DailyPrompt—2131

My favourite animals have always been the same three: cats, dogs, and horses.
I love most animals in general — though reptiles… not so much, hehe. But those three have shaped my life in ways I’m only now realising.

My love for horses started very early.
When I was just two years old, living in the UK, we passed some horses one day and I absolutely fell in love. So deeply, in fact, that I caused a dramatic little toddler meltdown because I wanted to take them home — as if we could keep horses in a suburban garden, lol.

My poor father, not knowing how to calm me, ended up buying me a rocking horse. I treated it like it was real — brushing the wooden mane, talking to it, feeding it imaginary apples.

By the time I was around 9 or 10, that love had become something real.
I helped at a local horse farm — mucking out stables, brushing warm coats, carrying water buckets, doing whatever was needed. Riding was my payment, and to me it felt like being paid in pure joy.

I even begged my parents for my own horse.
When they asked where I planned to keep it, I proudly answered:
“In the cellar.”
Oh, the beautiful naivety of a child’s heart.

Animals have been a constant thread in my life:
dogs, cats, ducks when I was little…
and later, as an adult, our first adopted horse eight years ago.
Two years later, another. Having horses during the 2020 lockdown was a blessing — if we didn’t have them on our property, I think we would’ve climbed the walls. They kept us sane. They kept us moving.

When my husband had his accident in 2023 and became bedridden, we had to make the heartbreaking decision to sell the horses. That goodbye still aches. It was the moment I felt myself shift from wife to full-time caretaker.

But I still fill the house with life.
We have a dog, several cats, and even a turtle.
And I can’t imagine a life without animals — without their warmth, their honesty, their silent companionship.

No matter what life takes away, animals always bring something back.
And for me… I will always need at least one furry soul by my side.

— Maggie
🐾✨
The Afterlove Voice