A good old shaggy horse story for the end of the week; or, Red the Mare teaches me yet another life lesson.

I learnt a big lesson this week. Life is always teaching me lessons, sometimes over and over again, because I am a bit of a goofball and I constantly forget things. Also, there is the gap between head and gut, so that one may know something intellectually, but it takes a little time for it to percolate right down into one’s viscera.

Red the Mare is my best teacher of all. On Monday, she had a little wig-out. Two strange horses were coming to work in our field, and I thought we’d go out to greet them. It was idiotic. I took her away from her herd, and Autumn was shouting for her, and in the wide open spaces two unknown equines abruptly appeared and went past her towards her field. Of course she wigged.

I’d made about sixteen different mistakes. I’d got caught in hubris for a start. Look at me, with my immaculate horse, with my whispering skills, with my All That. In my fever to refute all the mean stereotypes about thoroughbreds, I had convinced myself that I had transformed her into a dozy old donkey. Not only that, but I was showing off about it.

On top of that, I’d let things slide. I am so pressed with work, and my time management is so ropey, that I’d rather taken her for granted. She is amazingly relaxed and tractable, almost all the time. She does learn all the new things I teach her wonderfully quickly. But I’d stopped doing so much work with her, just thinking I had made this transformational mare, and I could take the foundations as read.

The wig-out also happened because I was not concentrating, and did not read the warning signs quickly enough. I could have headed it off at the pass, and I did not.

And then, the final sin: I took it personally. I’m always banging on about how silly people do this. They say things like: ‘my horse is taking the piss.’ No, it really isn’t. Horses have no concept of the piss. They are just being horses. Their behaviour is very rarely directed at their human. They are usually reacting in their own equine way, or they are trying to tell you something. (This is uncomfortable, this freaks me out, I do not know what you are asking me to do, etc, etc.)

But I’m ashamed to say, my immediate thought was: after everything I’ve done with you, you reward me with this? From donkey to bronco in under ten seconds: that’s what I get?

I felt the black bird of shame swoop, as if everything that had come before was wiped out, and all was disaster.

It took 24 hours for me to talk myself down off the ceiling. It turned out, she was telling me something. She was telling me that I had to sharpen up and concentrate and stop feeling so damn pleased with myself. So I squared my shoulders and back to the humble basics we went. Good, hard, determined work; confidence and clarity on my part, which is what she likes; and most of all, remembering that it is not all about me.

The hubris fell flaming to earth, and good thing too.

Since that moment, she has been as lovely and good and responsive as a horse can be. I’ve set her new challenges and she has met them. The black bird has flown off to bother someone else. There is a difference between shame, which means everything is disaster, and humility, which means I need to learn from this specific thing.

Shame is negative and insidious and destructive. It is the voice in my head that says: I am useless and feckless and pointless and good for nothing. It is mildly self-indulgent and teaches one nothing. Humility is a bracing, good, instructive thing. It says: come back down to earth and learn well from your mistakes.

It also says: everyone makes mistakes; you are not alone. Humility is rather tender. It tells me: never mind, you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.

This morning, in the blazing sun, we did some lovely groundwork. I went back to teaching her to jump, on the end of a long rope, and she suddenly found her leap. Often, when I point her at a little obstacle, she sort of ambles over it. Today, she really jumped, arching her strong back, picking up her dear feet.

She looked first amazed and then delighted. Her head went up with pride. It was enchanting to watch.

Then I got on and we rode through the wild grass, in nothing more than rope halter. Lovely trot, relaxed and long; some beautiful, soft transitions. I’m teaching her to move from trot to walk and back again using only my voice, like they do with Western horses. It’s very restful and she is learning it fast.

And there it was, at the end of a long week. The harmony was back. My good lessons have been learnt.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that I have to let my horse be my horse. I think I was trying to turn her into something she is not. She damn well is a thoroughbred; for all her sweetness and kindness and gentleness, all her ability to let herself down and be as relaxed as an old hound, she does have hot blood in her. Even though she was the slowest racehorse in England, she still did once run in a jostling field of professional equines at about thirty miles an hour.

I think I sometimes do this with humans. I may even do it with myself. I believe through sheer cussed will I may convert someone’s ideas or transform my own self. It never works. Everyone must be who they are; there are no magic wands, not in this lifetime.

So that’s my rather rambly end of the week muse and ponder.

Dear old Red. I don’t think she knew when she arrived in the wilds of Scotland that she was setting up a little University of Life, but it turns out that is exactly what she has done. I smile as I write the words. I feel, as I so often do, passionately grateful to her.

