I have been back in Valencia for three months. I still wake up sometimes expecting to hear the sound of the kennels, or the cello-like call of the capuchins in the morning, or the low heavy breathing of horses in the dark. I don’t miss the work so much as I miss the quality of attention it required. The animals you see, don’t allow you to be anywhere else. They know immediately if you are distracted, anxious, preoccupied. You have to be entirely present. In other words, they make you better at being human.

Looking back, the three experiences were more connected than I realised at the time. Ghost — the dog who pressed himself into the corner of his kennel — and Marco — the chimpanzee who had forgotten he was a chimpanzee — and Río — the horse who stood in a field deciding whether I was worth knowing — were all asking the same question. Can I trust you? And the answer, every time, had to be earned. Not declared. Not performed. Earned.

I have thought a great deal about what it means to care for a traumatised animal. On the one hand, it is practical: food, space, routine, medical care. On the other hand, it is something less definable. Patience as a form of communication. Stillness as a form of language. The willingness to be present without agenda. In short: to be trustworthy.

The children who came to the equine therapy sessions on Dartmoor — I think about them often. A boy named Isaac, nine years old, non-verbal, who had never let anyone touch him without flinching. By the end of the sixth session, he was resting his forehead against Río’s neck with his eyes closed. Nobody taught him to do that. Nobody could have. That is to say: some kinds of healing happen beyond the reach of instruction.

What I know now that I didn’t know when I left Valencia is this: the most important skill in caring for a traumatised being — human or animal — is not knowledge. It is not technique. It is the capacity to be with suffering without needing to fix it immediately. To sit on the floor outside a kennel for forty minutes and read a book. To stand in a field and wait. To trust that presence, over time, is enough. After all, that is what they did for us, when they finally decided we were worth knowing.