Jack (the horse) is 28 years old and instead of putting him in a turnout pen during the day we just let him roam the property. He usually sticks around the barn, grazing or just standing around. But his favorite thing to do is lay down in various random spots that he feels are comfortable. Every morning after they drag the arena footing he goes and flops down in the soft dirt. Whenever we get a new shipment of shavings you better believe Jack is right there rolling in them once the truck leaves.
This was one of his ground-softness-testings. The aisle is all rubber so it’s not hard but I doubt it was very comfortable. Jack would beg to differ.
this makes the picture 100x better. what a happy old man.
This post has by far the highest amount of notes out of all my posts so I figured it would be something that I should post a follow up on. My trainer, Jack’s owner, posted this on Facebook today and I wanted to share it with you all.
@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???
I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.
The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.
Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.
Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.
To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.
This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.
However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!
On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.
The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.
Reblogging some horse knowledge for certain people who write fantasy books but know nothing about horses *cough cough*
reblogging for the line “Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety”.
Also: horses have very limited depth perception. You know that thing where you out your finger on the bridge of your nose and it disappears because it’s behind your field of vision? Now imagine your nose is as long as a horse’s. The blind spot in front of a horse’s nose is huge, four to six feet or so. When a horse jumps, it can’t see the fence, it has to be trained / remember to look for it and remember where it is and how high. They cannot tell if that is a spot of oil or a black hole in the road. It’s probably a black hole. Better avoid it.
Horses can’t see your hand, they smell the treat (and use very sensitive skin/whiskers to feel.) Some horses are garbage at doing this gently, just absolutely awful, but remember – they can’t see what they’re doing.
Horses also have partial color vision – they see horse relevant colors. Blue, yellow and therefore green. No red derived colors. If you want to see an anxious couch have a bad trip, ride it in an arena with alternating sections of purple and yellow seating. Grey grey YELLOW YELLOW HOLY SHIIIIIIIT. Every single horse would walk past the purple seats and go OH MY FUCK at the yellow ones. This is why the bright red (grey) bucket isn’t a problem, but oH my FfffffffffSHIttTTTT do they notice a stray yellow plastic grocery bag.
Last statement here is, instinct tells a horse that anything clinging to your back is going to eat you. That we spend so much effort convincing them otherwise is amazing and in general a testament to the human race’s commitment to Bad Ideas.
Deadpool movie advertising is best movie advertising 😆
This is even better than the tiny billboards they had for the Antman movie.
lets be real; deadpool’s marketing “team” is just ryan reynolds sitting in his deadpool onesie in his home office at 2am designing posters for the movie.
Sometimes I lose my appetite for days or weeks – even the foods I normally crave become as appealing as eating paper towels. It normally goes hand in hand with sensory issues with the food. These are some of the tricks I’ve learned to make sure I get enough nutrition anyway
The first and most important thing is you need to remember that eating anything is better than eating nothing. You may need to suspend your normal standards or rules – eating foods that are less “healthy" than normal, eating the same thing over and over gain, or just not enjoying your food as much.
Energy (calorie) dense foods like nuts or energy bars are really helpful, especially if the actual process of eating is unpleasant. Sometimes its really nice to be able to eat a meals worth of energy in under a minute
Chewing gum helps me get my appetite going – If I am trying to get myself hungry for a meal I will often start with gum 30-40 minutes before.
I rely a lot on eating a little of something I’m comfortable with to pique my appetite and moving to a different food group afterwards. Eating the first thing is always the hardest – I find after I start my brain realizes that food is ok and I can move onto larger portions or a different food.
When I eat something sweet I tend to crave more sugar later. So I use this to my advantage and have a small portion of something with some sugar in it and then wait to be hungry for more. Sometimes I will try to eat something a little more nutritious the second time, others I just have more of whatever was finally able to pique my interest
For the same reason consider other foods you find hard to put down. I’ve heard that things with both carbs and fat in them are the most “addictive” and I use that when I’m struggling to get enough to eat. It’s ok if this is a “junk” food – remember eating anything is better than eating nothing
Ginger tea or ginger chews make my stomach feel better
Keep track of your food. It can be really informal, like making sure you don’t skip meals, or it can be some other strategy of keeping a food journal or counting calories. You don’t need to be super precise, it just helps remind you to eat when your body isn’t sending the right signals
Look at “food porn.” Scrolling through a food blog you love on tumblr or watching a cooking show can be a good way to get your appetite going
Have a nutritional drink like an ensure can help you make sure you are getting all the nutrients you need without much thought. I find ensure is best very cold or on ice.
Look for foods or categories of foods that seem easier to tolerate than the others. This might be something you know is easy on your stomach, something of a certain texture, something hot/cold, or just a favorite food.
If there is a food that you find less unappealing than the others, or feels “safe” to you go for it, even if you’ve eaten it many times in the last few days. I even find having eaten a food or meal in recent memory helps convince my body its not gonna be harmful
You can explain shit like the “””gray area””” of consent to them all day long and it will just be a waste of breath, because they have been manipulating that gray area to their advantage their entire adult lives. They understand it just as well as if not better than you.
Not raping and abusing women isn’t rocket science. If they wanted to stop, they would, as there is literally nothing preventing them. Writing them a how-to guide will achieve nothing; they’re not listening because they don’t care and they don’t intend to try.
Furthermore, you’re rewarding them with a free pass for “not knowing any better” and a lengthy handhold, which will do absolutely nothing to incentivize them to change. If you want to change the behavior of someone who acts exclusively in their own self interest, the only tool at your disposal is CONSEQUENCES.
Until treating you like a human being stands to benefit them, eg by protecting them from consequences, I really wouldn’t hedge your bets there. If explaining how they can do better didn’t work the first 75 times, it probably won’t work the 76th.
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