HORSES I HAVE LEARNED FROM

Maybe I am not quite sane, but horses have been my whole life. For me they are a drug more potent than LSD and more lethal than heroin. My friends tell me that my addiction has already produced deterioration of the brain. And unlike any other drug, horses are a drug for which there is no known cure: for me life without horses would be only a living death.

My earliest memories are of horses rather than people, and horses rather than places or people have represented the milestones of my life. I am a true centaur, half man, half horse.

The first thing I remember is sitting on a horse in front of my great-uncle Harvey Blake: I must have been little more than a year old. And I remember that just after this my father bought a black thoroughbred gelding called , Masterpiece, a horse that was extremely difficult to handle, for he used to kick and strike out with his front legs at anybody who came into his stable. I had not been walking for very long when a general panic was caused in the household, because I was missing and could not be found anywhere. After a considerable time my mother and father, nursemaid and the farmhands, all of whom were looking for me, found me in the stables coolly playing under Masterpiece's manger. When they tried to get me out, Master- ' piece used his feet and teeth to prevent anybody passing the door. Eventually I had to be tempted out with a sweet

from the doorway, after which I always used Masterpiece's stable as my favourite refuge, where I could play undisturbed with the horse protecting me. I used to wander about under his legs and feet and thoroughly enjoy myself, as a small boy will, getting myself filthy. Further, being rather an unpleasant child, I quickly found that when I was naughty I could escape punishment there as long as I wanted, while my nursemaid and parents fumed outside the door. I used to refuse to come out until they promised not to spank me. This experience taught me at a very early age that horses were my friends and protectors.

In the autumn of 1933 my parents went to Bridgwater Fair and paid two pounds for a small black Dartmoor pony. Inevitably she was called Black Beauty and she became the guide, teacher and friend of the whole family. A great individualist, she could untie any rope and open any door. On one occasion when we were trying to corner her in the yard, she escaped by going through the back door of the pantry into the kitchen, out to the hall and then out through the front door. And when we were sick, she would be brought up the stairs to our bedrooms to keep us company as a reward for good behaviour. A very stern disciplinarian, she punished any bad practice in a rider by depositing him firmly on the ground, and then waiting to be remounted, teaching me very early in life that a liorse will retaliate instantly against any infringement of its code of conduct.

When the time came for me to go to school the obvious way to get me there and back was on a pony, and when a year or two later my younger sister joined me, she used to ride behind. We always rode bareback, as my father was of the opinion that the only way to learn a true seat on a horse was to ride without a saddle. We learnt to trot, canter and even to jump long before we had a saddle, which we were allowed to have when we were seven.

And so for the next five or six years, until I went to boarding school, I rode to school every day. Occasionally, if we were very very lucky, we would go down in the morning to find that the ponies had got out of the field; and provided the weather was nice, that would be a 'red letter' day, spent looking for ponies and being damned careful not to find them.

The next horse who played a really significant part in my education was a New Forest thoroughbred-cross chestnut mare, who had been bred as a polo pony. Chester was very difficult to handle in the stable. Since she had a very thin skin and was very ticklish, she would kick and scream in temper if anyone touched her legs or tried to groom her. But she was the first horse with which I ever established a real understanding and empathy, and I found after a while I could anticipate what she was going to do before she did it, and that she in turn would reflect my moods. As a result she was a fantastic gymkhana pony and for two years I supplemented my pocket money with her winnings.

While I still had Chester, another horse arrived who was to teach me a great deal. One day the local knacker man, Bert Newman, who for years had sold my father horses he thought too good to kill, telephoned to say he had a bay I sixteen-two-hand three-quarter-thoroughbred mare, four years old, and he would let my father have her very cheaply for ten pounds. My father said that there were too many damned horses about the place and he did not want another one, so Bert said he would let my father have her for a fiver. 'No thank you,' was the reply. The exchange ended with Bert saying that, because of their long-standing friendship, he was giving the mare to my father and would send her over at once. I was thirteen at this time and still riding to school. When I got home that evening, the mare had been unloaded from the lorry into a covered yard with some heifers, and I managed after some argument to persuade my father to let me ride her to school the next day.

