Introducing Murphy part 2

I think it was when we began to ride Murphy that we began to fall in love with him. During his illness we felt sorry for him of course, and sorry for the scars he bore from his ill-treatment. We were adamant that we would try to improve Murphy's lot in life, but this didn't really amount to love. However, when he started to allow us to share in his world by being on his back, that's when the bond was forged.

While things seemed to be going better with riding Murphy, our relationships with other liveries at our stable had taken a turn of the worst: it was clear that others couldn't see what we saw in Murphy, after all he greeted every passer-by his box with a snaking neck and plastered back ears, so he did not do its own case much good. People are frightened of what they don't understand, they didn't understand Murphy and they didn't understand us for persevering with him. He had hurt no one but Fiona and I at that time, and we were careful to keep others away from him. However we found ourselves being treated differently, as if some of the perceived madness of our horse was rubbing off on us!
Livery yards can be quite bitchy places, and instead of support with our new and difficult charge, we found ourselves the target of behind the back comments, and even outright hostility. Fiona and I are friendly sorts, and these treatment hurt me particularly deeply. These problems were compounded when our lovely old mare Molly lost her battle with laminitis, and we had to take the painful decision to have her put down. In some strange way Murphy helped us with the pain of losing Molly, we had another life depending on us, we were kept busy.

Loving a horse at the best of times is always strange and largely unrequited experience. It's not in the equine nature to be hugely demonstrative of affection to any but their own species, most will gladly be the recipients of fuss, but seem unwilling, or perhaps unable to return it fully. Murphy was even worse than usual in this, there seemed no way into the defences he had built around himself. The friendly scratch of the neck or withers, which would be appreciated by most horses, he found disturbing; it would provoke a swift retreat to the back of his box, or an even swifter bite. We tried everything we knew to open some form of a channel of communication with Murphy; to find some form of physical contact that he liked, and that could be a reward for him. It was Murphy in the end who took the initiative and open a dialogue: he stuck his tongue out!

It was Fiona who first discovered Murphy's tongue language: we had always been careful to attempt to fuss Murphy's nose at arm's length as he leant over his stable door, avoiding the possibility of a lunge and a bite. But one day, whilst he had his neck fully extended, his ears up and alert, his head tilted sideways with an air of curiosity, he simply popped out his tongue, and Fiona, not really thinking, gave it a gentle tug. Murphy greeted this with the triumph and enthusiasm of a tourist learning his first word of a difficult foreign-language. Now he wanted to use this word all the time!
He soon learned that he could use his new word in several different ways: if he had been told off for misbehaving, out would pop the tongue, seeking reassurance, and possibly even offering a sort of apology. If he wanted yet more reassurance, he would curl his tongue into a sort of tube, and present just the tip of it out of the side of his mouth. When excited and friendly, he would make small enthusiastic licking and suckling motions, liberally interspersed with big floppy invitations to tongue-pull.
Some have attempted to explain this as simply pseudo foal behaviour, a desire to suckle, or some sort of oral fixation possessed by a horse that is not really grown up properly. However when you view this behaviour in context, it seems to be more complicated than that: an attempt, perhaps, to show us how to give him pleasure; in other words a means of communication.

Murphy had come to us with only one shoe on, so we soon discovered another one of its problems: he was not good to shoe, in fact he was impossible without sedation. It was clear that some trauma had caused a deep mistrust of anyone handling his feet, we could just about manage to pick them out, but even this was a struggle, and left us sweating and exhausted. The cost of Molly's treatment had left us financially battered, and now we had the extra burden of a vet call out at every shoeing.

To be continued