More on Animal Communication

In my personal and professional involvement with horses, I can usually avoid "arguments" with equines, but differences of opinion with other horsey people can happen all too easily. However, the other day, I avoided people problems only to experience a curious "confrontation" with a horse.

A new client, whom I had only "met" on the phone the day before, asked me to visit her yard the next day with a view to recruiting my assistance. As she was busy preparing for a social event, she put me in the charge of her "friend".

I should explain that this yard, although small, had some "new technology" in the form of a an equine wash room complete with "driers". My own methods are "traditional" and I avoid excessive "washing" (and clipping) of horses.

Thus when the yard owners friend told me to "soak" her horses, I immediately felt uneasy. Therefore, with the first horse I kept the soaking to a minimum, and all was fine.

For some reason, however, I followed the friend's instruction with the second horse. When the procedure was complete, this horse suddenly broke away, lifted his head, and with the back of this smashed a light/drier above the doorway

The horse was huge - about 18.2 hh (take it from me this is big !) - and the smashing action, which caused no obvious distress or injury to him, had considerable dramatic effect. Obviously, something had annoyed him !

I have come across this kind of behaviour in horses, where there is "injury" to property but none to themselves or people, on a few occasions in the past. These seem to be "controlled", and sometimes "histrionic", outbursts of frustration.

They certainly tell us something !

On Talking With The Animals

I sometimes fancy that I may have the gift of animal communication, but don't share this with too many people for the reasons given below.

One of my favourite movies (TV repeats of which I never seem to tire) is the Eddy Murphy take on Doctor Dolittle. Indeed, I love all of Murphy's films, including one (never sadly repeated ?) in which he plays an engaging rogue who "accidentally" becomes US President. I think this was made before the election of Bill Clinton.

Returning to Doctor Dolittle, Murphy plays an ordinary medical doctor who as a child has the gift of animal communication, but is encouraged by his family to suppress this with the consequence that it seems to disappear. Then one day when he is "grown-up", the gift mysteriously returns with hugely comic results.

However, this gift is also very unsettling for Murphy's wife and colleagues, and, as a consequence, he agrees to being "sectioned" in a psychiatric hospital. Nevertheless, he still refuses to recant his belief that he can talk to animals and they to him.

Fortunately, just when things look a little desperate, and Murphy's animal friends need his help outside, the chief psychiatrist's cat tells him that this gentleman is in the habit of wearing a pink tutu and thong which he keeps concealed in his cupboard. Not wishing to be "outted", the psychiatrist agrees to Murphy's release and all ends happily, but I won't give the plot away now.

The moral of the tale is that the gift of animal communication in today's world could be difficult accept, and manage, in a science-based profession like medicine.