The following morning I went out to the yard to catch her and bring her into the stable. But instead of eating from the proffered bowl of oats, she attacked me with her teeth and front legs, so I clouted her across the nose with a halter and told her not to be a bloody-minded cow. I put the halter on, saddled and bridled her and rode her off to school.

About five minutes past nine Bert telephoned. He had had a bad night nagged by a guilty conscience, he said, and my father was not to touch the mare as she was dangerous. When he heard that I had already ridden her to school, the full story came out. Fearless had killed her previous owner, a Devonshire farmer, and Bert had been paid to take her away. He had intended to shoot her as soon as she came off the lorry, but unfortunately an R.S.P.C.A. official had arrived and insisted that she be put down with a humane * killer in his presence, and since this was clearly impossible Bert had thought of my father.

I rode Fearless to school for the next two weeks, and apart from the fact that she was inclined to take a piece out of me with her teeth and strike at me with her front legs, I had no trouble whatsoever. We kept her until she died and she repaid us a thousand times, as she saved me twice from serious injury and on one occasion saved my father's life.

My father was driving home with her and a young horse as a pair in a wagon, when the young horse bolted at an American Army convoy. Fearless steered the cart and the other horse in and out of the convoy and the oncoming traffic, and eventually managed to stop the other horse. This she did by swinging away and pulling the young horse . with her when she wanted to go to the left, and when she wanted to go to the right by swinging her head and biting

the young horse to make it shy away. My father could not do anything with the reins since the young horse had panicked and was completely uncontrollable, but Fearless could control him, and she managed eventually to stop him after about two miles.

Fearless was always bloody-minded, but there was no horse like her. My first encounter with her had taught me a lesson I have remembered ever since: that with horses, if you are without fear and confident of yourself, you will be able to master any situation.

Fearless was such a good worker we never chose to breed from her, but finally when she was eleven years old her frustration got the better of her, and one night she got out into the neighbouring field where we had a bunch of yearlings and two-year-olds running. Among them was an immature uncut two-year-old thoroughbred who was barely fourteen-two. Fearless was well over sixteen-two, and my father always swore that she went up into the yard and borrowed a step-ladder; but anyway, during the night she somehow managed to persuade the young Corsican – that was the two-year-old's name – to serve her, and eleven months later, full of pride and joy, she produced a son and celebrated the fact by taking a piece out of me when I went down to congratulate her. There was only one name that he could be called and that was Folly. He became the property of my sister Olive, and for the next five years he grew and thrived.

When he was three years old he was broken, and after breaking him I taught him to buck on command. I could always make him buck in a dead straight line, a very big and powerful buck that was nevertheless extremely easy to sit, so at the age of eighteen this was my standard party piece when I wanted to show off to my girl-friends. My father played polo on him and my sister Olive hunted him.

Eventually, just before she went out to New Guinea as a medical missionary, Olive decided she would like to fulfil an old ambition and ride in a point-to-point. Since she weighed twelve stone seven pounds and stood five feet ten inches, this was clearly a piece of madness. But when Olive makes up her mind to anything there is no arguing with her, so she entered Folly for the ladies' race at the Axe Vale point-to-point. For the whole of that season two horses had been dominating the ladies' races in the West Country – Ching Ling and Shepherd's Pie. So unbeatable were these two that everyone else eventually gave up, and when we got to the Axe Vale we discovered there was nothing else in the race: only Ching Ling, Shepherd's Pie and Folly.

Olive borrowed my breeches, racing colours and boots, and ate a hearty breakfast. Apart from instructing her that even if she broke her neck, she was to get back to the paddock to give me back my racing colours, there was not much else I could do to avert the coming disaster. She also insisted on riding in a hunting saddle, since she had never ridden in anything else.

