Great Brockhamhurst Stud

12/07/2022

I never do this, but I am going to do this.

I am going to talk about safety.

And I am not going to mention hats once.

I’ve seen one too many sad stories about people tumbling off their horses, one too many melancholy pictures from A&E, one too many shy, shamed admissions that the nerve has gone.

People feel ashamed that they are afraid to get back on their horses after a nasty fall. But there are two kinds of fear: the useful, sensible fear that keeps us humans alive, and the paranoid amygdala fear that says everything is going to hell and we will never amount to anything. The first one is the one I listen to. I don’t, eccentric as it may seem, want to die.

That fear tells me a lot of good stuff. It tells me that if the red mare and I are out of practice, we will need to go and do a bit of preparatory work before we ride out into the hills again. It tells me that preparation and practice and patience are everything. It tells me not to rely on luck or what the hell; it tells me to do the work, day after day.

So, in our field, we do the work. We do it on the ground, for days and weeks and months, until the fear nods its head sagely and tells us we are ready. We do stuff which looks boring or nuts to a lot of people. And that’s because I don’t want to be the person who has to sit up all night in a chair because of seven broken ribs, or who can hardly speak and is the colour of putty because of a smashed up pelvis, or who is hobbling about on a broken ankle. I live alone. I have to do my work and look after dogs and horses. I can’t break my ankle.

I have a whole boatload of rules that many people will scoff at. I don’t care. For instance, I won’t get on a horse who can’t stand still at the mounting block. Won’t do it. It’s not only dangerous in and of itself, but that inability to stand is what my friend Warwick Schiller calls ‘bolting at the standstill’. That horse cannot control itself, and so we’re in trouble, right off the bat.

I spend years teaching my horses to control themselves. I learnt an entire new horsemanship from scratch to do this. It is never complete, because horses are prey animals and flight animals, but it goes a hell of a long way.

You literally can teach horses to think their way through problems, rather than react.

You can teach them to move easily between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, so they can bring themselves down after a fright.

I’ll give you a specific example: when Clova first came to us, it took her as long as forty-seven minutes to bring herself down. I once timed it on my telephone. And that was not after a fright, that was after the tiniest bit of pressure - just me asking her to trot round me on the rope. Forty-seven minutes. I stood and breathed and waited and broke my heart, a little, thinking of the things she must have been through in her life.

Now, it takes between three to seven seconds.

I watched her do it the other day, out on the trail. An unexpected duck flew up off the burn. It gave her a tiny fright. Four seconds later, she dropped her head, relaxed into her loose rein, and licked and chewed. We taught her that, because it’s a lifesaver, for her rider. It also makes her own life so much easier and happier.

We do a ton of other stuff that helps safety. We teach all our horses to stand still, we teach them all personal space, we teach them focus and connection. This means they won’t trample over us in fear. When horses get scared, they go blind. They’ll knock you over because they don’t know you are there. They are in full survival mode. I won’t work with horses like that. It’s not their fault, but they scare the jeepers out of me.

Actually, that’s not true. Our Freya was like that, and I did work with her, because I wanted her to relax and be happy and find herself, and so I had to work through a lot of very sensible fear. It was a balance between keeping myself safe and giving that horse what she needed, all the time. Thank goodness those days are behind us. Kayleigh was sometimes scared and I was sometimes scared and we were absolutely right to be afraid. There was danger, and we reacted to it rationally.

The focus work is not just so the horses won’t send us flying when they are in survival mode, it’s also for things like feeding time and putting them back into the field.

I have a ridiculously strict rule in the field. All our children obey it to the letter. I owe it to their mothers to keep them safe. It is: we lead the horses in, find a good space, turn them to face the gate, check whether they are relaxed, check whether they are focused on us (rather than on the bears in the woods), check whether they are connected to us, and only then let them go.

I do all this because I love being with horses and I don’t want to be scared of them. A horse who can regulate her own nervous system is so much easier to be around. She’s easy with herself and that makes the humans happy and confident. A horse who knows about personal space is a pleasure, in every interaction. A horse who has control over himself is a joy, not a terror.

Horses will always be intrinsically risky. We’ve all tumbled off, at one time or another, the posse and I. But I like to reduce the risk to the lowest possible point. Every time one of us tumbles, we learn a boatload of lessons from that. It’s almost always that I’ve let something slide, got a bit cocky, ignored a warning sign.

I’m not very brave, and I’m glad I’m not. I used to be deadly ashamed of this. Everything in my childhood was geared to kicking on and riding through it. That was what my dad did, with his steeplechasers; that’s what he famously did when the docs told him he could never ride again and he was back the next year in the Grand National. That was how it was done, in our house.

But I don’t have that kind of physical courage; not any more. I am afraid of breaking things and hurting things. So I train my horses in the ways of slowness and peace. I train them to know me and know themselves, so that fear does not swamp them when it comes. I train them to trust their humans, so they don’t have to go into that hard, terrified survival mode. They always have someone, in their corner, on their side, who will stand on the ramparts and not let the mountain lions pass.