 

Today’s pictures:

The lambs are growing up and look very beautiful in the dancing sun. They always make me think of Jane Austen, for some reason. There is something wonderfully unchanging about sheep:

The little HorseBack foal:

My lovely wise girl:

With Autumn the Filly, who has begun sporting a very chic fly mask, to guard against the horrid horseflies:

Can you see the wisdom of the ages in those eyes? I so can:

Working with The Remarkable Trainer, earlier in the week:

And having a lovely pick at liberty in the wild grass:

Stan the Man:

That is his highly concentrated Where is that Damn FLY face:

The hill, shimmering in the heat haze:

Thank you for all the Stanley love from yesterday. You are very, very dear Dear Readers when you do that. It’s one of the lovelinesses and absurdities and sweetnesses of the internet, when fondness for a canine can come winging through the ether, from thousands of miles away. More touching than you know.

And now I am naughtily taking the rest of the day off to listen to the Ashes and watch the July Meeting at Newmarket. It’s the heavenly Sky Lantern today, another great female thoroughbred, although of a slightly different stamp than my own dear girl. People are talking of a tactical race defeating her, and the Gosden filly gaining the upper hand, but I stick with the glorious flying grey, and hope she will assert her starry class and prove the doubters wrong.

Ascot, Day Five. Looking back on the lovely Sky Lantern, and ahead to the beloved question mark that is Mad Moose, and the streak of lightning that is Society Rock.

This week has really been one for the girls. It has had everything, this Royal Meeting. The big battalions of Ballydoyle marched forward, the titan that is Dawn Approach came back to his roaring best, the veteran Johnny Murtagh showed the young fellas how it is done.

The Queen won her race. The memory of Sir Henry Cecil was honoured, with his widow showing the absolute definition of courage, which Hemingway once described as grace under pressure.

The new boys had their moment in the sun, with Olly Stevens in his very first season as a trainer, and George Baker in his fifth, sending out winners, and the youthful James Doyle racking up a quick-fire treble.
But perhaps the memory of the dancing fillies is what I shall most hold dear – Riposte and Estimate on Thursday, and then, yesterday, the lovely grey Sky Lantern.

I have loved Sky Lantern since I followed her career as a two-year-old. She just held on to win the Guineas, but yesterday she had a much harder task, drawn out wide in a big field. To add to her troubles, Richard Hughes, her jockey, has been having an awful week, meeting trouble in running, making one controversial decision to switch right across the track which he himself admits was not his finest hour. All the armchair jocks were up in arms.

How they howl and carp, these online cavaliers, most of whom have never sat on a thoroughbred in their lives, let alone one that is going at forty miles an hour. Every jockey, like every human, will make a mistake once in a while. Racing is as much an art as a science, and tactics cannot be perfect in every single race. But the punters are merciless and shriek with their pockets, accusing good jockeys of riding to lose or stitching a race up, as if these tough, hard-working professionals are metronomic machines who should never make the slightest error.

I stuck with Sky Lantern in the end, because I love her, and even though I convinced myself the draw would defeat her, and the Irish raider might have the edge, I could not desert her now. I got her at a happy five-to-one, and Hughes dropped her out the back, let her find her own pace, picked up her up about three out, went right past the field in the straight, and won as he liked, easing up.

It was the prettiest of finishes, that delightful thing where the jockey does not even need to wave the whip, but can just keep the mighty animal balanced, riding with hands and heels. Hughes was patting her neck and pulling her ears before he even passed the winning post.

‘Well,’ said my mother this morning, as we relived the race. ‘She can do anything now.’

The second most satisfying moment of the day was a little whimsical each-way shout on Forgotten Voice, trained by Nicky Henderson.

It’s always rather funny seeing the National Hunt trainers at Ascot, all guyed up in their top hats and morning coats instead of a dented old Trilby and thorn-proof tweeds.

For some reason, I love these dual-code horses almost more than anything. I don’t know why. I suppose I am an admirer of versatility. Forgotten Voice had once been high class on the flat, but that was years ago. He’s gone for hurdling now, and to come back to the Royal Meeting is something of a stretch.

Yet he was the pick of the paddock by a country mile, his coat so shining and gleaming you could see your face in it, his head held high with bright spirits, his massive quarters packed with muscle. He was 12-1 and who knows what old form a genuine horse may pull out of the bag? It was worth a bit of anyone’s money.
And the dear old fellow damn well did pull it out of the bag, hanging on for the line against all comers, and I shouted so loudly that this morning my throat is quite hoarse.

Today, my own private dramas will revolve around two horses who could not be more different. One is another of the dual code fellas. Mad Moose is a chaser who is pretty good, but not quite in the very top class. His greatest moment over the sticks came when he chased home the majestic Sprinter Sacre.