Olive and Folly clearly decided that this was a first-class hunt and nothing more, so they proceeded for two-and-a-half miles at a steady speed. At last, half a mile from home, Olive decided that now was the time to do something about winning the race, and since Ching Ling and Shepherd's Pie were then a fence and a half in front of her, I thought she was leaving it a bit late! But Folly went; and it was only because he was giving two-and-a-half stone away to the two best ladies'-race horses in the West of England, that he was beaten by five lengths. What he would have done if he had started his run in good time, I clearly do not know. I am quite sure that the public, none of whom had backed Olive, would have lynched her if she had won, so it was probably just as well she took her time. But they both enjoyed themselves, and that little story only shows just what a good horse will do for its owner when he really puts his mind to it.

The following year Folly was sold to some friends of ours and he was still hunting and hunting well when we left the West Country ten years ago.

Shortly after the experience with Fearless, my father realised that in handling unmanageable horses he was on to a good thing. So he put a series of advertisements in the Horse and Hound: BAD'NS AND MAD'NS BOUGHT AND BROKEN.

For the next five or ten years a series of unbreakable and unrideable horses arrived at Martock and Crewkerne Stations, each of which was about four miles from my home. It being war time, and help being scarce, I was sent to fetch them, and was always given strict instructions to lead the horses home. But I was bone lazy as well as disobedient, and saw no reason why I should walk when there was a horse' to ride, so apart from the first and last half mile, I used to ride them home in a halter. I got plenty of secret amusement out of the next day, when my father went through the full breaking procedure before considering the horse safe for me to mount. I realised of course that the reason I found these unrideable horses easy to ride was no virtue of mine, but that, after being bumped and banged about in the train for ten or twelve hours, they would have proved friendly towards anybody who rescued them from their misery and treated them kindly. After petting and talking to them for ten minutes I was their friend for life, and I could do anything with them. They were all horses of great brain and character and taught me a lot, mainly that friendliness and gentleness and firmness can cure any vice.

I was about fourteen when a horse arrived who did not have much brain or character. But what he taught me was fundamental to all my future handling of horses. He was a. thoroughbred called The Toff, and we got him because he was completely uncatchable. After we had had him for a week, I decided it was time to teach him to be caught. He was grazing by himself in a two-acre field. I started directly after breakfast, and for the next nine hours I walked after The Toff round and round and up and down the field, and when I walked The Toff walked, always refusing to let me catch him. After the first half-hour he got so bored that he moved only when I got near him; but he still kept walking away, walking away, walking away. This went on for nine hours. But eventually he gave in. He let me catch him and put the halter on. Even at that time I had enough sense to know that the first thing to do when I had caught him was to make a great fuss of him, and the second thing was to turn him loose again. Then for the next hour and a half I walked after The Toff, up the field and down the field, and round and round and round the field again. Then I caught him for the second time and made a fuss of him, and turned him loose. For the next twenty minutes I walked after The Toff, caught him for the third time, made a fuss of him and again turned him loose. I went on like this until I could catch him at my will and turn him loose, and after fourteen hours I went back to have my tea. He taught me one thing: when you start a thing with a horse, you must finish it, no matter what happens. You go on until you have done what you have set out to do, you must have endless patience, never lose your temper, and when he has done what you want, make a fuss of him; and then do it again and again until he does it without question. I do not know what happened to The Toff as he has completely gone from my memory; but I shall always be immensely grateful to him for teaching me what is basic to all my knowledge of handling animals.

