As soon as she realised she was loose, she ran off, as if I had made the most elementary mistake in the book, and rushed up and down the side of the pen, calling towards the field. Two horses were standing nearby, but they showed little sign of concern as Amber pranced along, desperate to find a way out. I let her keep running, and she charged around, heading vaguely towards where I was directing, yet somehow as if I wasn’t in there with her at all.
This wasn’t join-up, it was just a horse panicking. I soon started trying to invite her in, even though I had seen none of the signs I was looking for. Her lips never ceased to pop open and shut, but she held her jaws resolutely shut, eyes darting around, her head up as high as it could go. Only if I really blocked her strongly, or made a very sharp movement, could I get her to flick an ear at me for the briefest second before she made a last-minute change to her direction. She also kicked out a lot, mostly at the metal grill surrounding her, shooting off in a panic at the loud noise when she made contact. But she wasn’t aggressive, and at first I couldn’t put a finger on what she was doing. Only later did I realise that this was what she had learned as a way to cope with being trained. She was attempting to blank me out of her existence.
Eventually I managed to get her to look at me for a second, and I immediately turned away and retreated. She stopped, snorted loudly and the world seemed to stand still for a second, before she turned and ran off in the other direction. A few tries later and I got a lead rope on her, but she was so restless she couldn’t keep her feet still. Her tail swished constantly – I felt sure she was using it on me deliberately, whipping me with it as I stroked her and picked up her feet. She pawed the ground, all the while making the popping motion with her mouth, holding her breath and then flying off, round me again and again, but without ever pulling against the rope.
After a while, she settled; at least, it wasn’t getting any worse. I began walking her round the pen, trying to decide on a course of action. It seemed the saddle was a good place to start, but as soon as Jo brought one in, I wasn’t so sure. Amber swished her tail intensely, curled her nostrils and buried her ears into the back of her skull. She showed no sign of lashing out at us, but my favourite saddle wasn’t so lucky. After her first swipe at it, Jo and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing. She went to get a cheap old one, which we never use for riding, but which nevertheless has its uses.
I had by now taught Amber to back up, faces or no faces. This was my main way of telling her I was unhappy with anything she did. But I tried not to take much action unless she did something really dangerous, for she had backed away from any direct assaults on me. I wanted to see how serious she was about her hatred for saddles.
It didn’t take long to convince me she would happily rip every saddle in the world apart, given the chance. She bared her teeth and snatched a sharp bite at it, then ran around me again, trying to pretend it wasn’t there. I hadn’t failed to notice that, put in a stable, she would likewise try to tear that down, ferociously attacking the door, its frame, and even the old stone wall itself, until I eventually gave her an expendable bundle of sticks as an alternative. Strangely, she did not weave from side to side in frustration as so many overstabled horses do; she simply wanted to destroy the thing that so tormented her, and was trying to do the same to the saddle. I didn’t let her, but only because it would have set a very bad precedent, and one thing I was already sure of was that she needed a new saddle, which would not be cheap. Her viciousness didn’t help me feel kindly towards her, but I couldn’t blame her for wanting to take out her anger. When I went to move the saddle alongside her, she wheeled round me in some kind of a canter, desperate to escape.
It had been clear from the start that nobody was going to ride her that day, at the very least, so I decided not to press the matter. After all, we had several weeks to work with her. Next to the bridle and long-lines that we had rather optimistically brought up to the pen, Jo was sitting with Emily, putting a brave face on the prospects. I was glad for the encouragement even though I was beginning to realise that this was not going to be easy. Quite apart from her mental state, Amber’s young body was tense from head to toe, her muscles tightly knotted in spasms. The top line of her neck felt like a steel rod. She was fixated with one hind leg, which bore a large, pink scar on the cannon bone. She frequently looked down at it, stamped it, or kicked out, paranoid that something would injure her leg again or get entangled round it. Nicole suspected foul play at some stage as Amber’s behaviour was so similar to that of a horse which Kelly was training, who came to her after his leg had been tied up, in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue him and make him more compliant. There was no way of knowing what might have happened to Amber. But most of all, despite the major physical barriers that we would have to contend with, it was the scale of the mental barriers she had put in place, in an attempt to escape from the reality she had been subjected to, that really daunted me.
Eventually I managed to get some kind of follow-up, but it was still without any kind of acknowledgement that I existed. She went through the motions of following, as if she was just going there anyway and I happened to be in front of her, while she continued the mouth popping. I took her out of the pen, and we spent some time just letting her graze the thick, lush grass on the bank below Henry’s cedar tree, and she gulped it down eagerly, but without a trace of gratitude.
I had arranged for Pennie Hooper to come down the next day, so at least we would have a good idea of what physical problems we were dealing with. Pennie arrived, full of smiles and the usual tales of ghastly London traffic, and after her customary strong coffee and hand-rolled ciggy, we proceeded to the yard and Jo brought Amber out for us.
