One of the things that I've been working on is not "bumping/jolting the reader out of the story." Something like the horse thinking is semi-plausible. It's a "translation" of his thought, done by me. However, I worried that if I had the horse actually talking that it would hurt the credibility of the story. I was trying to have the horse episode be a little comic relief from the actual story, but not a different story.

Yeah, another request for more horse? I can't give anything away, but stay tuned!

I'm glad you liked him.