Hello Dear Humans, I don’t think my human, Ma Leueen, has told you about the show we were at last weekend. She’s been pretty busy with her offspring visiting. Humans call them children even when they are completely grown up. Anyway, this female human is called her “daughter” and she has an offspring of her own, a little colt who is a couple of years old. They come out to see me of course and I am very gentle and well behaved with the little humans.
Now, back to the show. There is something important that came up at the show that I need to tell you about. The weather here has been pretty bad with a lot of rain. So, the humans decided that it was safest to have the show in the indoor arena. But they had the warm up in the outdoor. Well, in the afternoon when we were warming up it was bright sunshine. I’m fine with that. I know you humans squish your eyes almost closed and wear those dark things on your eyes in bright sunlight but we horses are fine with that.
However……
From the bright warm up we went into the indoor arena. The dark indoor arena. The ground in this arena is made from something very dark, almost black and there is not much light that comes from outside. So, it is DARK! What you humans may not know is that your eyes can adjust to this difference in a matter of seconds. But for we horses it is different. For us it can take minutes, many minutes. I knew this and did my best when we went in but it was not easy and they had put something different at the end of the arena. At first, I did not see it clearly but I was nervous. But since Ma Leueen asked me to keep on going I did. I got over it. And after my eyes had adjusted I could see it was the judges stand and table and a blue shiny cloth draped in front of it. That has not been in the arena when we had gone in there the day before. But no matter I just got on with our test.
So, Dear Humans, I would like to remind you of something. Millennia ago you were living in caves and going from the dark cave to the bright outside and then back into the dark cave. Your eyes evolved to be able to make that transition quickly. We horses lived outside in the light all the time. We did not go into caves or other dark and dangerous places and so our eyes did not evolve to be able to make quick changes. So, going into a dark arena or a dark stable we have difficulty adjusting and being able to see for several minutes.
We horses are superior to humans in many ways but not in the ability of our eyes to adjust from light to dark. If you could just keep that in mind we would very much appreciate it.
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