In her own very special way, Pennie proceeded to give us her professional opinion about Amber’s physical state. ‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, before remembering Emily was standing with us. ‘Her brachiocephalus and trapezius, what kind of a saddle have they been using? And she seems to have spent the whole time holding her breath! God, I can’t believe how tight these hamstrings are, they’re like piano wire. She’s in constant pain, all over . . .’ Pennie moved along Amber’s body, her hands studying the muscles, hard as marble beneath the skin and hair. She started to work, amidst much tail-swishing and teeth-baring, but had to back off when she got to the loin area, as Amber started to lash out.
I had known as soon as I saw her that Amber was not in good physical condition, but I had not imagined that so much damage could be done to a horse in such a short time. Amber was young and had been perfectly healthy when I’d first heard of her three months before. But she was in a much worse condition than I had expected, and I felt I had been a bit dismissive of Emily’s concerns the day before, in my efforts to keep her from becoming too despondent. I suddenly realised that a lot of her apparent coldness was down to a very sensible distrust of us, given that the last trainer had ruined her horse. It was perfectly natural for her to doubt that we would come up with a result, having made the same sorts of promises that he had spectacularly failed to make good. And it was plain that successfully training Amber to the point where she could be ridden by anyone, let alone enjoyed as a horse for Emily to hack around on, was now going to be a great deal less easy, if it would be possible at all.
‘Adam, you mustn’t do anything at all with her for at least a month, nothing the least bit strenuous. You can take her out for walks, and graze her in hand. Give her a gende massage as often as you can, but be careful. She really is close to breaking point,’ Pennie declared. Of all the horses she had looked at for us, she had never given such an extreme diagnosis.
Once she realised that we were not going to ignore her horse’s needs and proceed without regard to her physical or psychological condition, Emily seemed to relax. So for the next two days of her stay, we took Amber out to see the estate and surrounding area. It was remarkable how good she was about some things, and how others sent her into an uncontrollable panic. She showed no sign of nervousness at being separat
ed from the other horses, and was actually very relaxed for a young horse being led out around the village with its barking dogs, noisy children and light traffic. This confirmed my initial suspicions. Although she had huge problems, these had only been the result of the training she had been subjected to. In fact, she was a perfectly normal horse, or at least she had been. Her early education had been good – she was perfect about picking her feet up, for example, and to tie up to the wall.
About a week before Emily’s visit, our new working pupil, Brian Mortensen, had arrived from Denmark. Partly due to his imperfect English, it had been difficult to break the ice with him, but I had been able to use the time-honoured tradition of asking him what his favourite band was. Expecting to have to grapple with the name of some Danish heavy rock outfit, I was surprised when he replied with the name of an English group, one of the top five biggest bands ever. Their songs are so well known that even my mother, whose rock credentials are nil, might be able to hum a few. Feeling buoyed by this success, when Brian and I gave Emily a lift that night to the pub where she was staying, I bought them a drink and tried the same thing on her. Unfortunately I had hardly heard of the pop stars she liked, so that line of conversation quickly dried up. But Emily was different in this environment, and much easier to talk to. Much like her horse, underneath a sceptical and spiky exterior lay a sensitive personality.
She was due to leave the next day, after lunch, and we were sitting outside in the sun, discussing the plan of action. We wanted to take Amber out for another walk, since it would be Emily’s last chance to spend time with her for a while. She was due to go to Los Angeles for most of the rest of her summer holiday, with her family. I was somewhat anxious about this, as I was aware that if anything happened to Amber while she was away, we would have to make all the decisions regarding veterinary treatment ourselves. In the event of a real emergency I did not want to have to make life-and-death decisions without consulting Emily and her mother. But, in spite of the fact that we seemed to be getting along much better, she was very reticent about giving me a contact number in the US. I couldn’t imagine why, as every client I had previously worked for had given me a long list of phone numbers to enable me to contact them every step of the way when they went abroad. I thought it could only be that Emily didn’t fully understand the desperate nature of the potential crises I might be calling her about, but I also didn’t want her imagination to run wild over the possibilities. She had enough to worry about with Amber even if everything went as well as could be hoped for, without hearing details about all the potential nightmare scenarios of horse ownership. So the conversation went round in circles for a bit. I realised it was time to get going on our walk, as her father would be arriving to pick her up in only about an hour. So I explained to Jo that if we weren’t back when he arrived, she should invite him in for a cup of tea and make him feel at home until we returned.
‘He won’t like that,’ said Emily quickly, and an awkward silence fell.
‘I could bring it out to the car for him,’ Jo offered quickly, obviously remembering her gaffe about the man with no legs.
‘No, it’s not that,’ Emily mumbled. ‘He won’t even get out of the car, he’ll just want to pick me up and go.’
‘Oh.’ I looked at Jo and Brian, but they seemed to find this as unusual as I did. Again it seemed like there was nothing to say, but there aren’t many situations in which I am genuinely lost for words (not that I can always be trusted to find the right ones). I mumbled that we wouldn’t force him to drink tea, but it would be rude not to offer him one, having driven all the way from London. Again Emily said he wouldn’t want to, leaving us all wondering what was wrong. Just when I thought she was never going to fill us in on the reasons behind her father’s mysterious aversion to hot drinks (and bearing in mind Nicole’s conviction that a person who does not drink tea should never be trusted), she suddenly blurted out, ‘You see, he’s, like, a celebrity, and everyone always tries to get him to do things.’
