Trying too hard.

Author’s note: this is very long, and it is all about me. I’d love to think you might extrapolate some universal human truths, but let’s have the word with no bark on it: it’s all about me. It also features the red mare. She now has her own Facebook page so that I don’t bore you witless with her every whicker, but today she’s come galloping back to the blog. I just wanted you to know that before you started.

 

I love triers. People who try can bring me to tears. Horses who try have me in pieces. Children who try, with that wonderful, youthful sense of optimism and determination, pull on my heartstrings like nothing else.

And yet, I have lately been reminded that you can try too hard.

Of course I knew that. I don’t want you to think I am a complete booby. One of the surprises I have found as I motor through middle age is that I know much, much more than I thought I did. I got quite cocky about this for five minutes, until I realised that I have a fatal habit of forgetting all those good things I know. That’s when the gap comes between theory and practice, and I find myself falling into elephant traps and lying on my back, legs flailing in the air, thinking furiously: but I knew this.

­This week, I had a little parable about trying, from my red professor.

Since I’ve come back to horses, I’ve taught myself a whole new way of horsemanship. I’ve learnt from two great horsemen – Robert Gonzales, in life, and Warwick Schiller, on the internet. Schiller provides an amazing resource for people who want to have happy horses, easy to ride and handle. At his place in California, he takes in all kinds of horses who have problems. He’ll be presented with a 17 hand dressage horse who can do a test, but who can hardly be rugged up without freaking out. He is sent buckers and rearers and bolters, horses that can’t get on a trailer, horses so riven with separation anxiety that they can’t think straight. He’ll take the horse right back to the beginning, go through the methodical steps, find the frets and the worries, iron them out, and by the end will have a soft, responsive equine who can do everything on a loose rein with its head down. He videos this, explains exactly what he is doing, and posts it on his page as a learning tool for people all around the world.

It has been a revelation for me and the mare, and because of it I’ve never in my life been so in tune with a horse, or had a horse who is so at ease with herself.

This week, Warwick Schiller is coming to Scotland to do a clinic. The moment I heard, I booked my place, and started dreaming of the great moment when the red mare would meet the master. Yesterday, a pincer action of three disasters meant that I had to cancel. There would be no trip to St Andrews, no glorious meeting.

Part of me was very sad about this. I’d been working so hard to get the mare ready. We’d gone right back to the beginning, found all the things I was doing wrong, concentrated on fixing them. I’d upped the ante, asked her new questions, pushed her harder. I’d sat up late, rewatching all the videos, trying to figure out where I was going wrong and what I needed to improve. Each day, I went down to the field with my teeth gritted, trying like buggery, because we had to get our gold star.

I say part of me was sad, because there was another part. Another part was, and this is so odd I can hardly write it, relieved. Today, I suddenly realised that I had been going to that clinic for a lot of the wrong reasons. I’ve written, over the months, about the red mare and her wonders on the Warwick Schiller forum, so that she is well known there, carving out her tiny piece of internet fame. I think that I secretly believed that I would arrive in St Andrews and say: Look, look, here is the famous Red Mare, IN REAL LIFE. And everyone would gasp at her beauty, and gaze in awe at all the clever things she can do, and give her a round of applause and a laurel wreath.

In fact, they would have seen a perfectly ordinary thoroughbred, with a kind white face, who is, I have to admit, a little bit short in front, and who sometimes slings her head and rushes her trot. In my eyes, she is the embodiment of a dream; to anyone else, she is just a sweet chestnut mare, with all the flaws that horses are heir to. She has not travelled for a long time, and the journey might have unsettled her. She would have had to stay in a strange stable surrounded by unknown horses, leaving her charge and field-mate behind. She could have wigged out a bit, even after all the good training we have done. She might, whisper it, not have shown her best self. Where would I be then?

Of course I wanted to learn, and of course I hoped that the last knotty problems would be instantly unpicked by those knowledgeable eyes. But I am slightly ashamed to say that much of the driving impetus was an awful sort of showing off. My competitive spirit, which I pretend is not there but which is always yelling, in the back of my mind, give me a cup, had hijacked the whole thing and was running riot. That’s why I was going down to the field every morning with gritted teeth.

Gritted teeth are not always bad. Gritted teeth got AP McCoy to twenty jockey championships. They got my old dad back in the Grand National after severe doctors had said he should never sit on a horse again. They got me, in younger days, round huge cross country courses, to Peterborough and Windsor, through complicated dressage tests.

But gritted teeth are no good to the mare. In this new horsemanship, she has been taught the ways of softness. When I grit my teeth, she thinks there are mountain lions in the woods, and her lovely, floating stride breaks up and her neck tenses and she fears that the storm is coming. She does not know I am absurdly trying to prove myself and improve myself; she just feels the tension and dreads the worst.

As a result of all this damn trying, we had lost that elusive trot. We’d had it, so beautifully that it made me weep tears of joy, and then it went again. The basis of this method is that you should be able to walk, trot and canter on a loose rein. You are teaching your horse self-carriage. It’s one of the things I love. Instead of giving it information every two seconds, you ask the polite question and then leave it alone. You are not saying a bit slower, a bit faster, a bit more collected. You just say go, and then sit as still as Ruby Walsh on Douvan in the Punchestown sunshine. You trust the horse, because you have taught the horse to trust itself. This requires a steady mental state. Trying too hard wrecks all that work at a stroke.

This morning, in a curious combination of regret, sorrow, wistfulness, release and relief, we went for a ride. We were no longer getting ready to show the teacher what we could do; we were just being together. I let the mare wander where she would, which is a basic teaching exercise I do every morning. She struck out towards the darkest woods, the ones that use to make her snort and rear. She was in her most intrepid explorer mode. She ignored the little Paint, who was doing her own private rodeo in the field alongside. At one point, the Paint and Stanley the Dog were staging an antic series of barrel races. The mare did not so much as flick an ear. I had no hand on her rein; she was brave and free.

By the entrance to the terrifying woods, there is a high granite wall, very typical of this part of the world. In it, there is a door. The door is exactly like that in The Secret Garden, one of the books of my childhood which most touched my heart. The mare walked up to the door and put her head through it and looked into the garden beyond. I leant down along her neck so I could see what she was seeing. There was a slope of grass, the young trees we planted for my late father, when the family gathered, including his sister, his nephew and niece, his children and grandchildren, and the blue hills beyond.