Since it was war time, my father, to salve his conscience, made all the horses work on the farm. Thus he could keep horses and feel that he was doing it for the good of the nation rather than for his own pleasure. I remember we had one magnificent thoroughbred gelding called Caravan and he used to have to work in harness and pull one of the farm carts, but he did not approve of it, and used to bolt occasionally, much to everyone's consternation, because he really could travel. I remember driving him out of the yard one day, just as a builder was finishing repairing the gatepost and wall which the horse had demolished when he had bolted only a fortnight before. I drove half a mile down the road and got out to open the gate in the field, only to find that Caravan had swung round, cart and all, and was going flat-out back up the hill. When he got to the yard, the builder, who had just finished the wall, was standing back to admire his work. Caravan came around the corner and the new wall was fiat again. The language was blue.

Caravan was a wonderful horse, however, for he had courage as well as determination. During the winter he was sound only one morning a week, and that was the day I was taking him hunting. If on Monday morning I was going hunting, Caravan was sound. He would be lame coming home from hunting and he would be lame until the next hunting day, when he would be sound again. This started me wondering how he knew before he saw me that it was hunting morning.

Of all the mad'ns and bad'ns we had, in fact none was bad, and none was mad. All of them had more than average intelligence, and an awful lot of temper with it. They were horses who had been misunderstood. They were horses who had been ill-treated. They were horses who had been spoilt by kindness. The bad'ns were strong-charactered horses who had been owned by weak-charactered people, and one or two by brutal people. One of them in particular sticks in my mind, a horse called Breakspear, who had a reputation of being a terrible bucker. My father and I went over to Arthur Brake's farm to see him, and my father bought him on the yard. He decided to ride him home. I was fifteen at the time and had broken a leg playing rugger, so had plaster on it from thigh to ankle. My father threw the horse preparatory to mounting him. He was very easy to throw and he behaved himself, did everything perfectly. I remember my father saying that either he was a very bad horse, or there was nothing wrong with him at all. He put his foot in the stirrup and then got on him. Breakspear put on the hell of a buck, my father went up and up and up into the air, then came down and hit the ground very hard. He got on him again and came off him again. After three times he managed to stay on. Then came the problem of getting the car home, so, full of youthful confidence, I said I would drive the car behind my father. I had driven it once or twice about the farm, so I got into the car and proceeded to go in jerks and stalls across the yard of Arthur Brake's farm. By the time I had gone half a mile down the road, my father was waiting for me. He had decided that since he had two more sons at home, he could, if necessary, afford to lose me, but during war time he had no hope of getting another car. So he took me out of the car, and Breakspear, who had had him off another five times in the half-mile, stood absolutely quiet whilst I got on him, one leg stiff in plaster, and took me home as if he was an old plug. He knew I could not do anything if he bucked,so he carried me safely and carefully all the way home. This incident shows the kindness and consideration even the most difficult horse has for a rider who is put in his care.

The horse that followed him displayed the opposite tendency. This was a sixteen-two strawberry-roan mare which we got from the late Arthur Palmer. She was a magnificent horse, but she had one unfortunate tendency: as soon as anyone got on her back, she would go flat out to the nearest tree and try to jam the rider into the trunk or knock him off under the branches. She tried it with me once and got me off. The second time she went straight for a big elm tree, and at the last second, finding I had no hope of steering her away from it, I swung her head the other way hard into the tree so that she went flat-out head-on into the tree. I went flying and she dropped to the ground as if she had been shot. I thought I had killed her. She did not move for about five minutes. When eventually she staggered to her feet very groggily, she was a sadder and wiser horse. I got on her again and rode her around the field, and she never tried that trick on again. But the story shows that an instantaneous reaction, an instant punishment, will cure a horse of most vices. After she had got me off the first time I did not curse at her, I did not swear, I just got on again; but the second time she went into the tree and knocked herself out. When she woke up there I was standing by her talking quietly and gently to her, and after a month or two she lost all desire to hurt human beings, and came to understand that we were her friends.

