HOME/THE ENQUIRY
The enquiry
What is the presence of a horse worth to a human being?
Life
A horse has a life before we give it a purpose.
What does a horse need to live as a horse, and to stay free to take part or not?
What happens if we make room for that life, respecting horses' natural rhythms and agency?
And how might we begin to reconsider our own place in the living world?
Three words
What we mean by them
- Free
- The horse lives according to its nature: it moves, meets others and goes away, without being shut in. The manure stays on the land. Where there are enough trees, no shelter or stable is needed. Depending on the location, part of the food can come from the land itself, so less has to be brought in. At the same time, how much fresh green the horses eat each day has to be watched, and they must not eat green carobs, so sometimes part of the land has to be closed off.
One example: Wild Horse Fire Brigade, about 200 protected wild horses in the Siskiyou Mountains, USA - Semi-free
- A large shared area with real boundaries: fences that keep the horses safe and the neighbours calm. The manure has to be cleared. Shade and shelters let the horses hide from the wind and rain. Almost all of the food comes from outside.
- Living-only
- Nothing is required of them. No work, no lessons, no performance. Anything beyond living happens only if the horse chooses it. Each horse has the right to refuse, and respecting that right is our responsibility.
In every case, a separate, roofed shelter that can be closed is needed: a place where a horse that falls ill can recover alone and in peace.
Starting point
A horse does not have to perform to deserve a life. That is not a business case.
This is where we start.
What a horse is not here
- Not a tool
- The horse is not a method, a mirror or an instrument.
- Not a therapist
- The horses are not a treatment. Therapists may work in the space independently, and the horses are free to take no part.
- Not a product
- Nothing in Horse Presence is designed to be consumed.
A horse is a horse.
The value
What if the presence of a horse could create value, even when it performs nothing?
The same value
Does the presence of every horse have the same value?
What people feel in that presence may differ from one horse to another. That is one of the questions we are asking.
Sustainability
Is that value enough to respect its natural existence?
- For the place
- Can the value humans experience through the presence of horses sustain the conditions in which horses can live?
- For the visitor
- Can people pay to spend meaningful time with horses without asking the horse to perform?
- Economically
- Can people's appreciation of horse presence become part of the economic infrastructure that lets horses live in the world?
- Ultimately
- Can free or semi-free horse living-only places become self-sustaining if we open them for humans to visit?
This is not a finished model. It is an experiment. At Our Home Can Tigres we are testing whether people value the presence of horses enough to pay for it, in money or in other ways. If they do not, the test shows that too.
The central question
The central question is economic as well as ethical: if a living horse can contribute to people’s lives through its presence, and that value helps sustain places where horses can live, then slaughter is no longer the only economic outcome people imagine for that horse.
What if the value of a horse did not depend on what it could produce, how fast it could run, what work it could do, or how much its body could be sold for?
This is not yet an answer. It is something to investigate, build and test.
The question is not only how we save a horse when there is nowhere for it to go.
It is how we create somewhere for the horse to go in the first place.
Island of Horse Presence
What could become possible in Ibiza if more places existed where people could share their presence with horses?
The horse is a doorway
What changes when presence is no longer dependent on the horse?
The horse can invite us into presence. But can we carry that capacity with us? Into a conversation. Into a relationship. Into conflict. Into parenting. Into work. Into solitude. Into the way we meet another living being.
- Across experiences
- What can develop through repeated contact?
- Over time
- How does that value unfold?
Society values
