A non-committal move that leaves open plenty of options.

You're ahead of me on this one Joe. I have no familiarity whatever with this opening.

I was thinking ...d6 myself, inviting the f4-bishop to chew on granite. But at some point you might want to free your game with ...e5 or ...c5, when the bishop has a rather discouraging effect. Maybe preparatory moves like ...0-0, ...Bg4 and ...Nbd7 need to preface a move like ...e7-e5. As I say, I don't know much about this line.

a lot of playable lines here 4..c5 for example. I suppose that is the point. Give your opponent a lot to have to work through, getting him confused.

Sort of like the Colle System, but with the bishop OUTSIDE the pain chain.

This is where style of play kicks in. Apart from the Guimard Variation of the French Defence, I very rarely play moves like this, and that derives from unhappy experience. There are good alternatives, some of which involve the knight going from b8 to d7. (Out of curiosity, I had a look at the GK databases. Not one example of this move!)

a self-limiting choice by Black. the pawn break at e5 looks difficult to achieve anytime soon.

Personally, I prefer 7.Bd3 here, but there is nothing against the text that I can see.

The text move I regard as extremely dangerous. White could almost 'get away' with 8.Ne5 immediately, here: 8.Ne5?! Bxd1 9.Nxd7 Kxd7 10.Rxd1 ... with a position hard to assess, but certainly not disadvantageous for White. But White's choice, to force Black to exchange on f3 (8.h3 Bxf3 9.Nxf3) seems best.

I prefer White's actual choice, myself...

8...Bxf3 was in fact 'forced', as any other move lost material.

This leads to a sequence of moves with several consecutive captures and needs to be checked by the player repeatedly to see if it sound. You have to be sure if you enter this type of variation, and you have to be right. If you don't totally trust your analysis, you should probably seek a quieter line. I have steered quite a few games into quiet lines in similar situations. Chess is a matter timing anyway in more than a few situations. Tigran Petrosian became world champ playing quiet defensive chess.

Sometimes simply counting gives you the answer, Joe. White attacks the g4-bishop. Black counters by attacking the b5-bishop. But that bishop takes a knight - so White is a knight ahead, AND is half-pinning the Queen, AND is still attacking the g4-bishop. Black has to deal with the bishop on c6 (...QxB) whereupon White keeps his extra piece by PxB.

Possibly better would have been 10.Nb3, with the move 11.Nc5 in mind.

'Equine' - pertaining to, or like, horses. You are probably familiar with 'canine' (dogs), 'feline' (cats), 'aquiline' (eagles), adjectives all deriving from the Latin for these animals. There's quite a lot of them. Just out of curiosity I thought I'd spend minute seeing how many I could remember offhand. I got to thirteen - sorry, fourteen...