The good horse and I stood, for many minutes, looking through the secret door. It felt symbolic of something profound, I was not sure what. I said, out loud, in her ear: ‘Thank you for this.’

We were not going to do any work today, because we are no longer preparing for a great occasion. But I thought, damn it, let’s just give that trot a go, just for the hell of it. And there it was, as if it had been waiting for me all along. She was as poised as an ambassadress, as delicate as a duchess, as gentle and relaxed as an old Labrador. We did it on a loose rein; we did it with no reins at all. I put my hands out into the cool Scottish air, and she bent her beautiful, mighty body round in a curving circle, found her own lovely rhythm, beat her own delightful drum.

I had stopped trying, and that was when she gave me my greatest gift.

So, after all that, the thing which was a bit of a disaster turned out to be the best thing which could have happened. I needed a lesson in not letting that wild competitive drive get rancid and wrong. I needed to be reminded that I don’t actually require a cup. I needed to know that sometimes I can crash everything when I grit those absurd teeth too hard. I had forgotten all these things, and circumstance and this generous horse came along and set me right.

Trying is good. I try to write better prose. I try to do my work at HorseBack well. I try to be a good friend and a reasonably decent human. I try to be polite and see others’ points of view. I try not to judge in a mean way, and I try not to bitch and moan. I try for stoicism and balance.

With this ravishing mare, I try to follow the example of those two dazzling horsemen, not because it will make her a supreme champion, but because she will be happy in her skin and have a human on whom she can rely. It also means I am less likely to fall off and bruise these old bones. That’s a good kind of trying. It’s trying for the right reasons.

And it means that we get a glimpse of the view, through that low door in the wall.

 

Here she is, after all that loveliness, having a happy breakfast with her questing friend. The Paint always hopes that if she stands there with her Oliver Twist face on, she might get a go. She never does. The red mare knows perfectly well that she’s had her own breakfast, and this orphans in the snow look is pure theatre:

One perfect moment.

Author’s note: I did of course have wonderful plans for the first post back. I’ve been out in the world, and I was going to tell you about that. I had stories to tell. I’d been thinking many, many thoughts on the long drive back. I was going to be like the Ferrero Rocher ambassador, and spoil you. Then the red mare did something so lovely that I could only write of that, because I could only think of that. (There really is not enough room in my mazy brain for more than one thing at a time.) So I’m afraid this is very, very horsey, even more horsey than usual. I’ve put in some extra Scotland photographs at the end, in a tragic attempt to make up for it.

 

Back after a very busy, very wonderful and very emotional week at Aintree. I was at full stretch, doing all my HorseBack work, and now have hit the wall and need to sit quietly in my room for a while.

As I drove home through the snowy mountains, I thought of my dear red mare. She is the thing that pulls me home. I may have been seeing some of my most beloved racing stars, some of the most elegant, beautiful and elite athletes on the planet, but the face I miss is that of a muddy, woolly duchess, who never won a prize in her life.

I got on her back this morning after not having sat on her for six days. The popular wisdom is that in springtime, with the new grass and the twinkles in the toes, thoroughbreds should not really be leapt on like that. I did about ten minutes of groundwork first, just to check her state of mind and remind her that her good leader had returned, and then, off we went.

Because I’ve been learning a completely new way of working with horses, we haven’t done any advanced or technical riding. I’m still trying to figure out how to do everything correctly on the ground, to get her and me to the place we both need to be. My version of schooling in the saddle consists of two daily exercises, both unbelievably basic.

The first is called Where do you want to go? I get on the mare, let out the reins, and allow her to go where she will. If she gets stuck anywhere, like the gate or the feed shed, I work her there, and then let her go again. It’s a fabulous exercise and it fixes about eight different things and I love it and it makes me laugh. But it’s not exactly technical. It mostly consists of me waving my arms in the air or scratching her withers whilst asking: where do you want to go? I’m always curious to see where she chooses, and wonder what is going on in her dear head whilst she makes those navigational decisions.

Then we move on to the Left Right exercise, which is about balance and straightness and light steering. If the horse goes left, you steer it right, and vice verse. It’s really that simple. So you see, we are not exactly doing collection or flying changes.

We were working on these today, doing our ABCs, and she was a little tense and tentative and I was bringing her down until she relaxed. We were looking for softness, which is our holy grail. And then, suddenly, in a ravishing collected trot, she started going in perfect circles, with the most beautiful bend in her body, using every inch of that duchessy thoroughbred self. She used to be quite stiff, and she would drop her shoulder, and she would lean on me, and her body would go out of alignment. I have not worked on any of that specifically. I’ve just done this wonderfully basic work on the ground and under the saddle, trying to teach myself as much as her, concentrating on getting each small step right, sometimes feeling like a fool because I am still muddling about in the foothills when everyone else is galloping over the mountain peaks.

But there, out of the blue, she described a balletic, poised, perfect circle, with everything in the right place. When that happens, you can feel it, like someone has thrown a switch and the whole world has changed. And the really lovely thing is that I was not doing anything. She was doing it by herself. That’s the point of all this work, to give her the confidence to carry herself. I simply point the way, ask the question, and then let her alone. There is no nagging or correction.

I was so amazed that I dropped the reins and let her go, simply moving my body with hers. And she kept right on going, in her delirious dressage diva circuit, everything in harmony. Every inch of her body, every muscle and every sinew, was working in time, each moving part going smoothly with the other. I’m not sure I ever felt anything like it.

In a daze of delight, I said whoa, and she stopped on a sixpence and I leapt off and covered her in strokes and rubs and kisses, wishing I could express to her the brilliance of what she had just done. She stood like a statue, with her head low, her ears in their dozy donkey position, her lower lip wibbling in the suspicion of an equine smile.

Did she know? I hope she knew.

She made me cry actual tears of joy and gratitude.

There is something sometimes frustrating about putting myself back to school, about having to learn humility and patience and rigour, about having to go over and over and over and over the very, very small things, until I have them right. I’m quite a slow learner, and sometimes I think: oh, bugger it, let’s just gallop off into the middle distance and forget all this. But what it does mean is that I appreciate the smallest things as if they are dazzling diamonds. I shouldn’t think many other horsewomen burst into tears today because they did a slow sitting trot in a circle in a green field. They’d probably think: right, that’s done, let’s move on to transitions. But for me, it was like winning that damn Grand National.

