Whispering Back

by Adam Goodfellow

  Everything we asked her to do that she didn’t like, she blamed us for with venom. After that day with the long-lines, she hated me for weeks. I could understand why she felt like that, but it made the prospect of making significant improvements seem remote. It even took some time to re-establish the small improvements we had started in the school. We went back to walking out around the farm, grooming and rubs.

  At first it seemed as if, in her world, everything was in one of two categories: taken for granted, or utterly terrifying. Nothing much was in between. I was beginning to wonder whether there was any chance of anything in her ‘terrifying’ category ever being turned into ‘accepted’. If there was any chance of her being ridden, by Emily instead of some rodeo cowboy, she would somehow have to get used to a saddle. Before that, she would have to accept the idea of working with a human.

  So I had really high hopes that we might make progress if we worked with a tarpaulin. She was bound to find it quite worrying, but as she almost certainly would never have been asked to walk over one, she wouldn’t have formed any negative associations. After I had just about accustomed her simply to being in the school, which was easier to do in body than in spirit, I set the blue tarpaulin out.

  Without pausing for a moment she walked calmly over it. I could have screamed.

  Unless I approached her with it aggressively, she found it only slightly disconcerting that I should want to shake it at her, more because it seemed such an odd thing for me to be doing than for any other reason. As long as I didn’t do anything with the long rope, everything was fine. Back to square one.

  It was around this time my ideas on driving horses with a single line began to change. I had never been a fan of lungeing, at least in the conventional sense. The idea seems to be that the person stands in the middle and asks the horse to go round in a circle. As anyone who has ever tried acting out the horse’s role in this ritual will very soon realise, this is an extremely dull, repetitive task. Although it may exercise a horse’s muscles, it certainly does not exercise his mind. It teaches him, in fact, that you want him to do 99 per cent of the work, while you twitter on and occasionally flick a whip. And even the muscular benefits of it are questionable, especially if devices like side reins are used inappropriately. I’d tried it with Sensi many years previously, in the fields in Milton Keynes when she was still fairly green. In spite of having lots of equipment, I was spectacularly unable to control her, at one point losing hold of the lunge line completely. It was easy enough to make her move, especially with the long whip, but making her move forwards was another matter. She had an expertly tuned ability to turn in towards me, and run back if I waved the stick. And when she finally did move forwards, it was all but impossible to get her to slow down, unless she decided to turn back in towards me again. All this meant I was quite ready to accept Monty’s assertion that lungeing could be detrimental to horses, and much less useful than long-lining. But we were beginning to see how, in many situations, there could be great value in combining Monty’s ‘body language’ techniques with a lunge line, when working in a bigger space than a round pen. There are clear similarities to how a horse behaves loose, and how he behaves on a single line if you do the right things.

  So I considered trying something similar with Amber. She had already been at our place for several weeks. In the usual run of things, horses came and went, usually reformed almost out of recognition in less than a month. But with her, although we had put so much effort into getting her body to unwind a bit, and she was responding to Pennie’s treatment, the improvement was painfully slow. It was not comforting to think that she had been here so long and we had hardly gained any ground.

  So I got the rope out again. I decided to work mostly in the school, so she could move in a straight line more easily. When I gently asked her to move away on a 30-foot line the first time, it was just like the first join-up – she blasted off round me in a complete panic. I was expecting it, but it still shook me how manic she was, as she flew round, nearly falling over and kicking at the fence. It wasn’t long before I started to remember the fact that lungeing has a particular weakness. It’s a lot easier to get the horse to go forwards than it is to make it stop. In Amber’s case this meant that whether or not I slowed down, she was on a schedule of her own, constantly evading the central issue, my existence. I tried another way – blocking her path so she was confronted by the fence. She panicked even more. Either she leaped forwards into the closing gap, almost falling over, or halted and turned, threatening to get herself tangled in the line. Putting her on a tighter circle just made me dizzy and put even more strain on her limbs. She could turn so tight that I could reach out and touch her shoulder, and she’d still be cantering, her legs at a 45-degree angle to the ground. I even tried making her speed up, then allowing her to slow down, but that nearly sent her out over the gate. Everything was either too subtle or far too much. There just didn’t seem a way to reach her.

