Rudy's Qualities & Horsey Wordles

From "Kinship With All Life" by J. Allen Boone:

After reading many books and consulting many "experts" on dogs, Boone decides to go looking for Mojave Dan, a desert wanderer, to "really help me solve the enigma of Strongheart", a German shepherd dog and famous move-star he was "dog-sitting."

After a great silence "Dan yawned and stretched. Then he spoke, aiming his words at the stars. 'There's facts about dogs,' he said, 'and there's opinions about them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the opinions. If you want facts about a dog, always get them straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them from the human."

How true this is for all lifeforms, including horses and other humans.

Boone had been asked to read to Strongheart, which he at first found rather odd, but then realized that "the more I had read to Strongheart the more I had been mentally lifting him out of all kinds of limiting dog classifications and balancing life with him as an intelligent fellow being, a fellow being who was entitled to as much of the best of everything as I hoped to enjoy myself...The more I stopped treating Strongheart like a 'dog' in the conventional meaning of the term, the more he stopped acting like 'a dog', at least as far as I was concerned. And the more this fascinating thing happened, the more we began functioning as rational companions and the more the kinship barriers between us came tumbling down."

Boone became aware that "something was definitely blocking the way" to his gaining a better understanding of Strongheart. "Much to my private embarrassment, I finally found out what it was: ME! With all my well-intentioned efforts, I had been making the common ego mistake of trying to do all the thinking and to arrive at all the final conclusions for both of us. It just would not work that way." He decides to flip the dynamic and become a student of Strongheart's. "I would try to set aside all pride in self and species, to quit all intellectual resistance, to become as humble and as receptive as I know how, to let the dog really go to work on me in an educational way."

"The only equipment that Professor Srongheart and I used in our educational system was a book of synonyms, a dictionary, and a notebook and pencil. These, of course, were for me... All that Strongheart had to do as instructor was to be himself. My part was carefully to watch everything he did and search for character qualities in him. My book of synonyms aided me to find the names of qualities and the dictionary gave me a more thorough meaning of the qualities. Then I would list these qualities in my notebook and study just what he did with them in his moment-by-moment living.

"I did not look merely for 'good dog qualities,' as they are usually listed by dog-show judges and other professionals. I was searching for the universal best in qualities, regardless of species identification. For qualities of abiding worth. For the kind of qualities that we humans always respect and honor whenever we find them in the members of our own species. Even for the kind of qualities that all the great world teachers agree are essential for living the superior life.

"I found hundreds upon hundreds of these great qualities in Strongheart. They came welling up in all their purity and glory from deep within him. He diffused them as naturally and as irresistibly as a flower does its perfume, a bird its song, a child its laughter."

I encourage you to try this activity with your horse(s). You can then enter the qualities on the website www.wordle.net and create your own wordle. By entering the horse's name a few times you can make it bigger than the rest of the words. You can also make one freehand if you prefer. Further ideas include buying a few colours of manila tag paper then letting your horse pick his/her favourite colour. Mount your horse's photo on the paper then add his/her name and the qualities you came up with. If you make the sheet of manila tag large enough you can mount it in your barn or feed room and add more qualities over time as they come to your awareness. Not only does it add life to your barn walls, but the photo and words are always there to remind you of both the wonderful qualities of your horse and to keep looking for more.

If you would like to share your horsey wordle with others please paste a link to your wordle in the "Comments" section after this post.

Here is a "Wordle" of some of the qualities I see in Rudy:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1870606/Rudy

You can also do wordles for any of the significant Others in your life, regardless of species.