie

The First (Great) Horse