Whispering Back (33 page)

After about one and a half hours, she was pretty good. The next day she got better. After the following session I began to work a bit in the school and found that if I was very tough, not letting her move her feet at all, she could cope with it. I wouldn’t let her trot off without having to put up with the lunge line being shaken in her face, and finally, fighting every inch of the way, she reached the stage where it wasn’t the end of the world.

At this time, we arranged for a saddle to be made for her. Kay Humphries, the only saddler we really trust, came out to take measurements. Her high standards have caused her to have numerous conflicts with manufacturers, and she’s long been campaigning against the poorly designed, poorly made, poorly fitting saddles that cause so much pain for so many horses. Emily was in the fortunate position of being able to take her old saddle, which was badly twisted and very heavy, completely out of circulation instead of needing to sell it on, to damage another horse.

We still had to face the bit where the rider gets on. By now Jo and I were a pretty good team and we got better, going through each part of the procedure enough times to be sure that Amber would cope. To get her used to the sight of a person looming up above her, Jo jumped up and down next to Amber in what would have looked to an outsider like a variation on step aerobics. She immediately seemed to know what this was all about, but apart from trotting on the spot and pulling some spectacular faces, she accepted the process comparatively calmlv. We walked around with Jo bellied over the saddle, many times, to get Amber used to the weight of a person on her back, letting her work out that the saddle no longer hurt her. In this position, Jo could easily bale out if anything went wrong. Amber tried to shoot off at first, and when I finally persuaded her to stand still, bunched herself up like a coiled spring, waiting to explode. It took several sessions before she would walk around calmly with Jo lying across her back, but when Jo finally went for it, and put her leg over, Amber was magnificent. Not only did it pass no more eventfully than it usually does with a starter, but the last thing I had most dreaded – having to tighten the girth once the rider was on – wasn’t a problem at all, probably because it had never been done before. All my worst imaginings, of Jo being thrown backwards with her foot right up in the air while I fumbled with the straps, came to nothing.

Amber has turned out to be our longest-ever resident trainee, having lived with us since we met her in the summer of 2000. Despite a long series of niggling setbacks as she slowly regained her physical condition, she has come on so well, proving that with the right approach you can make progress with almost any horse. Turning her into a youngster who can be tacked up and ridden away with little more risk than any other horse is probably the most difficult, and certainly the longest work I have ever done. I say that not only because of the type of horse she is, the delicacy of her physical and psychological condition and the extreme depth of her phobias of the saddle, ropes, and being mounted and ridden. Most of all, it was because three of the most valuable training techniques I learned from Monty – release of pressure, join-up, and long-lining – had little impact. Amber already knew about pressure/release, and join-up did not have the usual effect on her – she responded, but only as if going through the motions. Long-lining her proved almost impossible. My research on spookbusting was pretty irrelevant, too. She really was never spooky. Her fears were grounded in her reality, not her imagination. The best thing I could take from Monty’s approach was his attitude – stay focused on the end result, and keep thinking of ideas until you get there.

Emily tells me she loves her pony more than anything else she owns, and although it isn’t easy for her to get to Moor Wood, I’m sure Amber knows who her real owner is. I take them out for hacks around the countryside, and Emily spends hours just escorting her to the best grazing on the estate. Perhaps Amber understands something of what she’s been through it all for. Or maybe Emily just gets to be the good parent and I’m the one who does all the disciplining. For sure, Amber likes her more than me. But I’ve never had a moment of greater satisfaction in my working life than the first time I gave Emily a leg-up, and she sat on her pony and just stood quietly in the closing gloom of a December afternoon, and did nothing else but breathe in a moment that seemed to last for ever.

It’s not unusual for us to fall in love with a horse we’re training, often to the point that we get quite tearful when they leave. Sometimes one of us will fall more deeply for a horse than the other, and as a general rule, I prefer to work with nervous horses, whereas Adam seems to enjoy the challenge of big, bolshy horses who have no regard for one’s personal space. Even horses like Amber, who at times was so frustrating and difficult to train that we had to take it in turns to avoid going mad, nevertheless very quickly found a place in our hearts. It’s extremely rare, even when things are particularly difficult with a horse, that I find myself not liking them. In fact, I’m not sure I had ever really disliked a horse until High Flyer came on the scene.

