Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

How my new pony swept me off my feet – literally

She hooked one hoof around my legs and pulled me back into the box

‘This is the one I was thinking of for you,’ said the lady I might feasibly call my mother-in-law, in spirit at least.

We were standing in her stable yard in a dingley dell corner of the south of England which is frozen in time. After driving down a winding track between well-tended paddocks, we found her as we always do, dressed in western-style clothing, tending to her animals in her own little world, far from the madding crowd.

The builder boyfriend’s long-lost mother is a consummate horsewoman. I say long-lost because she ran away when he was a boy, leaving him with his father who brought him up alone. He always says he doesn’t mind because he was too young to remember her. Later they were reunited. He can appreciate her for how she is, a free spirit. Also, he knows he is a chip off the old block, unable to be quite tied down. I have had to remember this each time I have watched him walk off into the sunset and leave me, albeit temporarily.

Long wavy greying hair, dark eyes, determined jaw. You wouldn’t cross her. But I always find her good company. She is someone you can be with knowing that what you see and hear is absolutely what you get.

She is happier with animals than with people, but who can argue? And she has this uncanny eye for a horse. She found my thoroughbred Darcy in a yearling sale. We had gone down to take her out to lunch and the little filly nuzzled me over a stable door. Horses choose you. You can’t do anything about it. Darcy had a quiet, self-assured energy even aged one-and-a-half and when she pushed me with her nose I looked across at the BB, who was talking to his mum, and said: ‘Oh dear.

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