Early in 1946 my father went to Taunton races. Steeple-chasing had started again just after the war and in the paddock of the three-mile race was a steelpoint gelding called Lucky Bargain. What attracted my father to him was the fact that he bucked his jockey off three times, eventually putting the poor man across the rails so that he could not ride him in the race. My father bought him for £25 from his somewhat disheartened owner. Lucky I will swear could count. It did not matter when you rode him, he always bucked you off three times. After he had had you off three times, he was quite content to let you ride him for the day. He was a very good horse. But he was a horse that taught me to sit a buck, he would twist and turn, and buck in a straight line, he would go flat-out bucking and then he would stop and buck in the same place. He was almost impossible to sit. But at the same time he was an extremely kind and gentle horse, for having bucked you off, he would always wait for you to get on. When you hunted him or raced him he would always give everything he had. He was very generous.

On one occasion my father sold him, warning the man that he bucked, and he went into training. After three months the trainer had had enough and my father bought him back in Exeter market, then we kept him until he died.

Over the next five years I had a number of horses, and through them learnt more and more, because it is only by watching and trying to understand a large number of horses that you can learn what pattern of behaviour is general to each breed, and what is applicable to horses in general rather than to horses in particular.

We had one horse, for instance, who had been completely soured by racing. He was a big chestnut called Tomahawk II and he was French-bred and had won a lot of hurdle races and two-mile steeple-chases. But he had taken a dislike to racing and would refuse to start. He would just run backwards. He could move backwards as fast as many horses could trot, and his trainer and owner had given him up as a bad job and sold him to Bert Newman's son George, who passed him on to me for £15.

I rode him for some time, and on one occasion my wife rode him down to the village of Banscombe, which is half a mile to a mile long, and proceeded down the whole street backwards. We eventually cured him of running backwards

by just using patience and not trying to make him go for-• ward. We would sit on him until he wanted to go forward and then he would go forward quite steadily and happily. Within three months we had him going right. He was the sort of horse who really made life worth living: he came to us miserable, unhappy and disliking men in general, but when we passed him on eighteen months later, he was happy, kind and ready to look upon everyone as his friend.

I have always had to sell my horses once they were going right, simply because I have never been able to afford to keep them. My horses have had to keep themselves and help to keep me. But there is another reason why I have allowed horses to come and go. I have always felt that since I have a gift with difficult horses, the gift must be used. If I had concentrated it on one horse and one horse alone, many of the other horses I have had in my life would never have been rehabilitated, and probably ended up in cat-meat tins.

There is one incident in this period that stands out in my mind. I was living down near Lyme Regis at die time, running a pig farm, and we had five unbroken three-year-olds on the place. One day the hounds met nearby, but I decided not to go out hunting, because my horse was down in the village. I was working on the farm when the hounds found, so I caught the nearest three-year-old and put a bridle on it, and even though it had never been ridden before, it went quietly for me and I hunted it for half an hour until the hounds came back to the farm, and I turned it out. I had hardly turned it out before the hounds found another fox, and since the horse I had been riding was a little tired, I caught the next one of the five – and so on for the rest of the day until I had hunted all five. They all went absolutely quietly, except the fifth, which bucked for about five minutes and that was all, and that taught me a very there are a thousand people on your doorstep straight away to help, but on this occasion we did not see anyone pass us for nearly two hours, and we were faced with the problem of getting the old man across fifty yards of bog. So I went home and got three five-foot by four-foot sheets of plywood, and made a platform on the bog. The old man was only on three legs, but he managed to hop from the island on to the first piece of plywood, and then on to the second, then on to the third, by which time I had managed to get the first piece in front, and so we went on. Slowly and steadily the old man followed my wife from one piece of plywood to the other. When he was quite sure that it was safe and secure, he would hop on to it. So we got him home. But by this time his back joint was very badly swollen. I thought he must have pulled a tendon in the joint, so we left him hobbling around, and for the next two months, three or four times a day, he would give a screech to let us know that he was lying down and could not get up, and my wife and I would have to go out. She would take his head and he would get his front legs up, and I would get under his hind quarters and heave, until he got his good hind leg from underneath, and could get up. He never seemed to worry. He would hobble around quite happily with his girl-friend, and after about five weeks he was putting his foot to the ground a little bit. By September, about six months later, he was back on his leg again, though a little stiff in the joint. When the old man died on October iyth, we had a post mortem on the leg, and found that the joint had broken right across and had healed itself.

