What If You Are a Horse in Human Form

by

For Heidi—you will always be welcome on my back

Eric Schneider graciously offered to typeset and organize the book manuscript and design the jacket for me, and Debora Watts provided invaluable help with producing the scans of the photographs. Heather Rohde and Sean Simmans both created excellent equine renderings of me and kindly allowed me to reproduce them in this book. To all of them I offer my heartfelt thanks for their assistance and encouragement.

Front cover: The author in his natural form

Back cover: The author in his natural form and his owner, Heidi.

Artwork courtesy Heather Rohde.
http://www.rohdefineart.com

I did not want to write this book, but I have done so to fulfill a promise. (More on that later.) If you know or suspect that you are a horse in human form, or if you know someone whom you know or think is one, this book is for you.

Over the years I have communicated with and met several horses in human form. As far as I know, I am the only one who has ever revealed himself publicly, and I hope that this book will encourage others to “come out of the stall,” even if only to their closest human relatives and friends. Do not be afraid to do this, because you are not alone! Whatever your specific purpose is in this world—in this form—at this time, you can more readily carry it out with the help and support of at least one human family member or friend.

I do not know what your particular task is, and perhaps you don’t know either—yet. Further on I will provide information about techniques that you can use to find out. I used them to discover my purpose, part of which was to write this book. My purpose here in human form is three-fold: To let other horses in human form know that they aren't alone or crazy, to help these horses' human families and human friends to understand them, and to get our two races together as partners, where horses and humans each use our complementary intellectual, emotional, and physical abilities and gifts to help each other for the benefit of both.

In general, however, I can tell you why you are here on two legs instead of four. Our two peoples—horses and humans—are companion races, and our destinies are inextricably intertwined. We are here to help both our race and humankind, for the affairs of the human world affect us directly, whether or not we can perceive it when we are in our natural equine forms. I’ll come back to this soon.

We equines reflect the characteristics of the human cultures that breed us. The Clydesdale's brisk and lively temperament is similar to that of the Scottish people, and the Shire (which is what I am in my natural form) has a reserved and even temperament that is like that of the British people, particularly the rural folk. It's not really surprising, since people in any given culture want their horses to be compatible with their temperament and breed us accordingly.

For the benefit of those readers who suspect that they are equine (and for those who think they may know horses in human form), I will describe the ways that we know what we are, which vary from individual to individual. Some of us have actual memories of previous lives in our natural equine forms (including recognizing existing stables or farms where we lived), while for others it can be any combination of memories and/or other things such as:

Being recognized as a fellow horse by other horses (often accompanied by astonishment or fear from them);

An ineffable but powerful knowing that one is a horse;

Knowing instantly how to communicate with horses upon first meeting one;

Feeling a very strong sense of belonging with (and being accepted as a herd member by) other horses;

Walking continuously “on all fours” instead of upright when learning to walk, even after the time when bipedal locomotion should have been mastered;

As a child, having found the use of one’s thumbs and/or fingers confusing or perplexing (as if they were “alien extremities” to you) well after the time when you should have mastered their use;

As a child, having found the experiences of seeing in full color,
not
seeing the sides of your face, and
not
seeing with nearpanoramic vision to be strange;

Having (or having had) "phantom" horse parts such as a tail, that one can/could actually feel;

Having equine reactions, such as spooking at innocuous objects or situations that one doesn't immediately comprehend;

Having been challenged by stallions or "propositioned" by mares (or by stallions, if one is female);

Having always found some common human assumptions and notions (such as “No Pain, No Gain,” to give a trivial example) to be completely alien to one's way of thinking;

Having strange combinations of medical conditions that, taken as a whole, point to one's being a horse, and;

Having known you belonged with horses as well as having had an overwhelming sense of familiarity with them the first time you caught the scent of one.

Not every horse in human form is aware that he or she is one at an early age, and I can well understand why the process of realization is often a gradual one. Many of us, had we been fully aware of our true equine identities as small children, would have pined for getting our hooves back to the exclusion of all else! In order to be of help to our people and to humanity, we first have to learn human ways by literally "walking in their shoes," and the temporary or partial "amnesia" which "afflicts" some horses in human form enables them to do this.

Because the process of realization that many horses in human form go through is similar to my own, I will describe my own experiences during this process.

I was born in Miami, Florida on September 20th, 1966, the youngest of six children (three boys and three girls). My father Elmer was a fire chief who served in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Second World War, and my mother Annetta was a homemaker who worked at the Miami Air Depot (now Miami International Airport) during the war. I was born to them rather late, as my mother and father were born in 1923 and 1919, respectively.

