Jobi spent fifteen months away from me, first owned by (unknown at the time I sold him) a horse dealer with a very large equestrian facility and then sold to a family who owned him the majority of those months. I will never know how he was ridden or handled, though I have no doubts he was very loved by the family I bought him back from.
I was turning Jobi out to pasture yesterday, after riding him for the first time since he returned home, and couldn’t help but think that experiences change you. In the time we were apart I have grown to be a very different person than the one who never knew the loss of a horse. All of the people I interacted with and paths I had to take during that year have shaped me into someone, who is in many ways, unrecognizable from who I was before.
I think this applies to horses as well. They are already unique and individualistic. They have personalities and act out of emotion, feelings, and exist in the moment. They also learn how to expect, and by that I mean they learn what habits the people and horses around them have, and they adapt to co-exist with those habituated people and horses.
In Jobi I can see the effects of being handled and ridden by different people. I can see that he now expects it is okay to be pushy with his body, pillage for grazing grass whenever it suits him on the lead. He expects me to be less than careful in bridling him, and that I will never ask him to lower his head. He expects me to be wary at the speed of his walk under saddle and that I will want him to slow down.
Somehow though, he still expects that a canter depart should be asked for in the way I trained him. I can see changes in the way he interacts with the horses in his new herd now, he is more defensive than he has ever been before. He has come to expect that the horses in his herd will push him around in some way, that he has to be the aggressor in order to survive, where he once was content in expecting the horses of his herd to take care of him and keep him safe.
I see some of the same in myself after all that has happened this past year, a sort of defensive protection. Wariness. This has sharply contrasted against all the kindness shown in support of me bringing Jobi home. Perhaps I can spur that same emotional reaction in Jobi through kindness, call it the “pass it on” rule if you will.
Now I wonder how the two of us will change, which of our expectations will grow or remain the same. Where will we struggle – together and individually, and for how long. 
He is the best friend I’ve known for so many years, each of us finishing each others’ sentences until we separated and now in reunion we must navigate through the maze of differences that have developed in that time. My half is working at becoming whole again with Jobi.
One thing I know for sure, there is no turning back and no time like the present. Jobi is with me forever, and I carry him with me now even in the short times we must be parted.