I think a lot about what horses want. Sometimes, I think they want someone who will stand between them and a hungry lion. I am not physically brave, but I would do that for my red mare. I can’t tell you that she knows that, not for sure (I will never entirely know what she knows), but my guess is she has a sense of it. And that is why we are a team. We will protect each other until the last lion is down.

15/11/2021

The good old days

All kids rode in a snaffle because usually that is what your parent [mother] had in their day and they had survived so you had to - D ring, eggbutt, or loose ring. If your pony was a s**t and you had a kind parent or one with money, you might be allowed a kimblewick or pelham. Double bits were for adults out hunting or show ponies only.
Rubber reins were coveted - hunting a pony with shaving foam sweat on his neck meant plain reins were as useful as cooked noodles. Plaited leather reins were just as bad and ripped between your fingers.
Leather girths were coveted just as much - choices were string or the white candlewick girths which would split at inappropriate moments.
Coloured browbands were naff - the plastic ones for riding schools and the velvet ones for show ponies. Brass was for heavy horses.
There were four types of rug - canvas NZ, jute, wool with a coloured edging and initials for best and a sweat rug that looked like something Rab C Nesbitt wore that you used when thatching. Then there were blankets, usually nasty and itchy unless you were rich and could afford a Witney blanket
Every NZ rug hung to one side within five minutes of your pony being turned out.
There were four types of clip - trace, blanket, hunter or full. No one asked what type of clip suited their pony, ponies were clipped to suit the level of work they were doing.
No one wanted a coloured hairy, it usually meant your parents knew nothing and had bought your pony from the local riding school and no one wanted a riding school pony.
Everyone plaited to go hunting.
The amount of fences you jumped out hunting and stayed in the saddle was far more important than if you saw a fox.
Ponies lived out in just a NZ rug, even if clipped, nothing up their necks.
Feed was natural - oats, barley, wheat, sugar beet and bran then came in pony nuts which were great for rattling in the bottom of a bucket and a countrymix with yummy locust beans.
You made your own chop and warmed the molasses on the Rayburn.
You thought you were a nutritionist if you added garlic to your pony's feed.
Tesco own brand vegetable cooking oil was added to feeds to give a shine to the coat.
If you went hunting, chances are your pony had a warm mash with a bottle of Guinness and a raw egg mixed into it for a pick me up. Chances are that you had the dried up remains of whatever your family had at lunchtime.
Linseed was boiled and fed to everything to make the coat shine.
Grooming by torchlight was a skill.
Baling twine was a Godsend
Your pony probably knew all the top 20 hits.
Everyone entered the yearly WH Smith Win A Pony competition.
If your pony went lame, the farrier was called before the vet and usually cured pony.
No one's pony had ulcers.
We all knew someone who knew someone whose pony had had colic but none of us actually had that pony.
Fat ponies lived on thin air and no one said how cruel because there was no grass in their paddock.
Boiled spud peelings and other veggie peelings were added to feeds as a treat.
Wormers came in powder form - most ponies knew when it was added to their feed and left the feed uneaten and themselves unwormed. It was considered the norm to mix the wormer into a paste, spread in a jam sandwich and feed it to your pony.
Bread was not considered bad for your pony or even odd to feed your pony.
Winning at your local show in front of your school friends gave you rock star status until the next show.
Hacking to a show was considered normal. Sometimes your parents would leave a trailer at a show with your grooming kit, picnic and a picnic for your pony because your pony would not load so you hacked anyway. ;)
You turned out your pony to the best of your abilities - always plaited with clean tack. Tack was always correct, if you used a curb chain on a pelham/double then you also had a lip strap.
Coloured nylon tack was laughed at and considered townie.
Plain leather with just a stable rubber under your saddle or a plain numnah meant you knew your stuff - coloured numnahs, reins, etc meant you were a townie or came from a riding school.
Stockholm tar was brushed into the bottom of the hoof and across the frog every night.
Everyone had gone to school with purple spray stains on their fingers.
When the white wound powder finally came in black, we got excited.
All buckets were black and ridged until the rubber allegedly indestructible feed bowls came out - also in black.
A bright yellow builder's bucket meant my pony snorted and stood as far away from it as possible and meant I had to walk to the end of the field in the hissing rain to catch him.
Long leather boots were added to every Christmas list - rubber ones never shone as much.
Christmas lists always consisted of things for the pony - bridle, bit, rug, etc.
We didnt wear hats and back protectors hadnt been invented.
We went out riding without a phone and couldnt tell anyone where we were going as chances are we didnt know ourselves, we were just going out riding.
As long as we were back for meal times and before it was dark, our parents didnt worry.
Ponies knew their way home if you parted company.
Everyone had cleaned their tack while listening to Bohemian Rhapsody at number one in the charts.

05/10/2021

A couple of vacancies have become available for weanlings. Loose barn keep over winter, with large grass turnout for the rest of the year. All handling, grooming, regular farrier visits, worming and feeding as required.

05/10/2021

05/10/2021