Dust as thick as fog hung in the air as the colt, sides heaving, nostrils flaring and his once steel-gray coat now a reddish hue from dust sticking to his sweat, turned wearily to the inside of the pen. He slowly, almost cautiously, lowered his head to chest level, and with his ears pricked in her direction, took time to study the woman standing just a few feet from him. He was in a precarious situation, and he knew it. He had done the one thing no horse ever willingly wants to do—mindlessly expend all of his energy in the presence of a predator. Yet that was exactly what he’d done and now he was vulnerable. His severely fatigued legs shook uncontrollably under him and he began to understand that if he needed to run again, he wouldn’t be able, not for long anyway.

The colt stood in that spot, sweat dripping from his belly and his chin and his nose, for what seemed like a very long time. His instinct—the same one that had earlier told him to run until he could run no more—was now telling him to stand. Perhaps if he could stand long enough, he could catch his breath and regain some strength. If he did, he could make another run for it if he had to, or if need be, even fight.

Then the woman moved. It was an extremely small movement for a human, her foot sliding less than an inch to the right. But for a horse, and a nervous horse at that, any movement was going to appear big and that movement appeared to him as if someone had just driven a bulldozer through a wall. The colt’s body immediately stiffened. Eyes rimmed in white and bulging nearly out of their sockets, his head shot straight up, and he sucked back on his haunches preparing to flee. The woman slowly shifted weight onto the foot and the colt instantly looked to his left, away from the direction the woman was obviously thinking about going. His head darted back to the woman, then back to the left, then back to the woman.

She slowly shifted her other foot to the right, which put her body ever so slightly out of alignment with the way the two of them had been standing in relationship to one another. This minute, but well thought out adjustment the woman made, caused the colt’s thought to change from fleeing, or even fighting to a worried curiosity about what she was doing. The colt quickly, albeit stiffly, adjusted his entire body so that the two of them were back in alignment with one another. Again, the woman shifted, and again the colt adjusted.

It was about then, after his panic began to subside, that an image slowly began to form in the recesses of his mind. It was a picture similar to the one he had received several weeks earlier when the woman entered his pen and quietly removed the rope from around his neck. He had almost forgotten about that. Then, he had received a mental image, apparently from the woman, showing him what her intentions were, and what he could do to help himself. By doing little more than following the image, the colt was able to approach and allow the woman to remove the rope he had been dragging around since the night before. In this image, though, the colt thought he was seeing the woman gently touching him on his shoulder. There was no danger or harm coming to him in the image, although he was still concerned and fearful.