It's been argued that of all the animals humans have domesticated, the horse is the most important to our history. For thousands of years, horses were our most reliable mode of transportation.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I still prefer horses to human beings.
Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.
Horses are in our DNA. We used them way before cars for commuting.
I've been on some very good horses which have died, and that's very tough to take. But as much as we love the horses, and care for them, human life is obviously more important. Some good friends of mine have died or been paralysed while doing a job we all love.
Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it's the world's largest land mass and offered the most wild species to begin with.
Horses are a mirror of who you are. They're emotionally dependent on you.
A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.
Horses are like people - they have different personalities. They can be nice, friendly and hard-working, or awkward, difficult and lazy. If horses were people, some would be on the dole, and others would be entrepreneurs.
I'm used to riding horses. My father used to breed horses when I was a child. I grew up in Tipperary, in the country, and lots of people have horses there. If my parents hadn't been in the business, we would have them anyway, as pets. And my cousin Richard is a jockey.
Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.