The glory of sheep.

Today, I rounded up sheep.

It was mighty.

The red mare and I had gone out for a quiet ride when suddenly, over the brow of a small rise, we came upon a crazy flock of sheep, skittering about in all directions. It was a bit of a Gabriel Oak moment, I must admit.

Without thinking, I went into cowgirl mode. I circled the wheeling flock and brought them into order. On the other side, I saw the old farmer and his two grandsons, one on a quad bike, one with a sheepdog. ‘Which way do you want them to go?’ I shouted, reining the mare this way and that.

The farmers here are three generations. There is the old farmer, who has officially retired, but who, in reality, comes every day to check the ewes. He loves those animals, and casts his wise eye over them to see that all is well, missing nothing. There is the young farmer, who runs the show and works harder than any man I ever met, rising before the dawn and finishing his day in the dark. I have seen him doing the silage at ten-thirty at night, with his tractor lights blazing. Then there are the young boys, the grandsons, learning the ropes, understanding the land, developing those life-long habits of industry and striving.

There are few things I love more than observing knowledge passing down the generations. As I watched this good farming family at work, I felt something real and true stir in me.

The red mare had no such misty thoughts. ‘Excusez-moi,’ she said. ‘I am a racehorse, descended from generations of Derby winners, and you want me to do what?’

‘Bugger this for a game of soldiers,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to the paddock, to my nice, explicable Paint friend, instead of hanging out with these inexplicable sheep.’

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘it will be fun.’

By this time, I had a picture of us in my head, all wild and free, galloping across the plains of Wyoming with the wind in our hair, cutting cows like we had been born to it. In reality, we were one extremely duchessy duchess, and one scruffy middle-aged woman, wearing a distressingly mundane crash helmet and smeared spectacles, making absurd whoop whoop git onnnn noises.

Still, dreams die hard.

And for a moment, we were in the green grass of Wyoming, as the mare regally consented, and we cantered alongside the quad bike, the sheep running before us in perfect formation, under the lime trees, across the main road, and up to the long sloping meadow to the west. We damn well were My Friend Flicka.

My friend Jim, who does not have a head filled with green grass fantasy, saw us lope by and laughed so much he practically fell over.

My other friend, the owner of the Paint filly, drew up in her truck. ‘You’ve been doing what?’ she said.

‘Herding sheep,’ I said, as if we did it every day. The red mare snorted, as if to express how far beneath her dignity the whole thing was.

More gales of laughter.

‘I do admit,’ I said, ‘we weren’t exactly asked. The farmer did look slightly surprised.’

The red mare nodded her head, as if to say: who could blame him?

We waved our goodbyes, and went for a little racehorsey gallop to celebrate. Then I got off and walked her home, thinking she deserved the weight off her dear back after all that hard work.

‘You rounded up sheep,’ I told her, out loud. ‘You are a sheep-horse. You contributed something to the community.’

I swear that she almost rolled her eyes at me. Sheep, schmeep, she was clearly thinking.

I’m not sure I ever felt so important in my life. The 2601 words of book I wrote afterwards, even the HorseBack work, could not touch it. Today, it was the sheep that counted. It was something so small and ordinary, it could hardly be seen by the naked eye. It was moving some livestock from one field to another. Yet, in that wonderful moment, I felt we were part of something, doing something useful, stitched into this good Scottish earth. My red duchess may have been the slowest racehorse in the history of the sport of kings, but damn, she can move an ovine. The glow of it fills me still and makes me grin like a loon.

When the news is crazy and the world seems mad and the sorrows fill the pages of the papers, I cling on to the small things as if they are the life-raft which will stop me drowning. As I get older and more bruised, I believe it is in the ordinary that salvation and solace come. When I was young, I wanted to be extraordinary. I wanted the marks of worldly success. I wanted to do remarkable things. Now, I think that the greatest fortune and luxury is being able to know and love ordinariness.

Today, the ordinary came in the form of sheep. Take it where you can find it, I think to myself. It may not be everyone’s idea of glory, but for one shining moment, it was mine.

 

Today’s pictures:

You want me to do WHAT??????:

With those?:

Instead of hanging out with my nice dozy friend???:

But you know, if this writing lark does not work out, I think we’ve got a future in herding.

A quiet Friday

Ha. After spending all week telling my students about how they may drive off the dark, destructive critical voices, defy The Fear, and believe in their own true selves, I spent all last night tossing and turning, convinced that every single word I wrote here about writing was utter buggery bollocks. The irony elves were busy in the small hours, the little tinkers.

It’s probably because bone-tiredness has set in. I have used up all my energy, so today I am going to sit very still, with a bottle of iron tonic and Test Match Special on at full volume. The voice of Blowers will restore me to sanity and calm.

