Alagirl…what is the point? I noted that anyone who has a horse that they have a connection with that is stronger than any they have had before (or since) shouldn’t be trashed for saying that horse is (was) their heart horse.
So, is your point this thread is only directed towards horse PROFESSIONALS?
Where did I say I DON’T admire professionals who know their ‘stuff’?
I do not get your weird tangent at all.
call your horse anything you want. I do. You won’t bash me into doing any different.
Talk about first world problems… sheesh.
Yes, I have a “heart horse”- I’ve never actually called her that before I don’t think. Honestly if I wanted to call her my special fluffy magic fairy unicorn and I truly ate only Ramen so that I could support her even though she was deaf, blind and had 3 1/2 legs what difference is it to you?
[QUOTE=Laurierace;7766847]
I am disappointed to report that my recipe turned out great.[/QUOTE]
Maybe someone should post the recipe for Rainbow Cake.
So because someone doesn’t like the term heart horse, it means that they never truly experienced the love and connection of a special horse and they need pity. BTW, I had my “heart horse” but unfortunate financial circumstances forced me give him up. I miss him EVERY SINGLE DAY. I guess I didn’t REALLY love him and have a connection since if he really was my “heart horse” I would have starved myself and lived out of my car to keep him.
I hate the term, just because it sounds very cutesy fartsy, Disneyesque.
Then we even went as low as to say this person doesn’t deserve their spouse and they should leave them. Yup, COTH has sunk to a new low and it wasn’t the OP.
Yea, I don’t really get the whole “heart horse” thing either, and I have one. lol I don’t ever call her that, and if I did…she’d dump me in a hot second. Instead, I say that I lucked into the best partner ever, and I never take one day for granted. It doesn’t mean I love her less, because I don’t call her a heart horse.
[QUOTE=AffirmedHope;7767482]
So because someone doesn’t like the term heart horse, it means that they never truly experienced the love and connection of a special horse and they need pity. BTW, I had my “heart horse” but unfortunate financial circumstances forced me give him up. I miss him EVERY SINGLE DAY. I guess I didn’t REALLY love him and have a connection since if he really was my “heart horse” I would have starved myself and lived out of my car to keep him.
I hate the term, just because it sounds very cutesy fartsy, Disneyesque.
Then we even went as low as to say this person doesn’t deserve their spouse and they should leave them. Yup, COTH has sunk to a new low and it wasn’t the OP.[/QUOTE]
Nobody said it couldn’t be a heart horse if you didn’t keep it forever. I donated my first heart horse to TRF when he retired from the track. I miss him to this day but it was the right thing to do.
…note to self - never open a thread by French Fry again. 
The subject is certainly not worth a ‘face palm’ when you hear the word
‘heart horse’. We don’t even know the posters - they are probably members who are a lot younger than us and use terms differently. Grammar police, spelling police and now terminology police.
I feel deeply sorry for the people in this world who don’t value life In all its forms. Animals are souls in different suits. Study after study these days proves their social and family structure and supports that they do have emotions.
They may communicate in different ways and certainly lack some human traits, but this doesn’t make their lives less valuable.
Was it Ghandi who said that a society is defined by how it treats its animals?
Further, to presume to have any concept of how another person feels love or connection is absurd.
French Fry, starting an inflammatory thread in order to put down others is just sad and says much more about you than those you ridicule. Is your life truly so lacking that this is what you need to make yourself whole. Is this who you want to be in the world?
I hope that you & those like you can one day see that compassion is better than criticism.
Lastly, did someone die & leave you in charge of determining what constitutes a bad decision for someone else?
I love my horse and my dog. If you ask my husband he’ll tell you he knows his place and it’s AFTER the horse and dog. lol But I would never refer to them as my “heart horse” or my “heart dog.” Or my furkid/furbaby. That doesn’t mean I don’t love them and I don’t think that’s what FF meant either.
There are some words, phrases, terms that make our skin crawl or our toenails curl. I can’t think of any for me right now but maybe FF was having a bad day, things were slow or she’d heard it one time too many. It doesn’t make her a bad person and it certainly doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her animals. I think some people are taking this WAY too seriously!
