Stories from the Field
…Mags, the horse - August 2026
On August 5, 2025, I stood at the edge of an arena with tears in my eyes, watching my friend Kari ride her longtime dressage horse, Mags.
They moved together beautifully—calmly, confidently. Mags carried himself with the same presence and pride I had always known in him, and Kari's smile said everything.
If you hadn't known what had happened less than two weeks earlier, you might never have guessed.
Mags had recently had his left eye removed.
And as I watched them, I kept thinking about a conversation I'd had with him only weeks before.
Because Mags had told us he would be okay.
A Difficult Decision
In July 2025, Mags was approximately 26 years old and dealing with an ongoing problem in his left eye. Despite Kari and her veterinary team's efforts to treat it, the eye wasn't improving.
Kari was facing a decision she desperately didn't want to make:
Should she have Mags's eye removed?
For a horse who had spent so many years as her riding partner and dressage horse, what would losing an eye mean? Would he adjust? Would he still feel safe? Could he continue doing what he loved?
And, perhaps most importantly to Kari:
What did Mags want?
Kari had always supported my path in animal communication, so I offered to connect with Mags. If hearing his perspective could bring some clarity to an incredibly difficult decision, I wanted to help.
On July 20, 2025, I sat quietly at home and connected with him.
I still have the handwritten notes from our conversation.
When I asked Mags how he was feeling, he communicated that the eye was bothering him, more of an itchy discomfort, but he otherwise felt good. When I asked whether he would be okay with only his right eye, his answer came through with a confidence I wasn't expecting.
Yes. He wanted the left eye removed.
He communicated that he was right-side dominant and expressed confidence that he would adjust.
There was no sense from Mags that losing his eye meant losing himself.
But then the conversation became about something much deeper than his eye.
“We've Been Through Obstacles Before.”
Mags knew Kari was struggling.
He seemed aware of how hard she had tried to help him and how much responsibility she was carrying. He wanted her to stop blaming herself.
Then he brought me somewhere I hadn't expected.
Back to the beginning.
Mags showed me an incident early in their relationship when he had bucked Kari off.
I wrote what I received from him:
“In the beginning I bucked you off. That could have been the end, but it wasn't. We persevered and we'll do it again.”
He showed me Kari landing on her left hip and communicated that she had questioned whether she would be able to ride again.
And then came the answer:
It had always been yes.
When I called Kari immediately after the session, some things she could validate right away. Others took a little longer.
At first, she couldn't place the injury Mags had referenced. But days later, after thinking back through their history, she came back to me.
It had happened.
Just over a year into their relationship, Mags had bucked Kari off. She landed hard on her left side and sustained significant injuries. During the long recovery, compensating for those injuries eventually created problems on her left side as well—some of which still bother her today.
Now, all these years later, Mags was facing the loss of his left eye.
And during our conversation, he connected their experiences.
They had healed before.
They would heal again.
Together.
One line from my handwritten notes has stayed with me:
“This is a chance for us to go back to basics and re-establish our bond—heart to heart.”
Trust
With Mags's perspective now part of the conversation, Kari moved forward with her veterinary team.
Within days, Mags's left eye was removed.
His recovery was remarkable.
There were no complications, and Kari approached his adjustment patiently—walking with him and allowing him to rebuild his confidence at his own pace.
Mags had trusted Kari to hear him.
Now Kari was trusting Mags to show her what he could do.
And then came August 5.
Kari got back in the saddle.
I was there with my camera.
And I cried.
Because the horse moving around that arena did not look like a horse who believed something had been taken away from him.
He looked like Mags.
He rode as though nothing had happened.
The dressage horse Kari knew was still very much there.
So was their partnership.
One Year Later
What I couldn't have known when I connected with Mags that July afternoon was how much he would eventually become part of my own life.
On September 1, 2025, I began working at the barn where Mags lived. Instead of simply hearing about his life after surgery, I had the privilege of witnessing it.
And Mags and I became incredibly close.
I affectionately called him my “Auntie's boy.”
For nearly a year, I watched the horse who had been so confident about his future simply go on living it.
Today, Mags is still going strong.
At 27 years old, he and Kari continue to ride together every week. In July 2026, Kari moved him to a beautiful facility better suited to keeping him comfortable as he moves through his senior years.
His world changed when he lost his eye.
His life didn't.
Neither did his identity as a riding horse.
And neither did the partnership between Mags and the woman who had chosen him so many years before.
Looking back at my notes from that conversation, I'm struck by how little fear Mags seemed to have about what lay ahead.
Kari was understandably afraid.
But Mags seemed to know something she couldn't quite know yet.
They had faced uncertainty before.
They had found their way through it together before.
And they could do it again.
Sometimes animal communication isn't about changing what is happening.
Sometimes it is simply about making room for the animal's voice within it.
For Kari, that meant asking one more member of the team what he thought about the decision in front of them:
Mags himself.
His message was beautifully, unmistakably Mags:
Trust me.
Trust yourself.
We've done hard things before.
And a year later, they're still riding forward together.
