My chestnut mare has almost as many emotional problems as me. There was a time when this suited us both, being two badly behaved women together. I bought her when I was feeling rebellious and free spirited. I liked the flash of defiance in her eyes. I enjoyed being accosted every time I turned up at the yard by another owner striding towards me shouting, ‘Your mare!’
From biting the top of a bald man’s head to pulling the rug off another horse’s back and ripping it to shreds, her misdemeanours demand frequent apologies and offers of financial compensation. Her temper is as erratic as mine and she is just as expert at throwing tantrums. She once turned up to greet me at the gate of her field with a huge gash on her head after picking a fight with a tree (and the tree came off worse). She ripped her nostril open throwing a paddy when she was the last horse in the block to be served breakfast.
If she can’t get what she wants with hysterics she fakes illness. She hobbles around the ménage, tripping and stumbling with every step when I try to school her. When I get off and start leading her back to her stable she breaks into a lively trot. Her bucks are legendary. She once launched me into the air in the middle of Ockham Common and galloped off into the distance. While I limped home despairing of ever seeing my beloved mare again, she cantered happily along the country lanes of Surrey, turned up at the front entrance of the yard and, casual as you like, walked into her stable and put herself to bed.
The yard owner has had to adapt her whole management strategy to cope with Tara. Everything revolves around her, which of course only makes her worse. If she is put in a paddock she doesn’t like, she jumps into the field she fancies by hurtling over five-foot electric tape until she reaches her desired destination. No one knows from one day to the next where she will be when it’s time to get the horses in because she will have jumped her way around the entire farm helping herself to the grass in every single enclosure.
I’ve loved this horse insanely. I’ve enjoyed every minute I’ve spent wrestling with all 16 hands of her belligerence. But lately I’ve hatched a peculiar fondness for survival, and the other month I bought myself a nice little skewbald filly who doesn’t put a foot wrong and is an absolute pushover to ride. I cannot sell Tara, obviously. But I nurse the illusion that I might be able to find someone to ride her.
People have tried. A male friend with extensive riding experience got on her with a cheery, ‘Lets see what we can do with this horse of yours, shall we?’ She gave me one look as he sat there confidently tightening her girth and I knew he was doomed. The look said, ‘Who the hell is this? I’m not a performing monkey, you know.’
I took my new horse Grace and we rode out together but I knew it was hopeless. As Gracie trotted along conscientiously Tara became more and more mischievous looking.
‘Seems all right to me,’ my friend said as he ambled along with a suicidally long rein.
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘You’ve got to shorten your reins and hit her shoulder with your stick every time she pulls her head out.’
‘No, no, I don’t believe in hitting horses.’
‘Listen to me very carefully,’ I said. ‘If you don’t use your stick she is going to do something…horrible…’
‘Ha ha!’ he laughed. And kicked her into a canter. I followed behind counting to myself. ‘One…two…’ Sure enough on three, she interrupted a 30-mile-an-hour sprint by sticking her nose suddenly and violently to the ground and flipping him straight over the top of her head.
As I rode her home, my shell-shocked friend safely installed on little Gracie, I tried to reason with her: ‘Tara, you need to help me out here. I can’t cope with you if you won’t co-operate…’ But she had got what she wanted: me on her back and the impostor caked in mud and sweat and swearing ‘damned horse!’ every five seconds.
She undoes people, this mare. I am going to have to be honest. So my advert says: ‘Desperate chestnut mare urgently seeks sharer. Likes to buck. Difficult, temperamental, stroppy and unpredictable. Virtually impossible to handle in every way. Experienced riders with marginal sense of self preservation only need apply.’
Strangely, I’ve had a number of calls from people who want to try her out already. They sound way too keen for my liking. I think they might be weirdos.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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