I had to PTS the best dog I ever had almost 20 years ago and I still cry over him but I’ve never called him my heart dog or my fur kid. When Lady dies I’ll be in bed, on drugs for weeks but she’ll never hear me call her my heart horse. Baby girl…yeah, well :winkgrin:
[QUOTE=ayrabz;7767219]
Alagirl…what is the point? I noted that anyone who has a horse that they have a connection with that is stronger than any they have had before (or since) shouldn’t be trashed for saying that horse is (was) their heart horse.
So, is your point this thread is only directed towards horse PROFESSIONALS?
Where did I say I DON’T admire professionals who know their ‘stuff’?
I do not get your weird tangent at all.
call your horse anything you want. I do. You won’t bash me into doing any different.[/QUOTE]
I don’t care if you call your horse a butterfly…
But the sentiment of needing to feel ‘pity’ for those who don’t buy into the fluff…well…I ain’t doing the bashing. I am not telling that people are somewhat a lesser horse person for not feeling the special bong or can’t see the rainbows and sparkles. And that is what this has boiled down to. ‘Horse trader’ has been thrown out as if it was an insult. or the suggestion has been made that the OP is not capable of caring actions toward living beings.
And you tell me I am bashing?
Anyhow:
In the vein of the OP, the special bond with Dobbins…he special connection nobody else can see…
It’s all about the bond!
You won’t even need a helmet, right, because he loooooves you!
K, now, once more: The phrase has become weighed down with crazy and fluff.
This does not mean that the bond you can develop with your fellow living being, be it horse, dog or, heck, even husband, must never be special if you are rational.
I know for a fact that my dad was many times the horseman certain snake salesmen will ever be. he didn’t then nor does now mince words. He did have relationships with his horses, but never lost sight of the big picture: In the end it is a horse.
[QUOTE=french fry;7764227]
I can’t even articulate how many face palms the phrase “heart horse” inspires in me. Particularly since it’s almost always used to imbue extra emphasis on the specialness of your situation or lend credence to a terrible decision, i.e. “I’m eating cat food and racking up credit card debt to pay for my heart horse, but it’s all worth it because (rainbow sparkly heart emojis) HEART HORSE.” Or, “My trainer said he’s going to kill me one day but I won’t give up on him because (insert Black Stallion fantasy emoji here) HE’S MY HEART HORSE.”
“Well, that (terrible decision I made) was different because he was my heart horse.”
Just stop it. We humans have a pretty unlimited capacity for love. There will be another one and you will love him/her. Otherwise, what’s the point of being in horses at all?
Mean old hag of COTH, over and out![/QUOTE]
Mean old hag of COTH, someday I will have to tell you of MY heart horse. She is my second heart horse in my fifty plus years in horses.
MY heart horses are/were really really special. They don’t fart rainbows but they understand me and I understand them. We LOVE each other. 
And yep, I would do just about anything for a heart horse. Heart horse…I love the sound of that even.
Well I have skipped from page 1 just to say I agree with the OP. I hate the term. I got my first horse in 1965 and have had at least one or two or more continuously since. They are all special and unique individuals to me, or I wouldn’t have owned them. Geez, it’s like saying well, I have four kids but only one of them is my ‘heart’ kid.
what a stupid waste of time this one has been.
The only person I can see who attaches unwarranted emotion to the term is the OP needing to blow some steam it seemed to cause in her hearing it from others.
Some people do use the term, some don’t . I don’t think anyone who uses it has any disdain for someone who chooses not to. If what you wanted to post on was “Stop making bad horse decisions based on your emotional unbalance” then that’s what you should have said. I’ll wager most would have agreed with you. But to 100% group anyone using that term to a simpering idiot who has no spine to make good choices for their animals and their well being and their families is just a waste of time.
[QUOTE=ayrabz;7768848]
what a stupid waste of time this one has been.
The only person I can see who attaches unwarranted emotion to the term is the OP needing to blow some steam it seemed to cause in her hearing it from others.
