Midnight (the pony) on Loneliness

Midnight on Loneliness

I have a pony with seperation anxiety. Generally speaking, Midnight is as comfortable a creature as ever walked the earth. Big round hooves, feathered with shiny black hair, a long tail almost touching the ground, and this time of year, a woolly coat to keep the wind and rain out. Midnight is interested mainly in grass, but when he's filled his belly, he likes nothing but to hang his big face over my shoulder and tease me about having two legs. He is playful and reliable, joining a game of football as my six-year-old runs around his legs. He has never in his six months of being part of our lives, lifted a hoof, or bitten or shown any signs of being anything other that deeply laid back. Except when Chalky, the donkey is out of sight. 

Then he freaks. Don't get me wrong, Midnight isn't ever mean, he just panics to his very core when he thinks he's been seperated from his herd. Then he can turn on a pin, out-manouevre a swift on a thermal. The very first time I took him for a ride, he decided that the War memorial in our village was not to be trusted. His legs metamorphosed to jelly beneath me. He spun 180degrees and ran home, fast. When he could hear Chalky braying he calmed right down and slowed to a trot. When he could see him he decided it was time to graze the roadside verges. I caught up with him then and untangled the reins from his legs. 

We sent him on loan to a girl who wanted to jump him, he churned the ground to mud twirling and whirling like a whisk in a mixing dish because we took his companion away in the trailer. He came home to be reunited with the mule. I have to admit that once or twice I seperated him from our donkey just to hear the thunder he made with his hooves as he galloped to the furthest point round our lake and back again. To see him run like Black Bess with Dick Turpin aboard; then he is simply magnificent. 

The donkey is very nice. There is no malice in the donkey. The donkey really has no axe to grind, no disagreements with anything, not even a thistle. He is much happier than Eyore, but just as self-effacing. In fact, if I could make the donkey, man, I would marry him. But I don't think its just the greatness of the donkey that makes Midnight so attached.

Generation of horses before him, whose genes echo in his,  have survived by keeping their suede shoulders brushing their comrades. Being alone for a horse is a risky business. In common with wood ants and termites, bonobos and mackerel, horses have found sticking with their own kind the best way to stay alive. And we humans are as social a species as any other. No wonder then that Midnight wants to stay close to Chalky and no wonder that as more of us set up home on our own, pathologies set in. 

In human culture, living alone is a risk factor  for diseases of the heart, the mind and the body. From alcoholism to alzeimers, malnutrition to myocardial infarction, one of the worse things you can do for your health is live on your own. Put simply,  

'lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death' 

 And we are currently experiencing a fragmentation of culture, an epidemic of loneliness like never before. Images and movies and websites and this blog and any amount of social networking can't substitute for someone holding your hand, or leaning on your shoulder.  When my little boy wandered up to an old lady in a cafe and asked her 'Are you on your own, don't you have anyone to look after you?' he struck at one of the central issues of our culture. Horses need horses (ponies need donkeys) monkeys need monkeys, chickens need other chickens and people need other people.

I do not push it. Unlike better horsewomen, I find imposing my will so decisively over Midnight's difficult. I would rather respect his desire to be with his equid friends and find ways of riding him out in company than force the issue and have an unhappy animal underneath me. Riding a horse with its cacophany of metal bits and riding whips and saddle already feels too much like human dominion over animal for my liking. I don't want to add the feeling of fear to the equation. I want him to like being with me and to like being ridden.

So for now we potter about the lanes with the donkey in tow, or ride out with friends, which he greatly enjoys. I do decide the directions we go in and generally, the speed. But he decides who we travel with and that is alright with me. 

Sasha x