Polly the Cob teaches me a lesson.

2259 new words written. Twenty pages edited. Brain falling out of my ears.

I never quite understand how writing can be so enervating. I understand that the brain uses up a vast amount of energy, but still, I am not working down a mine. Yet, as I hit 4pm with two hours of work still to do, I feel as if someone has put the thinking part of my mind in a blender. What, who, how, why? it splutters. A faint grey mist descends over my vision. I squint at the screen, like an old lush trying to light a cigarette. Where was I? Who am I?

Deep breath, count to ten, start all over again. I’ll get it done.

Actually, the deep breath bit worked quite well. I think when I am up against a hard deadline I often forget to breathe. I really should have learnt yoga in my formative years.

Because of all this brain melt, there is not much blog for you. But you know I love nothing more than sharing a story, so I’m going to redirect you to the HorseBack UK post I wrote this afternoon. It is about Polly the Cob, a sweet coloured mare rescued by World Horse Welfare from a life of appalling neglect and suffering. She now works at HorseBack with veterans and servicemen and women who have undergone life-changing injury or walk the long road of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I am always grousing about the lazy assumptions people make about thoroughbreds. (How dare anyone suggest my glorious Zen mistress of a red mare is hot and wild and nuts in the head, I yell, in the echo chamber of my furious mind.) Cobs come in for their fair share of cheap stereotypes too. I had never known a cob until I met Polly, and even though I fight labels with every fibre of my being, I did think that they were not necessarily my cup of tea. Without being conscious of it, I had imbibed the nasty prejudices: big and hairy and slow and heavy. I have been shown the absolute idiocy of this. Yet another equine teaches me yet another life lesson.

Polly is a dear, and I love her. And she does a lope off a kiss as expertly as if she were secretly a Quarter Horse, underneath those flying feathers.

Never assume. I’ve actually been writing about that very subject this morning. I had it down, in theory. But it took a gentle little cob finally to drive it home.

Here is the link to her story: https://www.facebook.com/HorseBackUK/photos/a.269393705567.184638.197483570567/10152608849455568/?type=1&theater

And here is her pretty face:

I love this one. I swear she was posing for the camera as she spotted me:

Beauty and Truth.

This morning, in the misty, rainy field, I find the red mare and her Paint friend lying down, taking their ease like two old ladies. Red scrambles to her feet and does her Minnie the Moocher walk towards me, her head down, her ears gently pricked in greeting. Hey, she says, there you are. There are no operatics, no prancing or whinnying or snorting. It is just a contented horse, happy to see her human. My heart blossoms and blooms, like a flower in springtime.

Thoroughbreds are bred for speed and strength. They are all power. Even when Red is at her most relaxed, when I sit on her I can feel that mighty engine, humming underneath me. At the moment, she is still off games as her abscess heals. At the moment, I feel a different kind of power from her. It is the power of stillness, of authenticity, of a good mare at ease in her skin, of a living creature with a mighty spirit.

I go to do my HorseBack work. Today, this takes me to World Horse Welfare’s Belwade Farm. They are having an open day on Saturday, and the members of the HorseBack team are practising in the indoor school for the demonstration they will perform. Belwade rescues horses from lives of pain and neglect and abuse. As I arrive, I see one of the happiest sights I know – the green, wooded hills of the Dee Valley dotted with contented equines given a second chance at life.

One of their rescues was Polly the Cob. Her early existence was a nightmare of neglect, and she ended up brutally tangled in wire, which has left a deep scar on her hind leg. Belwade saved her and then sent her to HorseBack, where she has been learning her new job. She has come on so well that she has already worked on a couple of the leadership days, and soon she will take her place on the courses proper, with the veterans and servicemen and women who have suffered life-changing injury and Post-Traumatic Stress.

This morning, as she returned to Belwade to show off her new skills, she brought dazzling smiles to the people there who remembered her well. It was a very moving moment. I think she remembered them. I have a belief that horses have a very strong sense of humans trying to help them. (If the red mare ever gets a foot caught in a rope, she will stand perfectly still and look to me to come and untangle her, as if she holds a granite certainty that I am there to get her out of any mess.)

I did my usual cantering about, taking hundreds of pictures for the HorseBack archive. Polly was exemplary, standing like a statue as a tarpaulin was draped over her and a giant pilates ball bounced on her tremendous arse. She was vivid proof of the value of desensitising training.

She was proof of something else, too, just as the red mare is. Both horses, in their very different ways, bring me back to what is important. They are reminders of all the unflashy virtues – kindness, steadiness, reliability, gentleness. You can’t blag or bluster or cow a horse. It sees through phoniness with its eagle eye. Swagger and vanity and narcissism mean nothing to it. If you offer a horse patience and sympathy and a good heart, that half-ton flight animal will do anything for you. It will go with you to the ends of the earth.

This never ceases to amaze me. It never stops delighting me. The rain may fall, the news may be bad, the slings and arrows may come, along with all the sorrows that flesh is heir to, and yet there, in a quiet field, is my one true thing. If Red were a human, she would read Keats. She might misquote him slightly. Truth and beauty, she would say, nodding her wise head: that is all you know and all you need to know.

And, I might say back to her, the small things. Know the small things. Find loveliness and solace in the small things, and, however bleak the weather, the internal sunshine will break through the clouds.

At which point she would pause, snort, give me a look, and say: you’re going to start talking about love and trees again, aren’t you, you mad old hippy?

 

Today’s pictures:

Polly the Cob, this morning, with her old friends at Belwade:

And showing off her considerable tarpaulin skills:

Could any horse take a huge flying ball more in its stride?:

Little and Large, at Belwade:

The view looking south-west:

DONKEYS!!!!!:

Another southern view:

Misty hills to the east:

And, rather randomly, here is a chicken, for the Dear Reader who loves chickens. It is not my chicken, but it is, indubitably, a chicken:

The elegant ladies and their lambs:

Red the Mare, from a sunnier day:

Even Red is not this red, but I was having fun playing about with the contrasts:

Oh, that face:

Stan the Man. Love this rather contemplative expression. And the heart-breaking ears, of course: