Horses; Herds and Systems

Before I address the “herd”:

My classmate and fellow blogger, Whitney Vickers, asks why I think anthropomorphism is bad. I want to assure you I don’t. In fact, I think it is at the core of human’s utility with animals. The ability to connect so deeply with an animal, at so many levels, is both beautiful and essential to humans. It is the health in animal therapy for the ill, elderly, and mentally touched. It is fully depicted in the film "Grizzly Man," where anthropomorphism had tragic consequences for the film"s namesake, and his girlfriend. It is also depicted in the movie, “Cast Away,” in the relationship Tom Hanks’ character has with Wilson, the volley ball, an inanimate object.

Whitney, you share in your blog the relationship you have with your cats. I celebrate for you, and for the cats, because they have a human who cares enough to take responsibility for their well being.  In so doing you improve the quality of your life over all. That is a gift divinely inspired. I also marvel at the cat and its selectively inspired adaptability. For at the core, the domestic house cat is most closely modeled by the African Lion.

 Out of our homes and left to their own devices, in whatever landscape urban or rural, cats take on behaviors that assure survival. Queen cats run the pride, the males are marginalized and battle for pride breeding rights. Queens will adopt and suckle a fallen sister’s kittens, a phenomenon rarely seen in mammals, outside of humans, while the victorious "Tom" will systematically kill all the kittens of his fallen foe’s seed.  Their adaptability has them at the top of the predator list without dispute, the range of their diet, over 800 species. This adaptability also has them in our homes, curled up or playing, seemingly ever in pursuit of the perfect cat nap or unsuspecting prey.

Now concerning horses; I feel that life is represented and expressed by systems. If you look at the picture above of the boys, you’ll see a system of two horses, and separate, but interrelated systems of the truck and the feed. The truck represents many unseen systems of production and marketing, the feed, the same in systems of farming. The horses represent a sub-system in a supra-system of horses. Currently we have no definite count of the number of horses in the U.S., but it is estimated between 6 and 11 million animals. That’s a big system, a huge herd, worthy of the attention of us all, horse fancier or not. It is our responsibility. In the next blog I'll talk about system inputs and outputs, and herd health.