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In his famous letter to the president of the French republic, Emile Zola (1840-1902) wrote, “it is a crime that exploit the patriotism for works of hatred, and it is a crime, finally, that make the sword the modern God, when all human science is at work for the next piece of truth and justice.” (Emile Zola, J’accuse, 1898)

I am in my turn out eating grass and I watch Oliver, who is a dog, and Max, who is a cat rolling down the hill in their deep friendship and never ending play. I watch Helyn entering the chicken area and I see Ginger, who is a chicken jumping on Helyn’s arm. I watch him filling up the bird feeder and, as I approach, he places his hand on my head and I can read his mind absolutely disgusted by the news.

We are on the side where science is working for the next piece of truth. We are not born with hate but we develop hatred as a defense against incompetence. When Helyn and he invited me in their family. I hated humans. I hated humans because of the suffering they caused. As a yearling, I was already 17 hands and they make me race. From inside the bones to inside the muscles, I felt tremendous pain and they were asking more. I am not a submissive type of guy. Instead I am a fighting type of spirit and I ejected them and I attacked them. It was hell for me but it was hell for them and I believed that I found satisfaction in this imbalance.

She loved my athleticism and my strong will. He was taken back by the intensity of my reactions. He told her, “Yes, the trainer is an idiot and the reason for the horse’s revolt, but the intensity of the revolt is above normal. Yes, he is an amazing athlete. Yes; he is living in hell because of the incompetence of these idiots, but it is always a mistake to buy a horse because we feel sorry for him. Do you think that we can and want to deal with such a problem?” Helyn responded, “He is intelligent; he will understand that not all humans are stupid.”  I moved with them and I realized that I did not hate humans. I hated the situations that low IQ humans created. In fact, I hate hatred because it demeans  my intelligence. I understand now why the ones who base their control on the culture of hate are afraid of science. He taught me how my body can work effortlessly and pain free and I developed my intelligence for greater ease and greater efficiency. At the contrary of some humans who exhibit a smiley face to cover a dirty heart, we horses, exhibit aggressive behavior to cover affliction.   (Sometime, it is not that certain persons change. It is that their mask fell.)

The other day, a new horse arrived angry, full of hate, raging, ”They want me to go easy, relax, but they move their back like a bowl of jelly, forcing me to contract my back.” I told him, because the main function of your back muscles is to protect your thoracolumbar column from a range of movement that your thoracolumbar column cannot afford. Surprised the horse asked, “You mean I’m not guilty?” I said no; you are a victim of pseudoscience. It is unfortunate, but quite often, biomechanics is used as a marketing strategy and there is a lot of fake science that is promoted to market antiquated beliefs. No long ago, he laughed reading a sentence. It was something like removing the mental or emotional problem so our posture improves through building trust. He commented, “You need two drinks to make up something like that and four more drinks to understand it”

“Those you can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” (Voltaire) This is true for humans toward animals including us and this is true for us toward them. When I was blinded by my anger, I kicked at him. I did not fake it, I reacted to get rid of control. I am glad that he placed himself out of reach. I could have killed him. I did not hate him at this time. In fact, I started to like him, but the ones who pushed me into intense revolt makes me react with an aggressiveness that is not my nature. I am intense but I am intense in love as well. He says that I am now the gentled horse in the barn. I always have been gentle, but my handlers’ incompetence triggered self-protection that turned into getting them before they get me. He told me one day, “You are a nature error; too tall, too strong, too fast, too powerful, too spirited and too intelligent. You overwhelm the system. It was just a matter of time before you get them badly hurt and then they would have put you to sleep as too dangerous. Lack of science and incommensurable ego is a lethal combination; it stimulates hatred and can only survive on hatred. They hated you and you hated them and your reciprocal hate engendered more hate. Your mask was hate but your heart was a smile. Helyn saw your smile right away. I am slower and you had to touch me with your nose while the haters screamed that you were dangerous.”

Claude Debussy wrote, “Music is the silence between the notes” That is where I liberated myself from my dumb hate. He played one note and let me compose the music. He played the note again and I rewrote the music. Sometime I was on the wrong line or the wrong key but he gave me time to think and I discovered that my body worked like a symphony. Each part has to be correct but there is the silence between the notes that turns the symphony into a piece of art. He often talks about our physique composed of systems within systems within systems. My deeper systems are out of his reach but he taught me how to think in terms of ease and efficiency, I learned how to orchestrate the deeper systems and these deeper systems are the “silences“ rendering the move elegant and sound.

The music they want us to play is stretching and relaxation. Deep under, some might know that gaits and performances are not about stretching and relaxation but instead subtle nuances in muscle tone. However, they have built an industry on stretching and relaxation and it is easier to convince riders that we should stretch and relax than explain that elasticity of our muscles is due for a large part to a cytoskeletal protein known as filament titine. Titine does have several functions such as sarcomere assembly and muscle spring. Yes, it demands a little more knowledge that the infantile theories of stretching and relaxation, but this is how our body works and how we perform and how we remain sound. Our filaments titine develop more through concepts such as respect of our natural cadence than naïve theories if stretching and relaxation, “If titine is functioning as a locomotor spring, then it should be tuned o the frequency of the muscle use.” (Paul C. LaStayo, PT, PhD. John M. Woolf, PT, MS, ATC. Michael D. Lewek, PT. Lynn Snyde-Mackler, PT, ScD. Trugo Relch, BS. Stan L. Lindstedt, PhD. Eccentric Muscle Contractions: Their contribution to injury, prevention, rehabilitation, and sport. Journal of Orthopaedic & sports physical therapy. 557-571. Volume 33, NUMBER 10, October 2003)

J’accuse the ones who accuse us of behavior because we don’t fit their pseudoscience. Science is at work for the next piece of truth, which is further understanding of our biological mechanism. The truth is how our physique effectively work; not how they conveniently believe that our body work. Science is the factual documentation of tested hypothesis. Pseudoscience is just hypothesis banking on the hope that repeated long enough, hypothesis became reality.  “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, give it the superficial apperance of being right.” (Thomas Pain)

Chazot