Years ago, when I got my mare Zuzka, the trainer I was working with at the time was so happy when we were able to put her in the same corral space with my gelding Khami. The trainer said it helped her training because the mare would be moved around all day by him.
One day some years ago I was riding my gelding Khami at a fast trot along some side trails, then dropping into a sweet arroyo, then swooping back out of the sand to head up a rocky hillside. The light and shadows created by low hung branches played across the canyon, the sun kissed the tips of my horse’s flying black mane as we moved along together, feeling as one, like we had done for so many miles before.
The horse’s self-image is something that we don’t really talk about because it’s hard to envision the horse looking at himself. I would venture to say the horse sees from the inside out because he feels himself in his skin. His nature is like an orb shining from the inside out from his heart through his skin.
My Valentine’s Day message is: it’s not all “hearts and roses” with horses!
Students may embrace Liberty Foundations and find their horse miraculously comes into relationship. Horse owners are in heaven thinking that they’ve achieved this blissful state with their horse so easily.
My gelding Khami inspired me to write this blog. But he’s not the only one: there are others I have worked with over the past years who are like him in one way or another.
Riding is the next step in our relationship with our horse. Working with relationship on the ground comes first, then the saddle.
Recently I have been concerned about how people and horses come together, and how we “read” what horses are telling us.
Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to talk about what we think of “love” between ourselves and our horses. We don’t really need studies to tell us what we feel about our horses and probably we have a good sense of how our horses feel about us. So much of what we feel would be considered “anecdotal evidence,” yet it is powerful and real. But there have been pilot studies done on the relationships between people and their horses, with some surprising, validating results.
(Okay, if you really want to, you can get off to sleep and for meals, if you think it’s necessary.) 
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Body Language 