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Seems like the topic of the day here is about boundaries and unconditional love. This morning, I was talking with one of my Life Coaching clients about this. She was struggling with the concept of unconditional love, she was feeling it means there are no boundaries to be set. Love is Love, she said. I was talking about how Unconditional Love is always loving but also loving someone enough to create those boundaries , for we all need them in our relationships for them to be healthy. Loving is not allowing others complete free rein over us. It is about loving them enough to let them know appropriately where our own personal boundaries are, with loving kindness, sometimes with firm loving kindness. Occasionally, it takes a whole lotta love to set and maintain those boundaries, especially when the other person (or animal) is having hard time with it. I use my horse Rubicon, as an example here. He is coming off a one year layoff, he has not been ridden much during that time. So now that he is being worked regularly and is adjusting to his new (old) routine of being ridden again, he’s testing me and looking for some boundaries about who is in control, he likes the attention of being ridden but would like to stay on vacation, so to speak. So he resists being seriously worked ….he needs me to say, yes you do need to do this. This is our agreement, for you to be ridden one hour several times a week, the rest of your time you have to yourself and can do as you wish….. My part of the agreement is to care for him and further his training by riding him. He really needs to know I love him and honor him by setting the boundaries of our relationship , much as I would do in a relationship with another human, although the boundaries for a human relationship would have another flavor than the human -horse one does. So, how do you feel about unconditional love and boundaries?