Darcy is high-maintenance, so I decided to leave her in the posh livery yard, with its luxuriant shavings beds and 24-hour butler service.
Being the great-granddaughter of Nijinsky, she expects to be accommodated in style and is apt to become disconsolate if left in a field for longer than a few hours. However Gracie, the skewbald hunter pony, was plumb disgusted with the five-star competition stables.
As soon as they came down off the lorry, she looked at the pin neat surroundings, the gleaming dressage horses prancing around the arena, and emitted a little snort of disdain.
‘Pah!’ I could have sworn she said.
The next afternoon, I arrived at the yard to find the owner wanting to update me. Darcy, she said, had settled beautifully. But the pony had been neighing non-stop in the paddock all morning, and running around her box neighing after lunch.
A few days later, the dreaded word ‘weaving’ was used when reporting her antics.
‘Oh dear,’ I said apologetically, for yard owners deplore weaving — whereby a horse sways impatiently from side to side — almost as much as they deplore wind-sucking and crib-biting.
These habits are often thought to be infectious but even if you consider that an old wives’ tale, bad behaviour does seem to spread like wildfire down a stable block.
The next day I arrived to find Gracie jumping around whinnying while all the other horses — once calm and happy — jumped around and whinnied back to her.
There was no doubt about it. Gracie was fomenting dissent.
She was possibly even more disgusted than me at the ‘No Horse-riding’ signs posted around the village. She took no consolation in the very nice gallop track around the grounds that Darcy enjoyed, but then the thoroughbred considers a 20-minute leg stretch fully sufficient for her requirements.
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