Porky Pig weeps and shivers because his ex still isn't picking up.

Jo and Escalante cuddle and wait for news in the stable; Ace's horse nuzzles him awake lovingly, and Ace has the mother of all magical horse moments. It's like he goes into the horse's eyes and the horse goes into his eye and they have a tea party on a starlight night. And that's when he starts licking the horse's face.

Just kidding. I grew up around horses and I think they are pretty to look at, but the romance of horses is sort of overblown... I mean, everybody's different. And maybe I used up all my horse love when I was little, because check out this conversation I remember having literally dozens of times --

Teacher: "Jacob, I've got a book I think you'll enjoy reading."
7-year-old Jacob: "Does it have magical horses in it?"
Teacher: "Nope."
7-year-old Jacob: "I see. Does it perchance have regular horses in it?"
Teacher: "No, it does not."
7-year-old Jacob: "No thanks. Peace!"

-- but the thing where people put their feelings on animals, I don't get. I'm allergic to everything so I haven't had a lot of pets in my life, but animals seem to be mostly like you think they are. The personalities people ascribe to animals I have seen in real life, but only rarely. And then you have this secondary romance where, if an animal likes or does not like you, then that says something about your character. And I do believe that is also true, but not to the degree we get force-fed all the time. It just comes off as very performative to me when people do this, like, "Look at how much I care about animals! I am a silly baby lady!"

Even a very smart horse is dumb enough to get caught in barbed wire and then keep running, because it is scared, until it has pulled a full-on Equus on itself. And so even if a horse could redeem me with its love, or look into my soul and see the truth about me in its horsey way, I still couldn't take that much pleasure from it, because that's still a pretty dumb animal that I'm looking to get validation from.

I mean, I guess I want to be liked by everybody, and that includes dogs and cats and horses, but I just can't see making those demands from any creature that doesn't know what words are or that doesn't have a problem with hanging around in its own crap, any more than I would feel a magical moment if some rude-ass junkie in a wheelchair told me I made him feel a little gay: At the end of the day, my worth is not impacted by those things, and it seems really ... needy, really project-y, to go another way with it.