The older I get, the more I believe in the small things, in all areas of life. The red mare teaches me so many life lessons, and returns me to earth when I become idiotic or hubristic, and shows me the value of the plain virtues. She is the Empress of Small Things, and I can never thank her enough.

 

Today’s pictures:

Are actually from yesterday. The road home:

And the faces that greeted me:

Quite often, when I get back, she’s not that bothered. There’s a bit of – yeah, right, whatever. But this time she came straight over for love, and then followed me round the field when I went to leave. I do fight anthropomorphism every single day, but I swear this face is saying: where have you been?:

Meanwhile, Stan the Man was very happy to be back in the feed shed, hunting for RATS:

Into the woods. Or: be brave.

There is a moment in a book when I think I am editing and slashing and cutting, killing darlings with a ruthless hand, slaying those irrelevant, indulgent, extraneous paragraphs like Attila the Hun on a wild Saturday night.

In fact, I am fooling myself. I am living in a state of tense fear. I have written all these damn words, and thought all these damn thoughts, and I am holding onto them for grim death. I trim a passage here, and chop a conclusion there, but I am tinkering round the edges. I find that my perspective goes, and I can’t liberate myself. I’m so terrified of losing the good stuff that I dare not murder the bad stuff.

This morning, in the field with the red mare quietly grazing by my side, I shouted into my mobile telephone to my agent. We had one of those revelatory, galvanising conversations which change everything.

‘I AM GALVANISED,’ I hollered, into the light Scottish air. The mare took not the blindest bit of notice.

I did not go to HorseBack, but ran straight to my desk. I merrily threw out 1700 words, and wrote 2339 new ones to go in their place. I was no longer frightened. It had taken me nine months of trying to work out what this book was really about, and, finally, it was the objective eye of the clever agent that cut through the thickets and saw the light.

The thing that is making me laugh is that the heart of the book turns out to be the part about which I harboured profound doubts. It was a piece of folly and self-indulgence, I thought, too much even for me. I could not resist it, but I corralled it into little separate sections in each chapter, so that when the agent shrieked with derisive laughter, as she surely would, I could quietly remove those nutty bits and sit up straight and be a grown up.

Those parts may now be released from their box. It is the happiest irony that they are the glorious, chugging engine of the whole book.

The red mare, as you dear Dear Readers know to your cost, is not just an actual horse. She is a metaphor horse. She is my totem, my shining light, my daily life lesson. After taking a holiday whilst I was cheering on her cousins at Cheltenham, she has come back into work, and I got back on her for the first time today. Warwick Schiller, the lovely Australian horseman whose precepts I follow, has a delightful exercise which he does with his horses every day. It is called: ‘Where do you want to go?’

The idea is that you get on and you let the horse wander where it will. The only rule is that they must keep a steady gait, but you do not steer them. This achieves many wonders, too many to go into now, but perhaps the most important is that it teaches them not to get stuck. If Red heads for the gate or the feed shed or the place where her little Paint friend is grazing, I make her work by disengaging her hindquarters and moving her in tight circles. When she goes off kindly, I leave her alone. Sometimes I wave my arms in the air, just for fun, and think about how good this is for my independent seat. I always love seeing where she wants to go next, and sometimes have to lie on her neck as she weaves her way under low-hanging branches and through the trees.

On this day of all days, after I finished the liberating, galvanising conversation with the agent, I got on the mare and asked her where she wanted to go. She set off to her usual haunts, near to home, and we described a familiar circuit.

Then, something amazing happened. She pricked her ears and struck off into new territory. She was going where the wild things are. She headed with purpose, without any doubt or terror, to the scary woods. The woods to the west are indeed dark and deep, with rough ground and alarming shadows. The pheasants which used to send her into shocked, vertical leaps live there, along with cohorts of invisible woodland critters, hiding in their umbrous lairs.

In she went, had a wander about, took everything in, and then found her way out again into the light. On the border of the scary wood is a ragged area where the building yard beyond the southern treeline stores all its old stone. Huge blocks of ancient Scottish granite lie there in heaps, along with old carved pediments and fanciful curlicued columns. Some of it has been there for so long that the moss and grass has started to grow over the sleeping humps, as if the very earth is reclaiming it for its own. This was not only far out of her comfort zone, it was treacherous ground, difficult to navigate. She was Magellan now, setting out without a map, going to the edges of the known world, into the realm marked Here Be Dragons. I stifled my delighted laughter, and went with her, wherever she wanted to go.

She beat the bounds, picked her way, sure-footed as a mountain goat, over the hummocks and crevices and sharp edges of the monumental stones, tracked her way past the young trees, and emerged, triumphant, all terrain conquered, back into the familiar flatlands of her own field.

I’ve been guilty of thinking she was not a very brave horse. I made a category error. It was not courage she lacked, it was good, sturdy, human boundaries. Once she had those, it turned out she could go anywhere.

There is a profound idea that when you work a horse well, you find out who it really is. If the human is not up to scratch, the horse may hide its true nature under a defensive layer of compensations and survival mechanisms.

Now she has confidence in me, the red mare may be brave. As my agent has confidence in the book, so I may be brave. It was a perfect piece of symmetry.

I cast away the old words, and wrote the new, and I had a humming sense of pleasure in the work. But nothing, nothing, could match the delight of that moment when my courageous mare cast off her shackles and headed out into the unknown.

 

Today’s pictures:

There was too much going on to take photographs on top of everything else. Here are a couple from the last few days. I’m afraid I am taking the opportunity to show you yet another lying down picture. Any excuse.

She’s actually staring at the scary woods in this picture, because some invisible creature is moving about down there and making a racket:

Stan the Man is always brave as a lion when he has that magical stick in his mouth:

In which I ponder lessons in horsemanship and humanity.

Today, my darlings, I lifted up a horse’s ribcage with my feet. If you were not lifting up horses’ ribcages with your feet then I don’t know what you have been doing with your time. (Especially Anne Westminster and her Grenson’s. Which is a reference only four people and a very posh dog will get.)