I began having flashes of memories of equine past lives at about 1-1/2 to 2 years of age. In these memories I was a black Shire draft horse pulling carts down English country roads with my large, feathered hooves. Before that I was a large black Flanders horse, and I have a fleeting memory of carrying a rider across the countryside somewhere in northern Europe (I’m fairly certain it was in what is now Germany).

The Shire memories, which are more vivid, came forth spontaneously one day in downtown Miami. I was in the parked family car with my parents when I saw a billboard for BOAC, the old British overseas airline. (I could not read at that tender age, of course, but I remember the distinctive BOAC logo.) The billboard illustration showed an oblique view of a hilly English countryside, which was divided up into a patchwork of multi-colored farm fields, all separated by hedgerows and stone fences.

At that moment an intense feeling of familiarity and contentment swept over me, and at the same time a pleasant memory of pulling a two-wheeled hay cart down a country lane (on the left side) began “playing” in my mind. Since there were no motor vehicles on the road with me, the memory must have been from the very early 20
^th
Century at the latest. (At that time I did not know what a draft horse was, let alone a Shire horse, but confirmation of this came later.) My parents wondered why I kept staring at the billboard, but at that age I wasn’t remotely able to articulate what was going on! From that time on, imagery that depicted Victorian England would trigger this and other Shire memories. The others are only “flashes” in which I was just doing other normal horse things (standing in a stall, grazing, and standing in a pasture under a leafless tree on a fall evening).

The Flanders horse memory, which surfaced soon afterward, is also a very brief one. I was carrying a rider across a valley on an overcast evening, and through narrow “cracks” in the overcast I could see dim sky light. Ahead in the distance across the valley floor I saw a small village, and the sight of it evoked thoughts of comfort, warmth, and hay. This memory was triggered the first time I saw a broken overcast sky one evening, and this sight has done so ever since.

Another such “trigger” was a rather unusual structure that my eldest brother Bob had in one corner of the back yard of his home in southern Miami. It was a small (about 15 feet by 15 feet) wooden shed that had a single-slope roof; that is, the front edge of the roof was higher than the rear edge. Bob used it to store and service his motorcycles. Whenever I looked at that shed, it made me think of horses and hay.

His home was located a few miles from an area of southern Miami called “horse country” where there were many horse farms and agricultural nurseries. Many years later when I had my own vehicle, I drove through “horse country” and experienced an eerie feeling of familiarity. The feeling practically “went off the scale” when I drove past the horse farms and saw more than a few onehorse and two-horse barns of the same design as my brother’s motorcycle shed!

The next time this happened was in 1969, when I was about 3 years old. I had gone with my parents to visit my brother Bob and his first wife Sandy. While returning home that night my father took a different route than the one he usually did, and we passed by the old Tropical Park race track. I had never seen it before, but the sight of it triggered another flash of equine memory.

An image sprang into my mind of standing in a stall, with my black head and neck extended out over the closed stall door. As in my other equine memories, I had near-panoramic vision with muted color perception. There was a wall opposite my stall door, and a bucket was sitting on the stable aisle’s floor in front of me. An old fluorescent light fixture hung from the ceiling on chains in front of my stall door. My impression is that I wasn’t a race horse. I was likely either a companion or an outrider horse for a race horse.

It was also in 1969 when I encountered horses in person for the first time. We were again at Bob and Sandy’s house, and as sunset approached we heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves outside. Standing on the walkway, we watched a small group of hippies riding horses down Miller Road toward “horse country.” Upon catching the scent of the horses, an overwhelming sense of familiarity and an equally powerful desire to go with them, to be with them, washed over me. I did not dare to act on the impulse. I wasn’t allowed in the street at that tender age, and my father—who was a firm believer in corporal punishment—was standing right next to me at the time.

During this period I had occasional “phantom limb” episodes. From time to time I had distinct physical sensations of the presence of an unseen, foal-size horse tail. I had a habit of reclining on my belly with my limbs folded up in equine fashion, and on these occasions I sometimes felt the weight of my tail, often accompanied by the sensation of it touching my legs! Every now and then I also felt it while walking (upright). I could feel the tail’s mass as it hung and swung behind me, and I could also feel it brushing against the backs of my legs. I would turn around to look at it, and was puzzled that I could feel my tail but not see it. This stopped happening at age four or five.

Another source of puzzlement to me at that time was my thumbs. They functioned normally, but for a long time I simply did not know how to use them, much to the consternation of my human parents. For example, when eating with a spoon I simply made a fist around the handle instead of holding it between the thumb and fingers.