Right from the start, I didn’t like the sound of him. Adam had come across him, via another client, as a possible candidate for us to use for our first Open Day at Moor Wood. It was a typical scenario of an owner with a huge problem, but being the owner of a small stud, very limited finances. High Flyer was a bottle-reared yearling and had become almost impossible to handle. Adam went to see him to find out if he would make a good demo horse.

‘So how was he?’ I asked, when Adam got back.

‘Oh, fine.’

‘So what did you do with him?’

‘I didn’t touch him at all, didn’t do any training. I wanted to see what his owner, Lynette, was doing. Apparently he is so pleased to see her, being alone in a field all the time, that he charges across and rears up in her face when she comes along. She seems really scared of him and practically offered to give him to me. He was near the gate when we came along, and didn’t do much, but Lynette was practically shaking with nerves. At first, she just couldn’t get him to take a single step in any direction. She put on his headcollar and held on to the rope just under his chin, stood by his shoulder and pushed his head as she told him to walk on, but he didn’t budge. Didn’t leap around or anything, just planted himself. Then she put a bridle on, and she could just about get him to move, but he was rearing up and striking out. It took ages to take him about fifty yards from the field, and even longer to get him back in. It was really hairy. At one point he practically tore her shirt off! I wanted to know if he could be sent away at all, so I went into the field and tried to move him away. He went off about fifty yards.’

‘Oh, good.’ Bottle-reared horses can be almost impossible to send away. Either they don’t understand their own body language, or they resent being manoeuvred. Either way, it makes join-up an unsuitable process for many of them.

‘Then I went passive. He stopped dead in his tracks, turned to face me, charged at me, reared, then wheeled away at the last minute, kicking out as he went. Only just missed me.’

‘Ah.’ I wasn’t sure how Adam had reached the conclusion that High Flyer was ‘fine’ from this description, but quickly rearranged the allocation of horses on the Open Day so that Adam would be working with him. We decided to put this particular segment on at the end, so that if Adam were injured, I could take him to the hospital, if necessary.

It was our first summer in charge at Moor Wood and we were putting on our first Open Day, partly as a way of publicising ourselves, but also to raise money for the Brooke Hospital for Animals, a charity that does superb work in the developing world, providing veterinary care, water troughs and other facilities for working horses, mules and donkeys. Their owners often live in worse conditions than most horses do in this country, and not surprisingly, there is a great deal of ignorance as well as poverty to combat. As their publicity material was set up on display, it brought a few things into sharp focus. Although the potential is there – as Misty’s tragic past shows – for an animal to be as badly treated in this country as any other, some of the cases the Brooke Hospital comes across are almost too horrific for words.

We worked with several horses to show join-up, spookbusting and other techniques, and Misty gave everyone who wanted one a hug. All the while I could hardly bear to watch when people approached High Flyer’s stable, on which was posted a note advising that a distance should be kept, and that on no account should anyone go into the stable with him, no matter how friendly he seemed. The notice also mentioned that he was a Welsh cob, section D, for sale.

