For those of you who don’t know, Pete was the first horse we took in during the very beginning of Habitat for Horses.  He was 8 months old when I bought him from the killer-buyer at an auction and brought him home. A month later, a lightning bolt hit a transformer next to our house, sending Pete over a six-foot wooden fence and into the woods, there to be entangled in a mass of barbed wire on my neighbor’s property. The result left his front legs cut to the bone at his chest level, an open wound 18 inches across and nine inches tall.

He’s healed now. It took a whole year in a stall for the wound to close enough for him to venture outside, and another six months before he could be around another horse. Now, years later, he stays at the ranch, the boss of whatever herd is moving through the system, and my best friend. When times get rough, I often wander out to visit him – to talk, to listen to the quiet, and sometimes to dance.

“I’m sorry I’ve been away so long, Pete. Things just became so busy that I haven’t had a chance to stop. I know it’s been a long time, far too long, but I just wanted to say …”

I stood in the pasture with him, standing on the edge of night, unable to continue. I thought of all the days we’ve had, of all the nights we shared, and wondered how my life would have been different if I had not looked into his eyes so many years ago.

Back in those dark days when he first came to me, back when his wounds were so deep, when his desire to give up so raw, I looked into those eyes and told him that as long as he would try, I’d walk beside him. He gave me his trust, his complete love, and to him I gave mine.

And then we danced.

His first steps were full of fear. The pain from his wounds often left him shaking and sweating. His goal was to stand as still as possible, to lie down, perhaps even to drift away into a place where the pain no longer existed. I couldn’t let him. “He has to move,” the vet told me. “Even a little, even a step or two, or otherwise …” He was that close, that small line away from closing down forever.

And so we danced.

One step towards the apple. One small step towards the outstretched handful of feed. Come to me, Pete, I’d cry. Just put your foot out a little. Just once, okay?

I’d stand beside him, moving one foot at a time, lifting, putting down, lifting another and putting it down, until all four were moved. One step - one very small, weak, reluctant step, and I’d hold him ever so close and cry.

Because he danced with me.

As the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months, the wounds slowly closed. While I was gone others told me he would just stand, doing nothing. When I returned and walked into his stall he’d walk with me. We’d turn in circles, go from one side of the stall to the other, back up and do it again. I’d touch the back of his hoof and he’d paw the floor. It was our dance, ever so long, ever so slow, but he moved with me, followed what I wanted his to do, step when he needed to, lift his legs high when I pulled them up and place his head on my shoulders when we were through – so tired, so trusting, so wanting to please.

It took a year, almost to the day, before the Doc said that he was ready to leave the stall. “Just as you taught him to walk again, you need to teach him to play, to move gently around the yard. Go very slow, a few minutes at a time, a little longer each day, until his muscles can support him again.”

Pete was two years old when he took his first step outside the stall. We went about five feet, then backed up and closed the door. A little more the next day, a little further the next week. Within a month he was spend all day outside, learning how to munch on grass, learning that falling leaves were okay and that frogs and crickets were his friends. We played a dozen intricate games – hide and seek, catch me if you can, you can’t scare me – but more than any other, we danced. I’d stand beside him, holding onto his mane, and walk. I’d touch his hoof with my boot, watch him paw and play like I was pawing, too. His head on my shoulder, I’d swing slowly around in a circle, supposedly teaching him a new sense of balance.

That’s what I’d tell others. That’s how the Doc told me to do it, but it was far more than balance, far more than exercise, far deeper than rehabilitation.

We danced.

When you hold someone very close, when the world goes away and nothing exists but two souls blending into one, swirling and circling into an entwined realm of love, it’s a dance to music unheard by others. When the heat or the cold no longer matters, when you refuse to let the arguments and battles and problems come barging in, when all is excluded and the two, if only for a moment, become one, the world becomes a ballroom and the emotions become the orchestra.

As darkness came last night, I stood in the pasture and held him in my arms. He rested his head ever so gently on my shoulder. I told him how very much I loved him, how he changed my world, how I’ve missed him. My tears fell onto his mane as his head pulled me closer to him …

And then we danced.

I came home late last night, revitalized, back in touch with a very special feeling about why I am here. In the early part of the evening I listened to people talk about saddles and bridles, databases and adoptions and in the middle of it all I had to leave, to walk out into the pasture and visit with Pete. The complications of life and business sometimes become so confusing that we miss the essence of what we are all about. There isn’t a horse or a human that doesn’t need love, yet many of us become so busy that we walk through the midst of a herd without once reaching out. We walk over the flowers and ignore the birds and walk past the warm noses reaching out to us.

Slow down.

Listen to the music.

Come dance with the horses and me.