The dear mare gave me a restorative morning too. Even though the sun started to beat hard from the moment I woke, the set-aside was still cool and shady. We have new neighbours; the sheep have been moved into the high east field, and are wandering and calling as they get used to their new home. I had a long, soothing chat with the farmer this morning. One of his girls was in distress on Wednesday, and I got a message to him so that he could come and get her, and before breakfast he roared up in his dark blue Landrover to thank me. ‘Is she all right, your ewe?’ I asked, concerned. I am very fond of these sheep. The good news is that it was a vitamin B thing, and she will be fine. I love talking to the farmer. I love people who do good things on the land, people who know livestock and weather patterns and are rooted in the earth.

After that lovely beginning, I went down to Red, who is finding the savage sun all a bit too much. She has a heat rash, so I cooled her off with buckets of water, and a little witch hazel, and spent fifteen minutes soothing her poor coat. She does a very touching thing when I do things like this for her. Whether I am anointing a scratch with wound cream, or applying citronella for the flies, or giving her this water treatment, she seems to know that I am doing something for her. She submits with a sort of gentle gratitude, standing very still, offering me her head, looking at me with soft eyes. I am almost certainly making this up in my addled brain, and she is not thinking anything at all. She is a horse, after all. But it does often feel as if she understands that I am here to help.

Then I let her out into the wide set-aside for a pick at the lush grass. I used to take her out on a rope, but now I let her wander freely. She is not going anywhere, and comes at once when I whistle. It was an enchanted thing, watching her find her way through the shady trees, searching out the most delicious patch of grass. She was her most peaceful, equine self, at one with her surroundings; just a horse, at home in a green world.

Neither of us is going to do any work today. We are going to have a lovely Friday holiday. We are just going to be.

 

Today’s pictures:

The farmer, on the right, coming to have a morning chat:

Red’s blissful morning:

Look at that happy face:

Do you want me to come now?

The hill:

Housekeeping note:

It has been brought to my attention that there are Dear Readers who have broadband that is less than whizzy, and find the blog slow to download, on account of the pictures. I love putting up lots of photographs, so you can see the full Scottish beauty. On the other hand, I imagine it must drive you mad, waiting waiting waiting, for the damn thing to appear on your screen. I’m not quite sure how to resolve this. Too tired to work it out today, but those of you who are seasoned bloggers might have ideas.

In the meantime, have a lovely, sunny Friday. And if you are cricket fans, fingers crossed. Australia about to bat.

A change of mood, and a little horse tale

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I met some really nice and interesting people today. A local woman came up to speak to me about a wind farm development which is planned for two hills away. (There shall be a post about this later; I need to marshal my arguments and check my facts.) I was working with the mare, and the woman admired her greatly, and of course I could not resist explaining about Nijinsky being Red’s grandsire. It is the most babyish form of boasting, and I seem to have absolutely no way of not opening my mouth and saying it out loud, for all the vulgarity.

At this, the woman walked quickly back to her car, opened the door, and then her husband appeared, at a run. The woman smiled at me. ‘When I told him that you had Nijinsky’s granddaughter in the field, he could not resist,’ she said.

The husband gazed at Red with the proper awe. I could have hugged him. I get this same feeling when people say nice things about The Pigeon. If someone truly appreciates how magnificent my mare is, then I am their slave for life.

Luckily, Red was at her politest and best, probably because I had been working on her ground manners for the last hour. She sometimes can take or leave visitors; this time, she courteously offered her nose to be stroked and nodded her head and pricked her ears and was quite delightful in every way.

It was lovely to lean over the gate, in the shadow of the blue hill, and talk with interesting people about our countryside, and what shall happen to it. Later, two of the gentlemen who look after the place for The Landlord came up and also leant on the gate, and we discussed the farmer, and how hard he is working to get the hay in, how he had been up harvesting until eleven last night. We lamented how the weather is all against him, and contemplated the nuances of silage.

Who knew that silage did have nuance? And yet it does. It’s all to do with rain and the time of harvest and the sugar content of the grass. You need different kinds of silage for milk cows and meat cows. I devoured all this excellent new information with delight. One of the things I love most is talking to people who know the land. I did not quite expect, when I was running around tranny bars in Soho at four in the morning in my wild twenties, that I should end up with a horse in a muddy field, talking intensely of silage. But I am oddly glad that is how I did end up.

The horse work today was of great interest to me. I’ve been feeling rather sorry for the mare for the last couple of days, what with the mud and the murk and the rain and not being able to go riding. I made the schoolgirl mistake of not doing much work with her, thinking she might appreciate the time off, and over-compensating with carrots. This did not at all have the desired effect.

Yet again, I realised I must go back to basics, that even in two days bad habits had crept in, that she was not paying proper attention to me, and she was crowding me a bit. There are hard line people who say you should never feed your horse from your hand, because it will always make them pushy. I don’t quite believe this, but I do think that there should be strict discipline around all forms of feeding.