When it was High Flyer’s turn last thing in the afternoon, I realised my precautions were not unreasonable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so dangerous as Lynette trying to take him from the stable to the pen, not even with all the bucking horses I’ve seen Monty and Kelly deal with. Those horses might be potential killers, but are generally quite safe so long as you don’t try to ride them. But you literally couldn’t do a thing with this High Flyer without being in mortal danger. Lynette had been trying to groom him in the yard, to smarten him up for his big day. He was getting increasingly het up, and whirling in circles. As a yearling, he was small, but strong enough to pull her around, and with his teeth, front legs and back legs all so close together, it was very hard for her to put herself in a safe place. He had clearly spent some time working on his repertoire. While snapping at Lynette, he would rear and strike out with his forelegs, and then a split-second later, curl his back end around and cow kick with his hind legs. He managed this while leaping and twisting almost continually, and rarely seemed to have more than one foot on the ground at a time. Lynette had a short lead rope on him, which she held tightly under his chin, and he kept pulling her off balance so that she was frequently in danger of getting right underneath his flying hooves. I’m not at all sure how helpful my ‘they’re ready for you in the pen, now’ message was. As she tried to lead him towards the gate of the yard, he got even more frantic. It wasn’t even clear that the circles they were spinning in were getting them any closer to the intended destination. At that moment, Adam appeared, armoured from top to toe with hat, body protector, long sleeves, gloves, chaps and steel toe-capped boots, in spite of the heat of the day.

The idea had been for Lynette to lead High Flyer to the pen so that people could see how difficult he was, and also that he had received no training at all from any of us. But it was clear that in doing so, Lynette would be risking serious injury. In the end, I took Finn, our Exmoor pony, to give him a lead, and Adam put High Flyer on a long rope, which he held at the end farthest from High Flyer’s teeth and front legs. By now, the spectators were peering curiously around the corner, giving the odd gasp as High Flyer came a bit too close to one of the cars that lined the track to the pen. It was erratic progress, but thanks to the lead Finn gave, Adam got him there in one piece.

Once in the pen, High Flyer put on a display as impressive as the one in the yard. But he was frustrated when his usual bag of tricks didn’t produce the normal results. Working with a longer rope, in the confined space of the round pen, Adam was able to stay out of the way of the thrashing hooves and snapping teeth, without having to worry about High Flyer actually getting away from him. Snaking the rope vigorously whenever his space was invaded, Adam could keep the yearling at bay, and only invite him closer on his own terms. By leading him from a distance, instead of by his shoulder, he was able to show that he wanted him to follow. And with careful application of pressure and release, soon he was getting the idea and began to lead and back up without all the tantrums. Once High Flyer had grasped the principle that Adam could control his movements with the rope attached, it was time to show him that the same principles held when he was loose.

Unlike many bottle-reared horses, High Flyer was actually relatively easy to send away. From time to time, he would swing his back end in and lash out at Adam, but it seemed more like a token protest than a well-aimed strike. When Adam invited him in, High Flyer was reticent, as if unsure about the new boundaries, and whether or not he was meant to approach. But by the end of the session, which in total had taken about forty minutes, the change in his attitude was quite extraordinary. He was no longer a piranha on legs, choosing instead to follow Adam around most courteously, as if that had always been his intention. The walk back down to the yard was spectacularly dull in contrast to the journey up. Following Adam politely, High Flyer walked calmly back down the path on a loose rope, without even trying to eat the grass.

High Flyer had certainly lived up to his name, and provided a fantastic finale to the end of a successful day. I was really pleased that Lynette had brought him along. But there was one niggling doubt at the back of my mind.

‘When’s he going home?’ I asked Adam.

‘Well . . .’ he said shiftily, not looking me in the eye, ‘she’s hoping someone will want to buy him. Apparently a couple of people have expressed an interest. It would be good if he could stay here for a couple of weeks for a bit more training, and then he would be a lot safer in his new home.’

‘Hmm. That’s fine, but we’re
not
keeping him. We don’t need eight horses. Do we, Adam?’ I said the last bit as emphatically as I could, more a statement than a question. It wasn’t just that we already had seven horses, there was something about High Flyer that I just didn’t like. It wasn’t even particularly his behaviour, as I was confident he would soon be absolutely fine to handle. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I just knew I’d rather he found somewhere else to live.

By this time, we had got quite used to people offering us horses. Probably the most unlikely candidate was a 17.2 hand high, eighteen-year-old thoroughbred, who needed remedial farriery every three weeks, couldn’t live out, reared and bolted, was aggressive towards people and horses, and was prone to colic. Not exactly the ideal companion horse, which was how the lady on the phone was trying to promote him.