There was a wonderful moment before I got on. Robert Gonzales, horseman, gentleman, spectacular human, said, in his gentle, easy voice: ‘Just start warming her up there.’ I’d made an absolute cack-handed farce of the groundwork the day before, at one point managing to swirl the rope round my arm and corral myself, but I’d been thinking and pondering and brushing up overnight, so I thought: now he shall see what an old British gal can do. He watched for about three minutes, out of the corner of his kind eye. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘There are five things you are doing wrong right there.’

‘OF COURSE I AM DOING FIVE DIFFERENT THINGS WRONG,’ I bawled, in hilarity. The mare blinked at me as if to say: decorum. I doubled over with laughter. I think I may have actually slapped my thigh. Oh, the flap flap flap of the hubris angels’ wings.

Robert showed me the five wrong things. He then showed me how to do five things right. I did five things right. The mare, forgetting for a moment that she is an aristocrat, and all this trundling about the valley in trailers is quite beneath her dignity, looked first surprised and then delighted. Round she went, relaxed and athletic, using her whole magnificent body, her head down searching for softness, a lovely bend in her body. We never really get bend, but there it was. All because I was now standing in the right position and directing my energy in the right direction and putting my hand in the right place.

‘Poor old lady,’ I said, when we stopped. ‘What you have had to put up with.’

‘Right,’ said Robert, quietly pleased. ‘Get her saddled up.’

So, we rode. Under that brilliant, eagle eye, we found a glorious soft trot, we disengaged the buggery out of the hindquarters (‘move, move,’ said Robert, when he saw I was falling into mimsy), we did easy transitions, we made delicate changes of direction. I lifted that ribcage with my heels, so that her powerful thoroughbred arse could be free to do its job.

I did whoop a bit, I must confess. The new feeling coming off the mare was like a rolling, liberated wave of energy. ‘It’s as if I’ve being trying to dance Swan Lake in clogs,’ I shouted, ‘and now someone has given me a pair of ballet shoes.’

I learnt to let softness run all the way through my own body, from my shoulders to my pelvis to my calves, so that her body too would grow soft, from ears to tail.

‘Wow,’ I bellowed. (When I grow excited, I lose all volume control.)

Robert, still quiet, still smiling, taking all this on the chin, looked me in the eye. ‘Good work,’ he said.

Out on the wild shores of the internet, there is a very lovely woman who also writes a blog, and also has an adored thoroughbred, and also loves almost nothing more than a good canine. She and I became blogging friends, and then real life friends, since it turned out, rather amazingly, that I knew her brother in my university days. She often writes, very bravely and lyrically, about difficult subjects. A few days ago, she wrote a piece on loneliness. Successful, professional woman are not really supposed to admit to such frail emotions, and I thought it took a great deal of courage. One of the anonymous keyboard warriors went at once into battle. Instead of saying nothing, or writing in empathy and encouragement, Anonymous was ungenerous and unkind. Pull yourself together and stop moaning, was the burden of the mean song.

It made me think about the art of criticism. All humans make mistakes and get things wrong and fall into muddles. This morning, that good horseman told me, without apology or embellishment, that I had got five whole things wrong. He did not mean that I am a bad person or I should go into the garden to eat worms. He wanted me to get the things right, for my sake and for the sake of the mare. I sensed he had faith that I could, and so I did. Not perfect, but better. Better and better and better; every day in every way.

The critique was all practical and hopeful. That is why I laughed instead of being downcast. The anonymous critic who attacked my friend had no positive end in mind. The harsh words were purely destructive, tearing down the house with no thought for the real, feeling human who lived inside. The criticism had no utility. All it did was bruise an already bruised heart.

The cruellest voices often come from the lacerating gin-soaked critics in one’s own head. I’m learning the art of not falling into category errors; it’s one of my quiet obsessions. I do drive myself onwards, because smugness and complacency are horrid companions. I make mistakes in writing, and mistakes in horsing, and mistakes in life, and I like to look those mistakes in the whites of their eyes and strive to correct them. This does not mean that I am feckless, pointless, useless and hopeless, and that there is no health in me. It just means I got something wrong. The good critic is a lovely voice, and should be welcomed in and given cake. The bad critic should be locked in a room with a bottle of Gordon’s and left there.

And this is what I love about my red professor and all the things she teaches me – I can go from lifting a ribcage to category errors to the art of constructive criticism all in fourteen paragraphs.

 

Today’s pictures:

I did not take the camera today. I wanted to take everything in with my eyes and my brain and my heart, and not have a filter. So there are just a couple more shots from yesterday:

Oh, and I have one more thought before I go. It is this: it’s never too late. I’m nearly fifty, and I’m learning something completely new. I hope I shall be learning it until I am ninety, because you never reach the end of a horse. What I like is that I find a joy in learning. I always was a bit of a girly swot. At the same time, there is an absurd voice in me which says that when you are a grown-up, you should know stuff; that there is something almost undignified about going back to the beginning and admitting rank ignorance. This is a stupid voice, and I mostly give it a Maggie Smith raised eyebrow. What is truly undignified is closing your mind, thinking you know it all, refusing to harvest wisdom wherever you may find it. I don’t think there is ever a moment when you are done. Hurrah, I say, without embarrassment, for going back to school.

The red mare takes a journey.

Today, I had the dazzling good fortune to take the red mare up to HorseBack to work with Robert Gonzales.

I knew that I was at the very beginning of my journey, and I understood, humbly, that I was in the foothills whilst he bestrode the mountain peaks. Even so, when he took the mare in hand and showed me all the things that I had been getting wrong, in the gentlest and politest way possible, I did feel a moment of chagrin. I’ve been learning this new kind of horsemanship with the dedication of someone taking a university course, and I had felt that I had made some strides forwards.

In fact, I saw at once that I had been mimsing about. One of the things my father disliked most was mimsiness, and he was a horseman to his bones, and I should have damn well learnt that lesson by now. I’d been staying in a safe comfort zone, and letting the mare get away with things that I should have corrected. I write a lot here about rigorousness, but I had sadly lacked rigour.

When I had got over the bruise to my amour-propre, I felt excited, because a new door had been opened, and I could step through it. We’ll go on learning and I’ll go on getting better, and when you start from such a low place, the only way is up.