Locomotion on two legs was another strange experience. I seldom walked, but instead ran nearly everywhere, and for quite some time I often ran with a “three beats minus one beat” gait. In other words, I was trying to canter (the canter is a three-beat gait) on two legs instead of four, and moving my arms at this gait did not work at all when running on only two feet!

Another thing that seemed odd to me was that I could not see the sides of my face. It just seemed unnatural to not have most of it visible without a mirror. Seeing in full color was also a novelty, and I found some colors such as green and violet particularly captivating. When I was in my crib in dim light at dusk I could no longer perceive colors, and this vision seemed normal.

My father had planned to emigrate to Australia beginning in the late 1960s, and he bought a parcel of land on Magnetic Island (5 miles offshore from Townsville in Queensland). In 1971 and 1972 I visited there (and Rockhampton, Sydney, and Brisbane) with him. My brother Richard also went with us during the 1972 trip. My mother, while not against the idea of moving to Australia, was concerned that she might not be able to visit her parents very often, as air travel in those days was less direct than it is with today's longrange airliners. I have often wondered, "What if...?"

The rest of my childhood was entirely ordinary in human terms. I attended elementary school, had a few neighborhood playmates, and engaged in hobbies such as astronomy, model rocketry, and building plastic model kits and electronic project kits. In the second grade, we had a reading book called
From Elephants to
Eskimos
. I was endlessly fascinated with its photographs of the far north, and that region of the world felt familiar to me. Even though I had been born in Miami, the hot and humid climate there was never to my liking. Being a draft horse who is descended from the heavy northern European Forest Horse, my reaction to the book and to the South Florida climate were not surprising.

In 1976 my parents and I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of northern Georgia (my two brothers and three sisters were all adults by that time), near the small towns of Young Harris and Hiawassee.

In the late 1970s I first saw a picture (in a school library book) of Shire horses pulling a dray in England. The team of black horses struck me as being some kind of English version of the Clydesdale (a breed I was familiar with from the Budweiser beer commercials), but the name "Shire" had an odd, familiar "ring" to it even though I had not come across that word before.

In Hiawassee there was a horseback riding establishment that was run by a former Sheriff of the town. It was at the foot of a small wooded mountain that was covered with miles of scenic trails. I began riding there in 1979. My favorite horse was a dark brown part Arabian/part ”something” (Quarter Horse, I think) mare. She was blind in her right eye, having been kicked in the face by another horse when she was a filly. She had no name, so I called her Lucy because her personality reminded me of the character in the
Peanuts
comic strip. She had a forceful temperament that took nothing away from her femininity.

From the day we first met, there was always something different about her. She was only six years old at the time, but when I was with her I felt as if I were in the presence of a very old and wise mare. Her owner had warned me that she was hot-tempered, but she was always gentle and patient with me.

That did not mean Lucy had no contrary moments, however. Being a trail ride rental horse, she was used to carrying inexperienced or nervous riders who let her get away with a lot. While she generally went where I wanted her to go, she did not like being asked to move at specific gaits (especially walking the last 100 yards or so back to the hay manger, which she wanted to cover at a full gallop!).

One day she suddenly decided to refuse to make left turns. After fighting her several times to make left turns on the trail, I pulled the reins to myself so that her neck was bent all the way around to the left, tied the reins around the saddle horn, and sat back in the saddle until she’d had enough of that uncomfortable position. She never tried that trick again!

Over time we became close friends. She soon realized that no other riders gave her a grooming along with a leg rub-down
and
a full-body massage after each ride, as I did. The real turning point came one afternoon after I defended her from a higher-ranking gelding who intruded into her space to intimidate her. When he bit her on the neck I rushed between them, punched the gelding several times, and chased him away.

We spent a lot of time together “on the ground”; that is, not riding but simply being with each other. Before long I was able to see her thoughts in my mind. Lucy had occasional sinus headaches, and she would mentally signal me to help her from across the pasture. An image of her head would appear in my mind, and the image would “zero-in” on one area. I would walk over and see her forehead muscles wrinkled across her brow, tensed in pain. When I pressed on the area she showed me I would hear the sinus open up and drain, and she would sigh and press her head against my chest to express her thanks.

In the summer of 1979 I rode Lucy in a weekend wagon train excursion into the mountains. As we left the city limits she was walking at a leisurely pace, which caused us to lag far behind the rest of the riders and the wagons. Despite my repeated urgings using leg, seat, and voice cues she would not pick up the pace, and I reluctantly whacked her rump with a long switch I had been given.