Who Is Equus Niger

Last Updated on 2023-05-22 by Guy Taylor

Apart from the About page maybe I should just write a piece of who I am. Who is Equus Niger, who is the guy behind it? Well, my name is Guy Taylor, I am a 44 year old male originally from Zimbabwe and for a while I really had no idea who I was or what I truly wanted out of life. I ambled on through trying to figure out who I actually was and what I wanted to do with my life. I tried several things and looked at avenues to pursue and nothing really lept out at me, apart from the British Army which I tried to join for many years but bureaucracy, coupled with my own bad timing didn’t happen but I kept trying until I realized that I was fighting an un-winnable war. 

But first, before I continue, what does Equus Niger mean? Equus Niger is symbolic for me due to my connection with horses and my favourite colour/coat, it also means black horse in Latin. I have been asked why I didn’t try English which I did, only blackhorse was taken, in English I also thought of others that go along with who I am as a person and my passions but the closest and best thing I could find closest to one of my main passions was equusniger.com.

And there you have it, so if you have been wondering now you know. Now on to the rest of the blog

Now, I have a passion for writing I love it and I enjoy a good movie or tv show and so I decided to try my hand at putting myself through a screenwriting course in the hopes of one day creating my own epic tv series or writing some blockbuster movie and that never really struck, although I know the basics of creating a screenplay now. But nothing really gave, I think I was in that for the wrong reasons.

At the end of 2018 a few days after the tragic passing of my mother I fell really ill and was hospitalized with severe gallbladder complications. In short I had a very dead, very gangrenous gallbladder which in itself, without writing a long dramatic story created several other complications that were in themselves life threatening. Up to that point I had lived pretty healthily, I had never spent a night in a hospital and had been very healthy but I took advantage of the fact that I have always prided myself on the fact that I was a very healthy person and that I had, up until that point been able to eat and drink anything and rely on my high metabolism rate to manage my body.

Then eventually after nearly a month in hospital I was discharged, albeit with a bile bag hanging out my right side to drain infected bile due to one of the complications that was caused by my gallbladder complication. Thankfully that recovered, the hole in my duodenum that had been pierced sealed itself and the bile bag was removed. And then a couple of weeks later when I was having a stent removed that was inserted in order to divide the bile I contracted acute pancreatitis which led me to spending another two weeks in hospital. And whilst I am grateful to the NHS for essentially saving my life the first time I never want to spend another day in hospital, ever again.

But coming to terms with all of that, as well as dealing with the loss of my mother it gave me a whole new appreciation for life that essentially put me on a personal development journey that I can only describe that I was ready for. I felt ready to heal myself from all the previous years of anguish and emotional anger and pain. I felt ready to discover who I was and what I truly wanted out of life. And what I have discovered about myself is that I have so much to work on, I have made massive strides on my journey, but I have also stumbled and had setbacks but what that in turn has taught me is that no journey in life is without its trials and tribulations, no journey is complete without its stumbles. And that path diverges into so many other paths that converge on themselves. It is an entirely illuminating experience once you discover who you are and what you want out of life.

As I am essentially from an agricultural family and have horse experience it eventually came to me that a childhood dream is all I have ever wanted and that is to cowboy, it is what I truly want out of life. I want to be the first in my family to take our agricultural heritage to new heights that I have always wanted to do since I was a child and since I discovered my love for horses and my connection with them from a young age that was always the reason I did things the way I did when I used to herd cattle by horse in Zimbabwe. Of course my cattle and horse experience needs work, especially when it comes to the element of being a Western Cattleman, let alone a Western Horseman. Transitioning from English to Western has been a long time dream that I have never been able to accomplish, simply because of where I live and not having that opportunity.

I have been learning from ranchers in the United States and Canada that I have made online friends with and found ways of ranching that personally appeal, such as low stress handling techniques, grass raising and finishing, processing and calving. I am not sure how I feel about branding but, we all have our ways and I am in two minds on it but that is not to say I would not give working on an outfit that does it a miss, or that I criticize or condemn ranchers that do. It is no ones place to criticize or condemn that which others do not fully or partially understand.

And that is my ultimate goal, that is what I want out of life and the goal isn’t to make money, it isn’t to make millions. The goal is not only to be better than I was yesterday, the goal is also to make a difference, it is to stand for something, is to know that I did something to make a difference in people’s lives and what better way than to help feed a nation? What better way than to feed your family from the ground that you steward? What better way than to leave a legacy and forge new paths for your family name?

When I was younger, in my teens I took a path that I have regretted at times and rather than go down the agric route, move to the US or Canada and follow or create a legacy I moved to the city and went into IT, not in a big way, not to the extent of being a software or hardware engineer, or technician or computer scientist but rather in sales and customer services. But that basically extended to other paths of sales and customer services once I moved to the UK. And in doing so I essentially lost my way and it took a lot of pain and anger and the feeling of betrayal to realize what I truly want out of life.

I’m not gonna sit here and bitch and whine and glorify myself, I have by no means been a saint through any of my trials and tribulations. I have done my own wrongs, I have let people down and hurt them in the past, all fundamentally regrettable actions that I can never make right because wrong is wrong and nowhere in life can we justify any wrongs we have done. The best way I have found is to accept our wrongs, learn from them and move on because the longer we stay harping on those wrongs we will never move on to a better version of ourselves that we should always seek, the bitter circle will just continue repeating itself until we learn to move on.

Of course this is not all of who I am, I’m still on my journey of self-discovery, no personal development journey is ever complete when you have put yourself on one. And if there is anything that I learnt from working with horses is that we never stop learning in life, not one single person in this life ever stops learning because none of us knows everything there is to know. We are always learning. We’re learning from other people, we’re learning from the world around us, we’re learning from the animals in our lives, from the universe, from nature.

And so, that is just a little bit of who I am, I can’t tell you all of who I am because I’m still learning.

This is just a bit of who the Guy is behind Equus Niger.