My fav animal.

It’s the #WYF day at Revenge Of Eve

and today the question is – what’s your favourite animal? Thanks for hosting, Eve. 🙂

So, my favourite animal for years was bear. Just any kind of a bear. Now I think it was mainly because I just liked our Polish word for a little bear, or a teddy bear, which is miś. I still really like it, I mean the word, and I still have my most favourite teddybear Pimpuś, but that’s  it about my love for bears now. I like them, but not as crazily as when I was younger, when I wanted to feed bears in the zoo with honey. 😀

Now, my favourite animals are cats and horses. Cats because they’re just so mysterious, enigmatic, introverted, silent, you may think they’re so silent so that you may not even notice their presence, but still most of them has something very soothing about them, my Misha is this kind of cat, I’ll always somehow sense when he’s around. I don’t know… the atmosphere changes in some way lol. Plus I think cats have a lot of traits in common with me, or otherwise, so that’s probably why I like them and why many of them seem to like me. My gramma’s cat Felix, about whom gramma says that he’s wild, always comes to me and lies at my feet when we come to her. He never lets me stroke him, but aparently, besides gramma, he doesn’t lay at anyone else’s feet and doesn’t act this way around anyone. Maybe he feels Misha’s smell. Before I got Misha and became convinced that Russian blue cats are just the best cats under the sun, I wanted to have a black cat, but now I wouldn’t change Misha for a million billiards of black cats. He’s just the best and he’s my baby and my best friend and just everything for me. But well, I named him Misha, which (apart from being a diminutIVE of michael) is Russian for little bear or teddy bear, so I must still have those bears on my mind haha. But Misha is such a cool name for him, rather gentle and cute, but still handsome and masculine and charming, just as Misha is. There aren’t many names with this kind of vibe. Oh but I’m going off topic!

Let’s go on to horses. When I was a little girl I was just so enormously afraid of horses. I’ve always had balance issues and height anxiety, and we all had obligatory hipotherapy at the nursery. I was just so shaky when I had to have it. Usually we just were riding around, but if I had to do some exercises on the horse, I always failed. I was so afraid and my coordination and balance was so rubbish, so that everyTime I finished hipotherapy I was more and more discouraged and more afraid. Then the nightmare ended and at school only a few kids with most complex needs like CP were having hipotherapy so I was immensely relieved. But after a few years my Mum decided to sign me up for hipotherapy at our local stud. Mum didn’t really know about my fear for horses, but even if she did, I don’t think it would change that much. I got to know I’ll have hipotherapy the very last day before it was supposed to happen and I was just panicking. You know, after all these years, my fear grew just so huuuge. But then we went there, I sat on a horse, felt very very anxious and dizzy for a while and then started to relax and actually at the end of my hour I was extatic. I liked this horse so much! I started to love horse riding very passionately. I was still afraid and my balance was still a mess, but after some time, my hipotherapist, who is also a professional rider and horse riding instructor, offered me to have actual riding lessons because she said I’m very good at it despite my issues. And I agreed and I still horseride in the same stud, on the same horse and with the same instructor, having just elements of hipotherapy, but generally learning to ride and sometimes still participating in competitions. I am so grateful for my Mum. Actually it is still weird for me that I am riding, because theoretically it seems like the worst choice of sport for me – it requires good balance, sensory integration, coordination skills and a few other things that I don’t have in abundance, but I’m still doing it and apparently it goes well. I still do have some fear every time I’m riding, my horse is very big so I need to face my height anxiety and I hate riding downhill, but it’s not so overwhelming at all.

I love my horse. His name is Czardasz, which is literally just czardas in Polish,but everyone calls him Łoś, which means elk. 😀 He’s very big as I said and very old, he’s 23, having various health difficulties, but still working. He’s just so incredibly phlegmatic, he’s so calm that when he’s walking, he can literally lose himself so deeply in his thoughts (or in sleep 😀 ) that he can easily stumble, but overall he’s so calm that he’s the safest horse on Earth. He’s very demanding for his riders, he never lets me do things by halves while riding and somehow he always knows the possibilities of a rider, for example if a child with cerebral palsy is riding him apparently he can feel what they can do, and if they can do something, he will only respond if they will do it correctly. but despite his phlegmatic, a bit indifferent you could say, way of being, he’s very feeling and emotional. We get along really well and actually are pretty similar.

My horse “for replacement” (so when Łoś is ill or something else happens) is named Tarzan, but everyone calls him Rudy (which means redhead). He’s younger than Łoś, his very sensitive and lively, and a bit cheeky. I love troting on him, because his trot is so light. My instructor says it’s so light you could as well just sit down, relax  and have a cup of coffee while troting and you wouldn’t spill a drop and that’s true. 😀 He can be very stubborn at times and his favourite food are apples. Łoś can’t eat apples, but when I’m riding on Rudy and don’t have apples for him, but only carrots, he seems rather disappointed, although he’ll devour anything edible willingly.

So yeah, that’s it about my favourite animals.