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dormant,
comatose, and sedated are always capable of surprising you.
    The horse is a prey species. It is used to
being picked on, chased, eaten and generally harassed. As a result,
the horse has always been a little edgy. Since prehistoric days,
the horse has run even before he knows why he's afraid. This
initial paranoia is probably why the horse is became a herd animal.
Horses assemble not for companionship, but because several sets of
ears are always better than one.
    In the 1983 movie Ghandi , there is a
scene where a crowd of people are confronted with an army of
charging soldiers on horseback. A resourceful leader in the crowd
instructs the people to lie down and when they do, they discover
that the horses will not step on them.
    A horse will go to great lengths to avoid
stepping on anything except terra extremely firma. This goes for
water, leaves, snow, mud, sticks and even some grass, as well as
people's bodies. It's all due to an innate protection plan: long
ago, the primordial horse must have figured out that if anything
happened to hurt one of his feet, he'd be defenseless. Lunch on the
hoof, so to speak, for some marauding saber-tooth. This natural
equine aversion can be quite a pain when you're toodling along a
trail with all the natural debris one finds on a trail, not to
mention all the unnatural debris one finds from Man's
contribution.
    Of all the studies done on equine behavior,
it's been established that horses live within a pecking order (or,
more accurately, a kicking order) in the herd. The top horse,
called Alpha Horse by animal psychologists, more or less lords it
over the rest of the flock, going out the gate first, eating first,
pinning his ears back at the least provocation and generally acting
like a real swine. Then, there's his lieutenant or Beta Horse and
so on down the line until every horse has a rank and a place in the
herd.
    When Alpha is out being ridden or otherwise
indisposed, Beta takes over, much like the vice-president in the
democracy of horse-government; he hones his nipping and ear-pinning
skills, and generally makes himself unpopular with the other
horses. This equine hierarchy will seem particularly cruel to you
if your horse, Stardust (alias Omega) displays permanently embedded
hoof and tooth prints in his hide every time you come out to ride
him.
    It's common to say that horses are much like
people. I'm not sure they're much like people, but they do tend to
have some moods and characteristics like people. In the little
pasture herd at the boarding farm in Georgia where my friends kept
their horses, it would be accurate to say there's a representative
microcosm of horse relationships and behavior.
    Shadow, a ten-year old black Anglo-Arab with
a white star, stands around 15 hands, (a "hand" is a unit of equine
measurement that is, quite literally, the height of a man's hand.
So, stacking 15 man-size hands on top of each other, would give you
the height of Shadow.) He had a tendency toward chubbiness, and
although a very handsome horse, he was one requiring an experienced
and patient rider, Shadow was, unlike most horses, gelded late in
his career. This was generally looked upon as the reason why, in a
pasture of mares and geldings, he's the undoubted Alpha horse.
    It's hard to separate Shadow's aggressive
personality from his sexuality by suggesting that if he'd been
gelded earlier, he'd be easier to manage and more docile. To look
at him, tossing his glossy head, or flattening his ears menacingly,
it would be hard to imagine him as anything but forceful and
irritable with the other horses.
    Little Dancer, on the other hand, is a 14'2
hand chestnut pony with sweet doe eyes and the lovely face of a
thoroughbred. As Shadow's owner also owns Dancer, the two are
always brought in from the pasture together, ridden together, fed
together and released together.
    As a result, they have become good friends.
They are inseparable in the pasture which allows the little pony to
enjoy special