Heartwarming by Whinny ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a little story, that I have heard directly from the person this story is about. This person is about 60 years old now, and the time is in the late 40's. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ He said, it was when he was young, in the years at the end of the second world-war. Here in Europe, everything was destroyed, bombed and in ruins. He was homeless, had nothing to eat, was freezing, and desperate to no end. He said, he stole something in a city and was traveling along the road, when soldiers came in persuit of him. He said, he quickly jumped into the bushes on the side of the road to hide himself. And there was the wooden-fence of a paddock. He climbed over it and sat down at the base of a pole, pulling up his legs and resting. He sat there the whole evening and night, and he grew desperate more and more. He was feeling that life had no sense anymore. He was completly lost and wrecked he said. He hid his face in his hands and cried until he had no more tears and was shivering in his wet clothes from the cold and his own sobs. That was when, he said, he spotted two horses in this field. Two old mares I think he said. They walked up to him and he can swear, they knew how desperate he was. They kept nuzzling and nudging him and, he said, they gave him more love than he ever had in his whole life. When he stretched out his hand, shyly and shaking and touched their velvet muzzles and they responded with their gentle nips and nuzzles, he said, he felt so loved again and the warmth spread through his body. They stayed with him through the rest of the night, and he is sure today, that their presence, their lovely touches, and their tender nudges and nuzzles, that this very treatment saved his life, for he is sure he would have ended it this night. For this night, they made him feel save and loved. They gave him confidence in himself again and made it possible for him to look ahead. The way they treated him made him look at them in a total different light. He never thought they could be that understanding and sensitive. He said, that he will never forget them, and he has a great respect for them, and he admires them. He stated, and he said it with awe "They really knew how I was feeling ... they really knew it." And from the way he said that words, it was easy to see, that in his thoughts he relived this very moments and was with them again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I admit, that when I heard that story, I was smiling a lot, for I know exactly how this feeling is. It was very nice to see, how this moments, this one night he spent with the horses, changed his whole life so much. ... *Whinny whinnies* ...