He is perhaps the quirkiest horse currently in training, and there are days when he gets it into his mysterious, horsey old head not to go. The commentator starts the call, the field jumps off, and the camera pans back to a slightly disconsolate-looking Sam Twiston-Davies, with Mad Moose standing stock still as his compadres gallop off into the distance, a faintly mulish, bugger you gleam in his eye.

‘Nope,’ he is saying. ‘Not today. No thank you.’

Nigel Twiston-Davies is nothing if not imaginative, so, in a rather radical move, he sent his idiosyncratic old fellow off to the flat, at Doncaster. To have your first run in a flat race at the age of nine is a pretty rare thing in racing. To everyone’s utter amazement, Mad Moose won, at 28-1.

He then went to Chester, where, on a dank afternoon, he finished a plugging-on second to the runaway winner, Mount Athos, with some pretty decent horses in behind.

Suddenly, Mad Moose was everybody’s darling. Hopes were high on a sunny Yorkshire day on the Knavesmire, where he lined up again. The stalls rattled open, and the mighty Moose took two slow steps forward and then stopped. Willy Twiston-Davies flapped his reins a bit at the old fellow and then admitted defeat. Mad Moose stood defiantly still, looking quite grumpy and entirely unrepentant.

Twitter went mad with delight. It’s a horrid thing for the owners, and all the connections, and York is a long way from the Cotswolds, but it was just so terribly funny.

The stewards did not think it amusing. The dry post-race report noted: ‘future similar behaviour may result in the gelding being reported to the British Horseracing Authority.’ Everyone else was beside themselves with delighted hilarity. For some reason, it made his public adore him more keenly.

‘We’ve all had days like Mad Moose,’ wrote one tweeter; ‘where we think ‘fuck it, just can’t be arsed.’

‘What next for Mad Moose?’ said another wag. ‘Dressage, equestrian, rugby union?’

Even his jockey could not help seeing the funny side. Willy Twiston-Davies tweeted: ‘Moosey was naughty.’ His hashtag for the day was #doeswhathewants. The Twitterverse was rocking with laughter. ‘Just makes me love him more,’ said one fan.

I suspect there is something peculiarly British about it all. Of course the people of Blighty love a mighty champion, but what they love the most is the underdog. And an unpredictable, cussed underdog with a mind entirely of his own is exactly what the people of these islands cannot resist.

To see a fellow like that at the Royal Meeting is not exactly what one might expect, and it brightens the gaudy carnival that is the summer flat season. I shall back him for sheer love. The good girls have won me enough money this week, so I can afford some caprice today.

My second big hope is another old-timer, Society Rock. He’s six now, and has been round the block. He could not be more different from Mad Moose if he tried. He is a fleet, strong, shiny sprinter, fast as the wind.
He has, however, had similar travails at the start. At this meeting last year, he reared up in the stalls, missed the break catastrophically, and did well to finish as close as he did to the imperious Australian star, Black Caviar. His trainer, James Fanshawe, took him back to stalls school, worked patiently with the colt, and produced him at York this spring for a thrilling victory first time out.

I’d love him to win because he is a brave, tough, genuine horse. He also comes from one of the smaller yards. James Fanshawe is a supremely talented trainer, admired by his peers, popular in his community. But he is not a household name. He does not pitch up at the sales with a prince or a sheikh or an Irish plutocrat by his side, able to hurl cash around. He does not have two hundred horses to choose from like the massive operations which now hold sway. His yearlings will usually cost tens rather than hundreds of thousands.

I’ve got nothing against the big boys, and admire the skill and success of the Hannons and the Ballydoyle posse. But it’s a lovely thing to see the smaller operations outdo the big guns, and it’s good for racing. It’s a mark of real dedication and skill, to be able to produce top-class winners when you can’t just throw money at the problem.

And Fanshawe has had a cruel blow recently, when his other stellar sprinter, Deacon Blues, succumbed to a recurring injury, and had to be retired just as he was on the come-back trail.

The particularly nice thing was that, even in the midst of that crushing disappointment, all thoughts at the Pegasus yard were of the horse’s future well-being. They wrote on their website: ‘He will make a lovely riding horse as he has impeccable manners and he is very easy to do anything with.  His owners will make sure that he has a wonderful home and will be well looked after.  He certainly won’t want for anything.’

Beyond all that, Society Rock is owned by Simon Gibson, a gentleman in his eighties who has done a huge amount for Newmarket over the years. No owner would deserve victory more.

So that’s why he would be my happiest story of the day. He’s in a big field, so he will need luck in running. He’s got some exceptionally good horses up against him. But he has the talent and speed and the heart to win, and I hope he does. His dear name will be the one I am shouting at the top of my lungs, at 3.45 this afternoon.