The mare, once she dealt with the slight shock of having someone work her who really was not messing about, had a lovely time, and when her lesson was over, rested happily, ground-tied, whilst the ex-sprinter Brook went through his paces. When they were formally introduced, she took to him with a faint degree of shamelessness, breathing into his nose and batting her eyelids at him. Often, when two strange horses meet, there is a degree of squealing and tail-swishing and a little dance as they work out the hierarchy. There was none of that. Just a gentle, questing hello, as if he were an old friend she had been missing. It was very touching.

Apart from not being firm enough, I think I have let emotion get in the way. The thing I notice about Robert is that he brings a delightful, calm neutrality to each horse. He does not get frustrated when they do the wrong thing, just keeps on persisting until they give him the right answer. When that answer comes, he does not, as I am prone to do, shriek and whoop and fall on the horse’s neck. He merely exudes a quiet satisfaction and gives them a good rub.

The love I have for this mare gets in the way of working her well. She does not really need human love; my bursting heart is all to do with my delight, not hers. She wants a place of safety and a sense of ease. My new resolution is to leave not only my worries and tensions at the gate when I work her, but to leave the love there too. I may indulge that when we have finished. It’s one of the hardest lessons in the world to learn, but I must learn it – it’s not, not, not all about me. It’s about her. That is the very least she deserves.

Oh, and PS. I was so inspired by this revelatory lesson that I cast away any shyness about saying the thing. I looked the great horseman right in the eye, smiled my goofy smile and said: ‘Robert, you are a giant among men.’ And that is no more than the truth.

 

Today’s pictures:

Resting, after work:

Despite being in a new and antic environment, she settled very well, just casting the odd look out of the door, where she could hear the rest of the herd moving about in the fields:

It was quite tiring:

I love this picture for about eighty-seven reasons. First of all, you are popularly not supposed to be able to do any of the things that we are doing here with ex-racehorses. One is standing quite happily by herself, with no human constraint, whilst another horse and several humans are working away about her. The other is going easily on a loose rein in a rope halter, stretching down his neck to find the place of softness, whilst his human rides him bareback. He is also in the middle of doing an exercise which he would never have learnt in his racing days, of yielding the shoulder, so he is having to concentrate very hard. Despite that, the softness is there. I also love the  look on the mare’s face:, a little bit dozy but a little bit thoughtful, as she processes everything she has just learnt:

Oh, those hot-blooded thoroughbreds, those crazy ex-racehorses; can’t do a thing with them:

She worked so hard she actually got sweaty, which is not what normally happens, so on went her cooler, making her look like a proper show pony:

I didn’t take any pictures of Robert working the mare, because I was avidly absorbing everything with my human eyes. Here he is with Brook, waiting for softness. He’ll wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. As long as it takes. That patience is one of the great lessons I take from all this. You can’t rush this, or skip parts, or think that half a loaf is a good enough. You’ve got to wait for the golden moment:

I try not to fall into anthropomorphism, but my idiot brain says the mare is flirting. I don’t blame her. Brook is a very handsome fella, as well as a very nice one. Actually, she is not really flirting, she’s just saying hello. But there did seem to be some sweet sense of recognition in her. They are related, after all. You have to go back four generations on his side, and three on hers, but there it is – Northern Dancer, in black and white, the grandaddy of them all. Maybe that good Canadian blood really is thicker than water:

Thank you to HorseBack, and thank you to Robert. It was a huge day.

In which I cast off my British reserve, and say the thing. Because sometimes you just do have to say the thing.

It’s been a mighty, mighty week, and there is so much I would love to write for you. I have, however, reached the stage that the poor Dear Readers know so well, when my bamboozled old brain is trying to crawl out of my ears and find a place of safety. Still, I’m going to type a line or two, and hope that I make at least some sense. (At this point, there is a very real danger that I won’t.)

There is a line in The Big Chill, one of my favourite films of all time, which goes something like: ‘How much fun, friendship and good times can one man have?’ Of this week I feel like saying: how much learning, revelation, brilliance, elegance and sheer poetry can one woman take?

I could fill a volume with the specific things I have learnt from watching a great horseman in action. I’ve already applied some of them to the red mare, and even though I am clumsy and bumbling in comparison to the grace and accuracy of Robert Gonzales, we have still made a glittering leap forwards. This week, we rode round a huge open field, with no reins, in a steady sitting trot. NO REINS. I tucked them safely under the pommel of the saddle and lifted my arms in the air, and let the good mare find her own direction. The important thing was that she should keep the same, even gait, with her neck nice and relaxed, going kindly within herself, which she did, with all the fine poise of a dowager duchess.

We did it on two consecutive days, so it was not a fluke. I was so proud of her I felt like crying absurd tears of amazed joy.

I am still in the scrubby lowlands, but I can raise my eyes to the hills, and that view shines like diamonds in my mind and heart.

But perhaps more importantly what I learnt was a human lesson. When somebody is really, really good at something, and has all the quiet confidence that brings, they do not need to hector or swagger or showboat. They do not need to prove anything, or cast anyone else down, or put out more flags saying Look at Me, Look at Me. They quietly go about their business, drawing other humans in through gentleness and politesse. They make their point by shining example. They remain absolutely present, in the moment, carrying their talent and their assurance lightly, so it is a lovely generous thing which sheds its refracted light into observing eyes. Perhaps most importantly, they are entirely themselves.

That is what I saw this week, and it was a great privilege. For once, I am not reaching for creaky jokes, or clever lines, or antic paragraphs. I am committing the great British sin of being as serious as stones. But sometimes in life you see something which is serious, which leaves a profound mark you know you will never forget, which is so beyond the run of the ordinary that it lifts you up and gives you a new and gleaming perspective. Respect is due.

Because I am British, I can’t possibly speak these words to the gentleman in question. In real life, I have to scuff my foot along the ground, and be ironic, and smile a goofy smile and look away. But I can write the words, in the shelter of the page, even though I feel quite shy about doing even that. Sometimes though, you’ve damn well got to say the thing. Because life is too short.

So - thank you, Robert. You are a remarkable horseman. But you are an even more remarkable human being.

