This is lovely. It's the most emotive looking horse shot I've seen, probably ever.
There is communication captured and and cropped wonderfully here. It's brilliant. Just a wee bit too much post constrat perhps? (My LCD monitor, though well calibrated, is unforgiving of such things ). An easy 9. Good luck!
The blown out hair on the right and the eye in the center are distractions for me. Plus, the photo doesn't say September to me, but of course that is very subjective and doesn't affect your score from me. 5
the eye is nicely captured, but not as effective as it might have been, because it's really hard to figure out what the thing on the left (and right) are. if the fence was as much a subject as the animal, it would be better to use higher dof and get them both in focus. just my 2 cents.