Besides being the day when the earth said a big eff you to thousands of people who showed up to use earth day as an excuse to smoke pot in public by pouring rain for 8 hours straight, yesterday was my horse Rivet's birthday, his 19th. He's been with me since he was 12, since I was 13, and I don't think a day has gone by where I haven't been so thankful for him, including that day when I lost both my shoes in mud trying to catch him so I could move him to a new paddock. I swear he was laughing at me the whole time.
I know Rivet probably doesn't care that it's his birthday. Usually I try to do something special for him, like make a special 'cake' or bake horse treats, and while I know he's happy about the extra food, I don't know if he really gets it. Generally his reaction is to shove me out of the way with his head, so he can eat whatever it is in record time, preferably with maximum mess. There are times when I don't know quite how to reconcile how much I love Rivet with the notion that he's my property. For years, all I thought I wanted in life was to work with horses and now I find myself disgusted by a lot of the things 'horse lovers' do.
Having to reconcile that I spent years exploiting horses without even thinking twice about it has probably been the hardest part of becoming a vegan for me. Realizing that you've been selfish towards someone you love for years makes you seriously re-evaluate your self as a person. Finding a way to work Rivet into my life as a vegan? It's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I'm slowly doing it, which just goes to show it can be done, but because so much of what we do with horses is related to riding them, showing them, using them, it's been a journey.
I take a lot of crap from vegans for being a 'horse person' and from 'horse people' for being a vegan, but I think if every person had a Rivet, we'd all have a much easier time understanding that other animals have feelings, thoughts, moods and desires of their own. I don't think anyone has taught me more about this than Riv, standing in ankle deep mud, waiting patiently for me to get within two feet of him, just so he could whirl up on his hind end and race to the other side of the paddock and stand there looking innocent.
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