 

Today’s pictures:

Happy friends, sharing their morning hay:

Stanley the Manly, ear flying, with a triumphant stick. It’s not the best picture I ever took in my life, but I wanted you to have the action shot:

I grew up in a racing and showing yard, where every single equine was gleaming and pristine. I could not hold my head up unless each hoof was gleaming with oil, and manes and tails were neatly trimmed, and coats were shining from grooming. I used to brush my ponies until my arm ached. Now, even though I can still appreciate a Best Turned-Out, and know how much work goes into a polished horse, I appreciate a different kind of beauty. It is the beauty of a mare just being a mare; hairy, scruffy, unadorned, covered in the glorious Scottish mud, with no prizes to win or points to prove. Herself is herself, and that is the thing I want most for her:

A glimpse of the mountain peaks.

I am in a slightly overwhelmed state. The regular Dear Readers will know that one of the things I love most is watching people who are really, really good at something. I adore brilliance. I doff my hat to it, and observe it with awe and wonder.

Today, I saw a horseman so good that it was like watching Nijinsky dance, or Olivier act, or Yo-Yo Ma play the cello.

I was doing my work at HorseBack, cantering about as usual with my camera, thinking of the Facebook posts I would write. I was very excited that Robert Gonzales had come all the way from California to share his knowledge and wisdom with us, and at first was only concerned with capturing the best shot. But after a while, I realised that something so rare was happening that I dropped the camera and merely stared with my eyes. At times, I could feel my mouth dropping open in cartoonish amazement, or my face falling into a foolish grin of pure delight.

Sometimes, at HorseBack, I hear stories from the veterans of the extremes of human experience, so bad and so far from my imagination that I can feel the very atoms of my body rearranging themselves, as if in outrage. Today, the atoms were on the move from the experience of seeing something so fine, so light, so ravishing, that it had a visceral effect of joy instead of sorrow.

What was it, this brilliance? It was so subtle that I can hardly capture it in words. It does not have soaring words to go with it, although it was a soaring thing. It was to do with steadiness, attention, timing, feel, a beautiful sure touch, a sense of something authentic and enduring. It was smooth and certain; there were no jagged edges. The thought was all about the horse, and getting that equine mind to a soft and easy place.

I thought I’d been doing pretty well with my red mare. I’d had moments of pride, which sometimes slipped into hubris. Now, watching the real thing, I realised that I was like a pub singer compared to Caruso.

That’s not the worst thing. I do not feel discouraged or downcast. At least the pub singer shows up. I feel humble, set in my correct and lowly place, but inspired to keep on going down this long and winding road until I can get within hailing distance of that kind of excellence. It will always be ahead of me, way out on the horizon, but if I could just catch a glimpse, I should be happy.

I love that there are people in the world who do such glorious things with horses. I love that the word they use the most is softness. I love that they are fascinated and enchanted by the equine mind and give it the respect it deserves. Until now, I’d only seen them on the small screen – old footage of Ray Hunt and the Dorrances, the documentary about Buck Brannaman, the brilliant training videos of the gentleman I take my instruction from, Warwick Schiller. But I’d never seen it in life before, and, up close, it is quite another thing. It is like a ravishing dance, and it made me smile the goofiest, happiest, most blissful smile in the world.

 

Today’s pictures:

Just time for two, since it’s been a long day, and I’m good for nothing now.

The magnificent Mr Gonzales, with Brook the ex-sprinter. This does not look dramatic, but it was one of the most striking aspects of the whole morning. It was simply standing and waiting for the horse to soften after a bit of work, standing and letting the new piece of learning soak in, staying quiet and still until the head came down and the muscles in the neck relaxed and the eyes went soft. Sometimes it took a moment; sometimes it took many minutes. It was the unforced, patient waiting, the sense of having all the time in the world, the offering the good horse the space to work it out with no pressure on him that was so very lovely, and it was oddly emotional to watch:

My furry, muddy, red mare and I have miles to go before we sleep. (The woods are lovely, dark and deep.)

But we shall prevail. Because we might have our hopeless moments and our bad hair days and our one step forwards two steps back, but we are triers. Like dear old pub singers everywhere, bellowing out ersatz versions of The Streets of London, we show up. Which must be half the battle:

Joy. Or, old friends and good horses.

Oh, oh, the old friends. The ease, the laughter, the fondness, the absolute lack of need to explain oneself in any way.

These particular friends are like the Radletts in Don’t Tell Alfred. (Oh, Fanny, not Fuller’s cake.) There is a lot of exclaiming – is that a new book, look at your pictures, this lunch is completely delicious, HOW HANDSOME STANLEY IS. All the good things are noticed and delighted in, and none of the bad ones even register.

I love it that we have almost thirty years of history together and that I remember their daughter from the day she was born. She is now a very charming and composed and entrancing young lady, radiating goodness and brightness and enthusiasm.

She is not a rider, although she’s been up on a few Welsh ponies. But I offered her a ride, all the same. She was thrilled by the idea. We went down to the field in the Scottish sun, and I quickly worked the red mare on the ground, partly to show them what she can do, and partly to check her state of mind before I put up such an important passenger. The wind was up, and the mare had come haring up the field to meet me at full canter with her tail in the air, so it was vital to bring her back down to earth.

Foot-perfect. I was flushed with pride. I got on, just to check further. Still as the rock of ages.

Up went the young person. I explained to her briefly about sitting straight and breathing to keep her body relaxed. I led them on a rope to start with. Safety first. But the two girls could not have been happier with each other, so I let them go. Round in a perfect circle went the thoroughbred mare and her youthful rider.

The mother, beaming, said: ‘You ride her like that, in a halter, without a bridle or a bit?’ I’m so used to it now that I hardly notice. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s how I’ve trained her. That’s what she understands.’

The Young Person’s smile was so wide that it was like a beacon, flashing its message of joy all the way to Inverness.

‘You know,’ I said conversationally, ‘there are some grown-ups who won’t get onto a thoroughbred. And there you are, riding her like you’ve been on a horse your whole life.’

Stanley the Dog was prancing around, doing antic things with tree branches. The dear Paint filly, quite recovered from her illness, decided to show off her championship breeding, and did a little reining pattern of her own out in the field, and some ventre à terre galloping. The red mare, conscious of her precious cargo, took no notice, but walked gently with perfect composure. The human joy, unconfined, flew up into the bright air.

