I have been thinking about animals lately. Mine, in particular. I have been thinking of them in part because I see them all the time and also due to their enviable capacity for presence. To be fair, their respective abilities to think ahead encompass only the time between meals, arguably giving them a better shot at happiness than a human being, but maybe that’s the key, maybe that’s the reason I love them so much.

And love them I do. I have oftentimes said that Hampton and Calvin Rowbottom are the loves of my life. Which is not to say I don’t have others so, you know dear reader, there is hope for you yet. Still, Ham’s number one. He’s the E.T. to my Elliot. The Wild Thing to my Mad Max. And Calvin, well Calvin’s pretty good too. Calvin is the Calvin to my Hobbes. Duh.

So what is it about these two characters that makes our relationships so easy, so enduring? I mean, Ham and I are going on ten years now and I am more in love with him than ever, which is certainly not something I’ve seen mirrored by the multitude of human relationships I’ve witnessed thus far. I was thinking about this tonight, out at the barn, riding under the stars. I was talking to Ham while we trotted around and realizing that it’s taken me this long to really figure out the importance of encouraging him, constantly, during our practices. I was thinking about how pertinent this lesson is to the rest of my life – that of talking and communicating and expressing encouragement, affection.

And then I was thinking about impermanence. Because things change. Pick up any Buddhism 101 book and that’s what it will tell you. It will say that the nature of life is impermanence and that your misunderstanding of this point is what keeps you suffering.

I get it.

Sort of. In theory.

I am, at the very least, comforted by the knowledge of life’s transience…which is not to say that I don’t cling, like anybody else, to whatever it is I want to keep the same. Which is not to say that I don’t suffer. But it is to say, somewhat to my detriment, that I have often jumped the gun. I have anticipated or created change perhaps before my life does. Because hell, it’s going to happen anyways right? Right. But these days I’m trying to pay tender attention anyways. To sit with discomfort and to act out of bravery and self-knowledge rather than blindness or fear. And I’m getting better at this, embracing the unknown, in part because going with the flow has always been my nature. Still, sometimes I go with it and am caught off guard when conditions cycle away and the rug feels swept out from underneath me. Still, such is life.

Yet despite all this, despite impermanence, there’s an enduring quality to my relationships with other species that seems to be a bit of an exception to the rule. At first, I wondered if maybe such is because Calvin and Ham are enlightened beings. Maybe they have reached Nirvana because don’t they seem so free, so goddamned pure in their emotions? And wouldn’t that do away with so much of the running around, manipulation and misinformation that makes up our lives? But then I thought about how habitually they both wait for their dinners and how their respective fear based reactions cause them temporary, albeit real discomfort and pain.

So they aren’t enlightened. Perhaps they are little Buddha’s though. Perhaps we all are. Calvin can be Siddhartha Buddha, pre-divinity when he was all fat and indulgent and full of gusto and greed. And Ham can be the Buddha after that, when he’s trying to do the right thing, figure out the middle way, and find the path out of anxious attachment. That I (somewhat big-headedly perhaps) think of myself as at a similar stage, may be the reason for the particularly potent connection I feel with my horse. Or maybe it’s because we’ve known each other, been their for one another, for so long now.

When we first met, Ham and I, he was a grump and I was a petrified, post-divorce adolescent. And we spent the first five years of our partnership hashing out our collective angst (he refused to walk, I refused to take care of myself, talk to my mom, etc)

When I went to college, and took a break from the pattern of perfection I’d demanded of both of us for years in the show ring, Ham and I spent time apart. We each had a tricky time of it (one of us did drugs, boys, NYC nightlife and one of us ditched lesson kids and developed a habit of “running away”) But when we finally found each other again, after all that, we picked right up where we’d left off. In fluid, baggage-free friendship.

Indeed, there was, and I suspect always will be, an effortlessness to our relationship. It’s the question of why this is the case that perplexes me. Or comforts me. I say this because everywhere I look I see people striving to “make it work,” to make it last, to make each other do whatever it is they want. Rarely is there an ease to interpersonal dealings and if there is, it’s a gift worth cradling (not clutching) in the arms of grateful attention. I haven’t always cradled Ham and still he stays around, stays loving me. Ok, not having cradled is an understatement. I have tried, on numerous occasions (albeit broken heartedly and against my will) to get rid of him. To sell him. To donate him. To lease him out. To leave. And yet, for whatever reason (thank you Universe) here we are, still a team after all these years.

So why. Why does it work? Is ours a relational exception to the impermanence rule?

Doubtful, especially because our friendship has certainly changed over time. It has changed in that it has grown, always fuller. Maybe this is because I spent so many years trying to let him go, and dancing around the discomfort of doing so in all areas of my life. Maybe it’s because he stayed on regardless. Maybe that is why he feels so constant to me. Or maybe it’s because I can be laughing or crying or obsessing or rejoicing and he will still pin his ears at me if it’s 4 p.m. and he’s eating his hay. He will still curl his lip when I wash out his nose. Or poop in the wash stall. Or badger me for a treat at the end of a ride.

Maybe it’s because, for all his fears of bogeymen in the bushes outside the arena, or giant snakes in the wash stall (the hose) he is not afraid to let me lead him past all that. He’s not afraid that I might  someday be unable to do so. Maybe all this. And maybe it’s because he knows what I’m still striving to figure out. That now is all that matters anyways.