Some people do use the term, some don’t . I don’t think anyone who uses it has any disdain for someone who chooses not to. If what you wanted to post on was “Stop making bad horse decisions based on your emotional unbalance” then that’s what you should have said. I’ll wager most would have agreed with you. But to 100% group anyone using that term to a simpering idiot who has no spine to make good choices for their animals and their well being and their families is just a waste of time.[/QUOTE]
All this negativity…why?
does htis make you feel bad when somebody whom you do not know, are likely never to meet dislikes a phrase of the English language?
Really strange that you get upset to this point…
I heart pancakes.
Is that so wrong?
I can’t figure out how people can pick one horse and say the love it more than the others. It’s like saying you love one kid more than the others. Again like having a “heart kid”.
Honestly, I ride lots of difficult horses that require a lot of time and emotion in them. So the horse I love the most is the one I’m currently riding. My best horse is the one I’m currently riding.
I’m not sure how you can have a “heart horse”, it’s like thinking about one kid while you’re spending time with another? Strange concept.
The OP was mostly frustrated with the complacent sympathy given the moment the term “heart horse” was unleashed upon a thread.
Speaking for myself, I don’t care if someone dislikes the word, I didn’t like being told to stop using it and the assumption that I was making poor decisions because I use it. I generally refer to him as the equine love of my life because hubby (not DH!) gives me the hairy eyeball if I refer to my horse as the love of my life but have been known to shorten it to heart horse on occasion. My heart horse is 26 years old so the fear of losing him is always in the back of my mind but I would never let that fear cloud my decisions when it comes time to do what is right for him. The OP implied otherwise and I took offense to that. I had a photographer come to the farm this week to get some photos with me in them since I am usually the photographer. I think she captured our feelings for him well.
http://roughcoatphoto.smugmug.com/2014-Laurie-Mark-and-friends/n-BJJGX/
[QUOTE=Alagirl;7768889]
All this negativity…why?
does htis make you feel bad when somebody whom you do not know, are likely never to meet dislikes a phrase of the English language?
Really strange that you get upset to this point…[/QUOTE]
It’s very tricksy to have a thread the whole point of which is to bash a group of people and then claim they are the negative ones for defending themselves.
Very tricksy indeed.
[QUOTE=Laurierace;7768915]
Speaking for myself, I don’t care if someone dislikes the word, I didn’t like being told to stop using it and the assumption that I was making poor decisions because I use it. I generally refer to him as the equine love of my life because hubby (not DH!) gives me the hairy eyeball if I refer to my horse as the love of my life but have been known to shorten it to heart horse on occasion. My heart horse is 26 years old so the fear of losing him is always in the back of my mind but I would never let that fear cloud my decisions when it comes time to do what is right for him. The OP implied otherwise and I took offense to that. I had a photographer come to the farm this week to get some photos with me in them since I am usually the photographer. I think she captured our feelings for him well.
http://roughcoatphoto.smugmug.com/2014-Laurie-Mark-and-friends/n-BJJGX/[/QUOTE]
Well, since the OP did not say that YOU in particular where of this nature, why dos it bother you?
it’s not like you have not come across those people who basically torture their animals with their love, keeping lame horses around when they should be put down, feeding dogs until they are about to burst…because of the special magic connection…
I am not sure where the OP warrants to dismiss her knowledge and expertise in horse keeping from the annoyance she has over the expression of fluff.
Some of that stuff was pretty personal.
Trying to explain the concept of a horse of a lifetime/heart horse to someone who hasn’t experienced that is like trying to explain color to a blind person or sound to a deaf person.
It doesn’t make sense.
It’s not “I love this horse more than any other horse in the entire world.” Because you don’t think about it like that - it’s not a comparison. It’s just a different connection.
IME, that horse picks you more than you pick that horse. And it’s certainly not all sunshine and rainbows and farting butterflies; I don’t say heart horse, but I do call my mare the horse of a lifetime (because she totally is!). There are definitely days where we’re pissed off at each other, or things just aren’t clicking, and she’s the most difficult ride I’ve ever sat on…but I wouldn’t trade a moment with her for anything else in the world.
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