You cannot remain unmoved by the gentleness and conformation of a well-bred and well-trained horse -- more than a thousand pounds of big-boned, well-muscled animal, slick of coat & sweet of smell, obedient and mannerly, and yet forever a menace with its innocent power and ineradicable inclination to seek refuge in flight, and always a burden with its need to be fed, wormed, and shod, with its liability to cuts and infections, to laming and heaves.  But when it greets you with a nicker, nuzzles your chest, and regards you with a large and liquid eye, the question of where you want to be and what you want to do had been answered.

Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide, 1992