So, there were no treats today, but a little manners work. I went back to leading her on the long line, and making sure she was respecting my space. Everyone has a theory on this. I find an arm’s length is good. I walked her at my side, with my arm straight out, so that if she got too close, she bumped into my fist. Because I have been a little lax about discipline lately, she was quite cross about this. She tried all kinds of cunning tricks to get round it, changing sides, going behind me where she could rub her head on my back. I kept on, very consistent and firm, and suddenly she submitted.

The thing that interests me about horse psychology is that instant switch. It is a combination of them understanding what you want them to do, and being willing to accept your direction. Oh, I see, they are saying, you are the dear leader, and I can trust you and follow you, and this is the thing you would like me to do. Of course, they say, in their horsey heads; of course.

The other thing I fully realise, perhaps for the first time, is that this sort of gentle discipline must be done daily. You can’t just think: oh, I taught her that, she’s got it, now I can do anything I like. It’s a process, not a ticked box. That’s why old horsemen always say good habits make good horses. It’s not that she is naughty and she wants to take advantage, it’s that she is a horse, and she needs to know the same thing applies every day, so that she does not fall into confusion. (I start to think that horses hate confusion more than almost anything; if I had a number one watchword at the moment, it might be clarity.)

What I like about the natural horsemanship method is that you can instil discipline by the gentlest methods. Discipline sounds like a harsh martinet word, that must involve some kind of physical push or hit or shove, raised voices, even punishment. With these techniques, it’s not like that at all. I did not let the mare crowd me and then get cross and tell her off. The stretched arm stopped her crowding me in the first place. I was not pushing her with my fist, I was letting her run into it if she attempted to invade my space. It only involved the merest contact, but it was enough to show her what I wanted.

The other lovely thing I have learnt lately is the idea of rewarding the try. This is something I have read about from many sources. The idea is that you watch your horse acutely, and the moment they make the smallest, imperceptible attempt to do what you are asking, you reward them. You do not wait until they do the exact thing completely and perfectly, because often they do not quite get what the complete thing is. It is the try, rather than the ideal execution, that may be praised.

I adore this idea. Again, I extrapolate from it the lifiest of life lessons. Everyone should be rewarded for the try. One should not expect people in one’s life to do the things you may wish exactly as you wish them to be done. Honour the attempt, not the idealised consummation. I am now going to apply this to every area of my life. If I am very good, and concentrate very hard, I may even learn to apply it to myself.

Of course, the happy irony is that if you are working with an equine, and you start rewarding the try, they immediately begin to do everything perfectly anyway. It is as if they sense that you are so much on their side, so devoted to the idea of partnership, that all they want to do is please you.

So, once I had got Red into an attentive, polite frame of mind, I did all the other groundwork things with her. They are all very small, and very potent. Move the hindquarters, stop, back up, come forward. She was so quick and responsive and absolutely immaculate that it blew me away. We got to the stage where I could merely point with my finger, with no contact whatsoever, and she would do the thing I asked.

All this might sound a bit nuts, but there is a really important reason for it. This kind of groundwork makes the horse happy, because she feels safe. She knows exactly where she is with me. It makes me safe too, because it means it is less likely that half a ton of animal will knock me over or push me into the fence or trample me. It means I can trust her with strangers, especially children. I can invite them to come and say hello, secure in the knowledge she will not barge them or frighten them.

I know I do bang on about this a bit, but I can’t tell you what a miracle it feels like to me. To build a relationship like this with such a beautiful, highly bred creature is one of the great gifts of my life. I want to share with the group over and over, because there is so much joy in it. And the potency of the joy comes because it is earned delight; I really have to work for it, which makes the reward sweeter still.

I was filthy grumpy yesterday, and got up with lowered spirits to another black sky. ‘It’s going to rain until September, I heard,’ said the man who knows the land. Yet an hour and a half of good work with my good mare lifted my heart, and defied the damn weather. At the moment, she, with her willingness and her cleverness and her trust and her quickness to learn, is my sunshine. She is my very own little Vitamin D delivery device.

 

Pictures of the day:

I love how Red’s view changes as they cut the hay. Even on the dullest of days, the colours of the land still sing:

It also interests me how the light changes. Those first two pictures are taken facing due west; the second two are facing north. And they are quite different.

This year really is the year of the foxglove. They must be the only things which have actually welcomed all this rain, because they’ve gone crazy:

My lovely mare, watching the farmer at work, as if it were a really, really good television programme:

And doing her Minnie the Moocher amble:

She really is an awfully nice person.

And talking of nice people:

Pigeon, with serious face:

AND HAPPY FACE:

I don’t have the heart to show you yet another shot of the murk where the hill should be. One day soon, the dear old mountain will come back to us, if only that bloody jetstream could get its act together.