Chosen by a Horse by Susan Richards Page B

mean bone in either of their bodies. What could happen?
    Georgia and Tempo made a big fuss as I led Hotshot out of the pasture and shut the gate, leaving them behind. They both kept up a frantic whinnying, rushing back and forth along the fence as though terrified.
    Not Hotshot. He was definitely the gentleman caller on his way to sit on the front porch with someone special. He’d been looking at Lay Me Down for a month, and it was like this was the dating game, and he’d won. He was ready. He’d lost most of his winter coat, and he looked sleek and shiny. He was almost a perfect match in color to Georgia’s red.People who saw them for the first time had a hard time telling them apart.
    In the order of dominance—there is always a clear and rigid pecking order with horses—Hotshot was at the bottom. In some herds, establishing the pecking order could be a rough business involving loud, physical confrontations. That had never happened with my three. Within minutes of being together for the first time, they had worked out that Tempo was the wise and gentle ruler, Georgia was the bitchin’ babe who got away with obnoxious behavior just because, and Hotshot was the good-natured nanny who doted on the other two, even when he was Georgia’s punching bag. This had been worked out nonverbally and nonviolently as they stood in a tight circle, all three noses together in the middle. Every once in a while a head had jerked up, but in a few seconds the noses were together again. This went on for five or so minutes, and then they started grazing, and that was that.
    Hotshot was all arched neck and big eyes as we headed over to Lay Me Down’s pasture. His eagerness to meet her was touching given his experience with females. He’d taken so much abuse from Georgia in the past ten years. Who was to say this one wouldn’t be the same? But that didn’t seem to be what he was thinking as he tugged at the lead, hurrying me along toward Lay Me Down’s pasture.
    Lay Me Down had seen us coming and stood with her chest pressed against the gate, waiting. Her head was high, her ears up and forward as she blew out a little whinny.Hotshot whinnied back. They were talking. I was dying to know what they were saying.
Hello? You can come over but don’t pull any funny stuff? After all these weeks I can’t believe we’re finally meeting? This place has great grass, don’t you agree?
    We arrived at the gate and right away they touched noses for a good long sniff. This was one of the prettiest yet most tension-fraught moments of introducing two horses. The outcome of a face-to-face meeting was impossible to predict and might or might not involve some form of physical aggression. With Georgia, a meeting with any new horse, particularly another mare, almost certainly involved violence. When a horse in the wild wants to attack something, it uses its front legs to do so. The kick can be devastating, even lethal.
    I was relieved but not surprised when neither Hotshot nor Lay Me Down exhibited any kind of aggression whatsoever. They sniffed and whinnied softly at each other, and after a few minutes I pushed gently at Lay Me Down’s chest to move her away from the gate so I could open it. She backed up just enough for Hotshot to squeeze through, I unclipped the lead line, and he trotted right in.
    I stood at the gate and watched two sweet old horses go a-courting. Their mutual attraction was instant and strong, and to a human eye—say that of a lonely middle-aged person with a tendency toward anthropomorphizing—it looked romantic. Hotshot’s nose spent a lot of time moving from one end of Lay Me Down’s long neck to the other, and when he felt braver, he let it wander past her shoulder rightto the middle of her back. She grazed. He sniffed. She grazed some more, he sniffed. She moved, he moved and sniffed. She wandered over to the watering trough for a drink, he wandered over and sniffed. He couldn’t believe she was for real. She was nothing