I work this mare using the horsemanship I use for many reasons. It is a compliment to her, since it takes into account her equine self, her evolutionary biology, her status as a prey animal, her herd instincts. I do it because it makes her feel happy and safe. I do it because it is practical, and makes every single thing, from putting on a rug in a gale to loading her onto a trailer, very, very easy. I do it because it reduces the risk of these creaking middle-ages bones getting broken. I do it because it interests me intellectually, as I watch the species barrier come as close as it can to being crossed. I do it because it is sheer, visceral pleasure, an earthed and physical thing. I do it because it builds the bond between us, and that makes my heart sing.

But sometimes I think I do it because it gives me a horse I can trust so much that I may offer a happy young person a moment of pure pleasure. I need have no fret or worry. The red mare is not the fiery ex-racehorse of myth, the hot-blooded thoroughbred of stereotype. She is a horse at home with herself who will carry a raw beginner kindly and with care. That is worth more than rubies.

 

Today’s pictures:

We are not in Kansas any more. Or, an unexpected day of loveliness, and the first life lesson of 2015.

A very kind friend offered to feed the horses this morning and I was not booked to cook my mother’s breakfast, so I had the most fabulously luxurious lie-in, catching up on my December sleep debt. I never lie in, as horses do not understand about weekends or national holidays. It was the most glorious start to 2015.

Then there was a feast of racing. Many of my old friends were out, and some new ones too, celebrating their birthdays. (All thoroughbreds are like the Queen. They have two birthdays. Their actual date of birth, and the 1^st of January, when they all turn an official year older.) I was beside myself. Everything in the garden was as lovely as human and equine wit could devise.

Then I got an email.

The red mare was lame.

Despite the fact that Rock on Ruby, one of my favourite fellows, was about to dance up the Cheltenham hill, I threw aside everything and rushed down to the field. Sure enough, there was a very doleful girl, head-bobbingly lame and extremely needy. She buried her head in my chest as if I could make it all go away.

I hate lameness. I feel it as if it is my own leg that is damaged. I also hate seeing all that majestic power and strength hobbled and confined.

I set about some equine detective work, feeling for heat, running hands down tendons, examining the sole of the hoof. We did hosing, stretching, and gentle experimental walking. The dolefulness increased. There were little pleading creases of worry and plaintiveness above those liquid eyes.

Whilst I had a little think, I decided to cheer her up by giving her a full body rub. She is a duchess and deserves nothing less. I’d also been inspired by a fellow horsewoman to experiment with the pressure of the rub – good, firm, no messing versus light, feathery fingertips.

I got so carried away I did this for an hour, until she fell asleep. That should help with the serotonin levels, I thought.

In the end, I decided abscess was the most likely answer, so I got poulticing. The moment she was all wrapped up, my little drama queen lifted her head, gave me a cheerful look, and went off for a browse in the set-aside, still a little footy, but a hundred times better. Thank you, she seemed to be saying, that was what was required.

Then I made her the most delicious feed on earth, with mint and nettle and dandelion and Echinacea for her immune system, and lots of extra treats, and left her contentedly eating under her favourite tree, all fixed up.

There is something almost holy in putting a sad horse to rights. She just wanted her human, and she got me, for two whole hours. It was not what I planned for today, but it turned out to be an oddly lovely start to 2015.

I write a lot about love being actions, not words. Anyone can spout fine words. I spout fine words like nobody’s business, my trusty thesaurus by my side. But proper, real, earthed love is doing, not talking. I did love today, and my good mare reminded me of the importance of that. So, it turns out that the first day of the new year began with my best beloved professor reminding me of yet another profound life lesson. She is so clever.

As I came back into the house, smiling and contented myself, Judy Garland was singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I could hardly believe it. It felt like magic.

I had rushed out in such a hurry that I’d forgotten to turn the television off, and The Wizard of Oz had succeeded the racing. There was adorable Judy and enchanting Toto, and we were not in Kansas any more.

I’m watching it now, as I write this. Stanley the Dog is dozing on the sofa. He got incredibly bored during the whole rubbing and poulticing process and had buggered off to pay a new year visit to my mother. (On account of his ability to open every door he has ever met, he just lets himself in, and my stepfather rings up to let me know he has arrived and then I go and collect him, like a mother picking up a child after a party.)

The Munchkins are now singing Follow the Yellow Brick Road. I’m not sure a day ever turned out more serendipitously perfect.

I hope that all the Dear Readers had a dazzling start to the year. Perhaps you too got a great gift in an unexpected package.

 

Today’s pictures:

I’d love to say that 2015 started off with this glancing sunshine, but in fact it was overcast, with gales and threatened rain. These sunny shots are from a couple of days ago:

A very long, very shaggy horse story.

Author’s note: This really is FOR THE HORSE PEOPLE ONLY.

I’m doing something different today. Some of you will know that I use a method of horsemanship with my red mare which comes down from the great founding fathers of Ray Hunt and the Dorrance brothers. The very specific techniques I use are learnt from a brilliant Australian horseman called Warwick Schiller. He has a very good internet forum, where I occasionally post stories about the red mare, and everything she and I are learning together, and the happy progress we are making in what is, to me, a new school. I like sharing with the group, with people who are going through the same process. Since this is an absurdly long story, I thought I’d post it as a blog instead of cluttering up the Schiller timeline. It is a Sunday, and I don’t normally write a blog on a Sunday, so I felt I could indulge myself, and that the non-horsey Dear Readers would allow me the latitude.

Here we go:

I’ve been away for a while and it’s been raining non-stop for three weeks, so the mare has not been worked, and has mostly been standing still under her favourite tree. In the weather, she and her Paint friend do that stoical switching off thing, and some of their field is flooded, so they don’t work off their energy in the usual way. The clouds cleared for five minutes on Friday, so I rather rushed into a bit of groundwork, eager to fit it in before the downpours came again.

Whoop, whoop, cried the mare, rodeo time. I’m not sure whether it was a bit of boundary-testing, general high spirits, the fact I had hurried her instead of slowly going through our usual steps, the sun on her back, the stored energy, or a combination of all of them, but instead of my dozy old donkey, I had a leaping, bucking creature on the end of the line. (We don’t have a round pen, so I was doing circles on the rope.) She has not done anything like this wild carry-on for months and months, and for a moment I watched in awe as all her thoroughbred blood asserted itself, she grew a hand before my eyes, and she stuck her posh nose in the air and snorted like a steam train. Her tail was vertical and flying like flags. Her trot was that high, flinging, Spanish Riding School of Vienna gait that almost defies physics. That, I thought, is half a ton of flight animal, with her adrenaline up.

