04/15/2026
Big Feelings
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A kind reader asked about Tern’s Big Feelings. How do these manifest themselves? What do they look like? I’m a huge fan of being able to honour and acknowledge the Big Feelings of our horses, so I’m going to tell you a little story, where you can see them in action.
Also, I should say that I have completely stolen ‘Big Feelings’ from someone else - the person who lodges at our field. It was such a clever expression, and now I am going to use it all the time. It’s expressive and evocative and obviously it has to have capital letters.
Tern the Bird came to us with established separation anxiety. When she went to work in her old job, she had to have a friend to travel with her. I saw the high anxiety the moment she arrived. I put her and the other two in fields divided only by a rail until I could work out that nobody was going to kick or bite anybody, but she freaked out so badly that I had to risk putting them together straight away because I thought she was going to give herself stress colic, or even injure a leg, because of the pacing and galloping.
Over the years, we’ve worked on the separation anxiety in two ways. One is building a relationship so that she feels safe and at home in her skin and her world. I think that the relationship bit helps horses feel safe with us, their humans, but also with themselves. And part of that is regulating and co-regulating the nervous system. (I’m so grateful to the people who taught me about this, because I once didn’t even know it existed or was possible.)
So there are the foundations, which help with everything, and then there are the specifics, which I’ve described before - you take them away and bring them back and you take them a little farther each time and you show them that everybody is still alive and the mountain lions did not come. It’s a kind of emotional reassurance and a building of resilience too.
No longer would she pace the rails or run into trees or give me frights. We did it! Hurrah!
Just as I was secretly thinking I really was quite clever I moved the herd into different living arrangements for spring. We are rotating the paddocks and doing general paddock management. (A man with a blue tractor comes to the magic field.) All this involved was literally a geographical difference of two hundred yards.
However, it clearly triggered something in Tern. THE BIG FEELINGS WERE RELEASED. All I had to do was take the red mare out of the new living area without paying attention and everything exploded.
Here are how the Big Feelings express themselves:
Shouting.
Wild pacing.
Actual full-on galloping, up and down, up and down. Ventre à Terre, as the clever French say.
Snorting.
Growing an entire hand.
Total refusal to focus or settle in any way.
Extreme physical activation and agitation.
It’s so funny, reading that list. Only a year or so ago I would feel a shame-sink of the heart. I worked so long and hard with my little bird, and we still have that long list. Just because we moved paddocks!
But here’s the thing. There’s nothing wrong with her and there is nothing wrong with me. I am a product of nature and nurture, just as she is, and in our DNA and in our history in the physical world we have developed certain reactions to things. Some of those reactions are non-desirable, and some of them can be changed almost in a heartbeat, and some of them are going to TAKE THREE YEARS.
Yes, they are.
We do not shame Big Feelings, not in our field. We do find ways to channel them and to manage them. I don’t want her turning herself inside out, but I’m not going to scold her or judge her.
It took four concentrated days. I went back to the basics. I did boundaries, and I did self-control. I actually did something I haven’t thought about for a while: I consciously directed her feet. This worked wonders. It really helped her. It wouldn’t, for instance, be nearly so helpful for Florence, but it did help Tern.
I took the red mare out and put her back in again. Then I took her out about another ten feet, and put her back in again. Then I left the red mare in place and walked back and forth to Tern. The red mare did ostentatiously dazzling Standing Still Olympics and I was so grateful to her I can’t even tell you. If she had wandered off, we might have been in trouble. But no, she knew I needed her help and she gave it, without stint.
Day by day, Tern remembered that she does have the capacity to control her own body. I did teach her that. My theory is that when they’ve evolved coping mechanisms - mostly to deal with fear or stress or uncertainty - they tend to revert to those in times of trouble. The red mare going away represented trouble.
Oh, and here’s the other thing. I really try not to mock or patronise my horses. I think it matters. I could tell her she was being silly, with all the Big Feelings and all, but I chose not to. I chose to honour what she was experiencing and not look down my snooty human nose. She was feeling what she was feeling. Fifty-seven million years of evolution were telling her she was going to die. I can’t scoff at that. I can keep myself safe and make sure she remembers there are lines she cannot cross, because she is half a ton and I don’t want to be run over, thank you very much. But scoff at her? No, I won’t do that.
We came back to equilibrium. We’ll probably have a bit of a swing and a wobble again, at some point. We’ll go on getting better. I will learn and she will learn and that’s how the Big Feelings, in the end, become something that don’t have to overset us completely.