A year after I had bought Cork Beg I went back to the market again, looking for a horse myself, and suddenly from a pen at the back of the market I seemed to get a message: 'for God's sake get me out of this'. I was drawn as if by a magnet to a sixteen-two-hand dirty brown

thoroughbred horse, who was as thin as a rake. When he came up in the auction I purchased him for £40. This horse was Weeping Roger, and he it was who set me seriously to study how horses communicate with each other and how man communicates with horses.

From the very start Roger and I seemed to have an affinity for each other, and it was handling and working him that first made me realise the power a man may have over a horse, if he really applies his mind to its control and handling. This set me thinking about the whole question of communication between man and horse, about how much it seemed to depend upon mental control. If this were true, conventional training methods were wasteful and inefficient.

I decided to test out my ideas. At about this time my father had bought a four-year-old thoroughbred gelding, who had been used as a stallion for two years and then castrated, so I asked him to let me try a new breaking method. I worked on the horse intensively for seven days: handling him, gentling him and working him. I got on him on the second day, and then rode him for an hour in the morning and afternoon for the next five days. This was a completely unbroken horse, yet on the seventh day we took him down to Taunton, where my father and I were both playing polo, and I was able to play him in a slow chukka i and he went extremely well. On the following Wednesday, that is ten days after the horse had first been handled, I played him again, this time in a fast chukka, and he never put a foot wrong. He turned out to be a really first-class polo pony who loved the game.

It normally takes at least two years' schooling to make a polo pony; yet by using mental control to get the horse to want to do what I wanted him to, I had done two years' work in ten days!

I was immensely excited: it seemed to me that I had stumbled on the edge of a real discovery, the meaning of which I was determined fully to grasp. What exactly was the 'mental control' I had exercised over my father's gelding? What precisely was the affinity I felt with Weeping Roger? I was to spend the following years trying to solve these mysteries. Meanwhile I was to have further evidence of the extraordinary sympathy that can exist between human being and horse. One such piece of evidence concerned a pony I bought for my daughter Paddy.

When Paddy was about three years old I went back to Exeter market again, and bought a three-year-old Dartmoor-cross Shetland pony who stood a bare nine hands high. He was obviously too small for me to break, so I got the daughter of a neighbour to break him for me. Darwi (that was his name) and Doreen got on like a house on fire and developed so close an affinity for each other that Darwi, who could get out of any field, whenever he got lonely or bored at night used to take himself the two-and-a-half miles to Doreen and bang on her window until she came to talk to him. Doreen did not mind, but her parents used to object strongly.

Darwi did Paddy extremely well for a couple of years, and then we passed him on to a friend who wanted a child's pony for his daughter. And that was the last we heard of him for eight years. We came to Wales, and Doreen went off to a job somewhere. Then seven or eight years later, my father was at a gymkhana and who should greet him in her rather distinctivevoice,but Doreen. My father had not been talking to her for more than five minutes when their attention was drawn to a pony who was whinneying its head off at the far end of the field. Suddenly they could see a pony bolting out of control with a very small child on its back. Child and pony came round the ring flat-out, straight to

where my father and Doreen were standing, and skidded to a halt. My father rescued the child, and the pony proceeded to greet Doreen. After eight years he had recognised her voice from the other side of the field. I do not suppose Doreen had handled Darwi for more than three or four months. But a bond was there between them even after eight years.

These experiences redoubled my enthusiasm for the work we were beginning to do on animal communication, and encouraged me to start trying to make some sense out of the signs, sounds and other signals we could observe the horses using to make their intentions and wishes plain to each other.

CHAPTER TWO

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 526