When it comes to horses, troubles come in multitudes. Multitudes of lame legs.
Gracie, the hunter pony, kicked things off by deciding she didn’t want to be caught. A pony who is running at full pelt round a seven-acre field at the sight of you with a headcollar hidden in a feed bucket is a tricky thing.
You can walk away and be philosophical about it or you can do the full Monty Roberts. This involves standing your ground, refusing to go away, following the pony relentlessly around the field, breaking its will to defy you.
Gracie has an iron will. When she decides that I’m an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs there is nothing I can do to take charge of the situation.
‘Me boss pony, you sucker who pays bills’ — that’s her philosophy, and she’s sticking to it.
She has been living out since the summer in a beautiful field with Tara the old chestnut hunter, who gave me many years of patchy service. Limited periods of somewhat happy hacking were punctuated by long bouts of attempted murder before, finally, she bucked me off on a main road in front of a car, very much because she was having one of her legendary off-days.
That was the last time I rode her. I led her back to the yard, had the farrier take off her shoes, and turned her away in a field to do as she pleased. That was nearly ten years ago.
She is now 32, or ninetysomething in human years. This summer I decided to cut my livery bills by taking Gracie to live with her, knowing how little the cheeky skewbald pony likes being stabled anyway.
She has been blissfully happy gallivanting round the field with Tara, who is too old to do any more than flatten her ears and snarl at her, very much like Smaug, the dragon in The Hobbit who lived to 180 years.
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