For entertainment

Four months ago, Karen's sweet Icelandic gelding, Kaffi, experienced an unknown trauma and became a different horse overnight. I have never seen anything like it.

After a few frustrating days where he was barely touchable, Karen consulted a vet. When he was given a clean bill of health, she had a trainer weigh in. That evaluation went so poorly, she was told she might want to donate him. It was so weird, so unexpected and also so frustrating.

A couple weeks later, we were celebrating Ryan's birthday, and he made the mistake of asking how things were going at the barn. I launched into the whole Kaffi story, finishing up with, "It's really bad. We're just about at the horse psychic stage."

He laughed and said, "Is that a thing?"

So then I got to share thirty five years of secondhand stories about all the things my friends' horses had told various horse psychics. Not going to lie, some of the stories are really funny. But also, I can not tell you how many otherwise rational, educated people have insisted that the things they heard were real.

Ryan asked, "Is that something you would want to do with Olive?" 

"Oh, I've thought about it," I laughed, "but I'm too cheap."

"What if I paid for it?"

"I can't let you do that," I protested.

"What if it was a Mother's Day gift? I want to hear what Olive has to say. For science."

"That would be amazing," I said. "For entertainment."

The next step was finding a communicator. I bypassed the "real deal" local communicator who actually comes out to your barn, because that costs $350, and I am as careful with other people's money as I am with my own. Instead, I went with a communicator who does readings over the phone. She came recommended by a former barn buddy, and her price was a budget friendly $100 for two horses.

Ryan booked the appointment, and Karen and I completed the registration. We were asked to provide each horse's name, age, gender and how long we'd owned them. Additionally, we were told to prepare three to five questions. Mine were:

• Of all the things we do on a regular basis, what would Olive like to do more often?
• Of all the things we do on a regular basis, what would Olive like to do less often?
• Does she have any pain?

Finally, we were asked to send one photo that clearly showed the horse's eye. This is the one I chose:

After that, all there was left to do was wait.

It was nearly three weeks between booking the appointment and our sessions. Ryan cynically noted that was plenty of time for the communicator to thoroughly Google stalk us and our horses. I looked at all of the posts I've written about Olive and thought, "Yep, it's all there if she looks hard enough."

I didn't really care, though. I wasn't doing this for science. In my mind, this was all about entertainment.