It all began to make sense. But now, although my brain was telling me that I probably didn’t want to know who he was, I was far too intrigued to let it go. ‘What does he do?’ I asked.
Emily hesitated, as if she was about to cross some sort of Rubicon. ‘He’s a musician,’ She said. ‘He plays bass for—’ It was Brian’s favourite group.
And so it was that I was able to give my working pupil a rare perk – his favourite bass player’s autograph – and also, start to realise what made Emily tick. It was obvious at once that her father’s fame, which he does not relish, had created a profound impact on her life. Her parents were exceptional by the standards of their peers in the upper echelons of rock’s nobility, in terms of the stability provided by their long marriage. But it was also clear that, in spite of the fame and fortune, Emily had not necessarily had an enviable childhood.
There was, however, one real advantage to be had from all this. She did not have the financial constraints of most of our clients, who find themselves in the difficult position of having to make choices between spending money on treatments from people like Pennie, and other vitals such as a new saddle, after which there is usually very little left to pay for training. It was clear that helping Amber was going to take a long time, if it was feasible at all; but at least a lack of funds wasn’t going to be the deciding factor.
It was one thing knowing that Emily’s family had the money to pay for our services. But it was still going to be very difficult to find ways to work effectively. Her physical condition meant that we couldn’t do the basic training that we normally would, teaching her to be saddled and then long-lined in the school and out on tracks and roads. That would have been the perfect way to gently strengthen her muscles, without the extra weight of a rider, while at the same time accustoming her to the sights and sounds of metropolitan Woodmancote. But it was absolutely out of the question to put a saddle on her, as she could go crazy and strain all her muscles again. I didn’t realise at this stage that it would prove even more difficult to train her to be long-lined, than to be ridden.
So, for the first weeks, we did nothing but lead her out, taking her to find the best views and tastiest patches of clover, and groom and massage her. She was remarkably unspooky for a young horse, calming down very quickly if a pheasant came up nearby, flushed out by the dogs, and she was fine in moderate traffic. Pennie came back and Amber was noticeably less resistant to the excruciating treatment. Maybe our training methods were making her more manageable. Or maybe she was starting to realise we weren’t trying to torture her.
Eventually Pennie gave us the go-ahead to begin working towards riding her. I took her up to the pen and tried another join-up. But, despite the considerable improvement in her physical condition, she was hardly any better mentally. As soon as she realised where we were headed, she began her goldfish impersonation, and you could almost see the adrenaline rise up in her. Immediately, she was back in survival mode, her attention everywhere but with me, her feet unable to cope with staying in a walk. It would have been unbearably frustrating for me, if I hadn’t been aware that it was at least as frustrating for her. In spite of the fact that first join-up work had not made an impression, I was still hoping to see some good results. But she still seemed to panic altogether at being sent away, however gently, and then not to want to be with me, only going through the motions of following, without seeming to have any trust or confidence in me. For the first few sessions, it was a battle to keep her attention for more than a second or two. Even when I sent her away, she would just scoot around the pen or school, lips popping frantically, looking everywhere else but at me until I showed her the back of my shoulder. Then she would come directly in, still looking away, and stand next to me, but avoid being given a stroke on the head, pushing through my space as if I wasn’t there. Every time she did it, I would go off in the other direction, and she would come round to me, like a barely-tamed barracuda.
In the next session, I tried long-lining her without
tack, just using a headcollar, and found that having a line resting on her hocks was far too much for her. Her back end dropped nearly to the ground, like some great cat on springs, and then she bounded off before kicking out so ferociously that the line nearly left my hand, and flew forwards over her back as she pounded around me. No matter how carefully I did it, she could not tolerate the line going behind her. For a split-second she would catch her breath and freeze, and then she was in an unreachable state until well after I stopped. I could get her to stand still, stock still, but moving sent her into a frenzy as she fled the line on the back of her legs. She just couldn’t cope with the idea, in spite of having a rug with straps that go around each back leg in much the same fashion as the long-line. And I knew that her body wasn’t up to much more frantic running around. It just seemed so likely to end in disaster.
We were soon both in a sorry state, dripping with sweat and even more exhausted by the mental strain of it. Horses naturally react strongly to something they fear, but once they realise that no pain is involved, they’ll usually overcome their anxiety, even if it takes a while. But the memory of the huge, ugly pink scar on her back leg seemed to live on in Amber’s mind like a nightmare. She pounded that foot on the sand, her eyes rolling wildly above her mane as she glanced down at it in terror. This was not making it better, I told myself. Her mouth was almost in a spasm, and she stamped the ground and set off again, all by herself. Enough was enough. I reached out desperately, and grasped the end of her nose, as if I could somehow hold back her fear. She stood prone, holding her breath. For a moment, it was like we were the only two beings on the face of the earth. I slowly relaxed my hand, and somehow got her back down. We walked for a long time, drying off the sweat.
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