In the old days, I would have been afraid. I would have toughed it out, even though quailing inside, probably called out whoa, whoa in a too-loud voice, pulled on the line. I would have thought she was being ‘naughty’ and possibly even got a bit cross with her, out of fright. I might have taken it personally. As it was, after everything I have learnt in the last year, I had remedies. I stayed steady and sent her on and let her get it out of her system. I absolutely refused her random attempts to change direction and kept her going forward. More snorting and some plunging, farting bucks. (The fart-buck slightly ruins her duchessy image.) It took about three and a half minutes before she realised that none of this was getting her anywhere, and the inside ear twitched towards me and she began responding to cues in her usual light and intelligent fashion. In the blink of an eye, I had my beautifully schooled girl back, and there she was, doing an enchanting collected trot to some inner music, carrying herself with composure, describing perfect circles around me.

I think a lot about this method of horsing and why I like it so much. It’s very practical. It makes all the daily things we do easy. There’s no pushing or barging or pulling. I don’t have to get nervous that I will be knocked over at tea-time, as she takes her polite three steps backwards and knows that she is required to stay out of my space. It’s also that working this method means that 90% of the time I have a calm, reliable, responsive horse.

But, perhaps most importantly, it comes into its own on the rare occasions when everything goes a bit Pete Tong. Horses are horses. You can school them and teach them and trust them and get them to trust you, but there is always the possibility of the unexpected. The difference is that now, when it does go a bit wild and woolly, I KNOW WHAT TO DO. I know that sounds very simple, but for me it is a revelation. Because of the new knowledge, I don’t have to be scared; I have a steady purpose. I don’t have to get cross about the wrong thing, I just make it hard. Sure, I say, you can leap and buck if you want, but you’ll have to work. Over here, I say; here is the right thing, which is easy. Oh yes, she says, I remember. And she makes the good choice and remembers her best self and all is harmony again.

After all that drama, this morning I woke to find the sun had finally, finally returned. Scotland was in her pomp again. I ran down to the field, ready to celebrate the weather. We would work, we would ride, we could do anything. The Horse Talker was there, working her Paint. The red mare was watching with interest. I noticed that there was a glittery hula-hoop propped against the gate. Ah, I thought. Desensitising. We have not done any imaginative desensitising for ages. Every morning, I do our regular version, throwing the rope across the mare’s back and whacking it on the ground while she does not move a muscle, and then rubbing her all over her neck and back until she is so relaxed that she practically goes to sleep. In the early days we did tarpaulins and flags and balls and even one of those silvery capes that marathon runners wear after a race, but lately it’s just been the standard version.

A glittery hula-hoop, I thought with glee. There’s fun.

I picked it up. It had lots of little maraca beans inside it which made a shushing, swooshing noise. UH-OH, shouted the red mare. Off she galloped, tail back up in the air, doing the steam-train snorting again.

‘Oh, dear,’ I said, ruefully to the Horse Talker.

‘Yes,’ she said sagely. ‘You are going to be here all morning.’

The red mare tried to pretend she was rounding up her little Paint friend, but was in fact clearly trying to hide behind her.

‘No,’ said the Horse Talker firmly. ‘You can’t come here.’

The problem with this kind of horsing is that it’s like Mastermind. I’ve started, so I’ll finish. If I show the mare a thing she’s afraid of, I have to work through it, or she’ll get the idea that she can escape a problem with a bit of gallopy snorting.

Bugger, I thought. What was I thinking? We were supposed to do lovely, slow groundwork. Why the hell did I pick the damn thing up? And why did she decide that swooshy maraca beans sound exactly like an evil tree snake that is coming to get her?

So into the small paddock we went. I had to remember every single thing I’d ever learnt about pressure and release, about timing and feel, about body language. She was genuinely frightened of this mad new object and was off in the clouds, doing her wild tail-in-the-air trot, snorting as she went, trembling a little at the same time.

It took an hour. I approached, I retreated. I did everything in tiny, tiny steps, so she would not be flooded. After a while, as she was dropping her head and the snorting and eye-rolling had stopped and the tension had left her neck, I rather naughtily threw away the rule-book and decided that singing would be fun. For no known reason, I went through the entire Simon and Garfunkel back catalogue. ‘Cec-il-ia, you’re breakin’ my heart, you’re shakin’ my confidence daily.’ The mare twitched her ears and relaxed.

It suddenly made me laugh that she can deal with the genuinely quite frightening sound of me singing, but the shush-shush of a maraca bean hula-hoop sends her into transports of fright. By the end, I was walking round her as she stood like a statue, waving the terrifying object over my head, shaking it all about, and singing: ‘I’m one step ahead of the shoe-shine, two steps away from the county line, just trying to keep my customers satisfied, satisfied.’

At the very end, I stood by her shoulder, and showed her the glittering article one last time. She bent her head and sniffed it. I rubbed it on her wibbly lower lip. ‘There,’ I said, ‘that didn’t eat you, did it?’

I did not expect that I should spend this morning teaching my mare to accept a sparkly hula-hoop. But who knows how many mad hula-hoop-wielding maniacs we may meet out on the trail? Now we truly are prepared for anything.

I love teaching this beautiful creature the ways of slowness. That’s the point of all this, for me. I’m too old for a crazy horse. I’m not the wild thruster I was when I was young. My middle-aged bones creak. My body does not spring back in the way it used to. I want a dear, stately, dowager duchess, so I can feel safe. I’ve got her so that most of the time she is so soft that a child of six could handle her. But I do rather love that every so often, that thoroughbred spirit does still rise. It’s mostly for the aesthetics. When all those wild ancestral voices are calling to her, she is a truly ravishing sight to behold. I can see all those Derby winners in her bloodlines, and right back to the three original sires, who came from the sands of Araby. It’s as if, in those high moments, she is a living history lesson.

The weather is going to hold and tomorrow I’ll go back to basics and we’ll return to our good, serious routine. We’ll work the steps in a proper manner and eschew the unorthodox. We’ll get back to dozy old donkey and I probably won’t see that floating, tail-in-the-air, snorting horse for a while. But I’m oddly glad that she is still there.

 

The friends:

After all our work this morning, waiting for her very well-deserved breakfast: