Natural horsemanship

If a bloke can wear stockings and suspenders in a stable yard why can’t I?

We had gone to visit a friend at a stable yard on a country estate on a crisp autumn Sunday. I was going to help his daughter with a pony they weren’t sure about. The builder boyfriend and I drove up a winding driveway past an elegant stately home to an antique stable yard from a bygone era where our friend was waiting with his daughter and their pretty black cob tied to the wall. Hens clucked from a nearby coop, kids came and went in wellies and warm jumpers, for there was a chill in the air. A young girl tacked up a smart, dapple-grey mount. Clip clop clip

The ugly truth about natural horsemanship

The rope riders came down the driveway slowly, their horses veering this way and that, side to side, forwards a few steps, then backwards nearly as many. It took them an hour to trespass from the bridleway that crosses the top of the drive and make their slow, dangerously shaky course between the paddocks full of horses until they made it to just opposite our smallholding, where their mounts gave up completely and just refused to take another step. There were four horses, but only one was wearing what I would call tack, as in a saddle and bridle. The other three, including a child’s pony being ridden by a