  Finally, I tried something that I didn’t really expect to work. I shook the line between us vigorously. She raised her head sharply, which slowed her down, and she looked down the line towards me, about to panic. I stopped in my tracks and she seemed to check herself. In a second she was off again. But it was a start, and I managed to build on it, until I could really get her attention when I needed it. This turned out to be probably the most useful trick I found to use with Amber. Big waves coming up the line right towards her eye were too much for her to ignore. Her natural inclination was to pull her head back away from the movement, which slowed her down. By stopping the movement of the rope instantly, eventually I got her really sensitive. Within about two weeks, a tiny jiggle on the rope was all I needed to get her to come down to a walk. It was the first and most important thing I taught her to do, for as she slowed down, she stopped panicking and began to come back to earth mentally, from where I could get through to her in other ways. Eventually I could get her to steer around the school quite accurately. It was an obvious improvement, and a viable substitute for long-lining.

  Around this time Emily came up and attended a riding clinic. Although she had never done much groundwork with a horse before, she managed to get Amber to listen to her and go away calmly wherever she directed. Using a different horse, we soon got Emily a lot more stable in the saddle, and began to unpick a few major weaknesses, which previous instructors had taught her. Knees off, feet too far forward and too much weight in the stirrup through trying to push her heels down, Emily was already halfway to falling backwards and popping upwards before a horse even moved forward, and had no idea about how to ‘bear down’ (engage her abdominal muscles, while breathing steadily). Of course, she couldn’t breathe deeply, or bear down, because she had been told to ‘sit up’, which had the effect of sticking her chest out and hollowing her back, as if she were doing ballet. Clearly, there was work to be done on Emily as well as Amber!

  But Amber was a long way off being ridden. In the weeks we’d spent trying to loosen her muscles and connect with her mentally, we hadn’t even looked at putting a saddle on her. Pennie came up again and we discussed her condition. After that first terrifying experience when the saddle had slipped, the trainer had girthed her up so tightly he had almost – perhaps actually – broken her ribs. But the damage was starting to heal. When Amber welcomed Pennie’s massage and began to groom her back, showing where she wanted to be rubbed, we decided it was time to try to move on.

  The first time I put a roller on her, she tried to climb out of her own skin. Her terror, her anger, was as bad as anything I have ever seen. I had taken advantage of the fact that she was blanking me out to just do it up as quickly as I could. When she realised what had happened, she threw herself around the pen, ten times worse than most horses with their first saddle. But she did not injure herself, and when she realised that the roller wasn’t slipping around her belly like her first saddle had done, calmed down eventually.

  But the next day it began almost the same. Now she knew what I was
up to and squirmed about, trying to bite the roller, or me if I happened to be in the way. For about two weeks, she made improvements so slowly that I couldn’t be sure they were real improvements. I was getting to the point where I dreaded training her, which was not something I had ever experienced before. Nicole took over for a while, and it was almost a relief to see that she had the same difficulties. Whether she got Amber to stand still, or put the roller on while she was cantering in that tight circle, it made no difference. Sometimes she would put the roller on and take it off twenty times in a session, other times she would put it on just once and reward Amber for her compliance by taking her out for a walk, but Amber’s attitude hardly seemed to change. After a week, Nicole handed the job over to Brian. A week later, Jo took on the task.

  By now, Amber would just about tolerate the roller, albeit with much tail swishing and grinding of teeth. It was time to introduce the saddle – my old one, of course – with a breast girth. By putting it on and off, again and again, I hoped that eventually she would be calm enough to think about what I was doing, and realise that it didn’t actually hurt. We decided that it might help to limit her space.

  One lovely afternoon, telling myself I really did have all the time in the world, I got her out of her field and took her up to her stable, where my tatty old synthetic saddle was waiting on the door. As I stroked her body all over, I told myself I was going to put on that saddle as many times as it took even if I set a new world record. Which I probably did. Every time she moved forward I made her move back, and if she started to trot on the spot, or paw the ground, kick, or bite, I made a sharp gesture with the rope. But the second she stopped, I instantly stopped my noisy movement, and after stroking her softly, I would go very gently back to work, lifting the girth up onto her belly and tightening and loosening it again and again.

  After about one and a half hours, she was pretty good. The next day she got better. After the following session I began to work a bit in the school and found that if I was very tough, not letting her move her feet at all, she could cope with it. I wouldn’t let her trot off without having to put up with the lunge line being shaken in her face, and finally, fighting every inch of the way, she reached the stage where it wasn’t the end of the world.

  At this time, we arranged for a saddle to be made for her. Kay Humphries, the only saddler we really trust, came out to take measurements. Her high standards have caused her to have numerous conflicts with manufacturers, and she’s long been campaigning against the poorly designed, poorly made, poorly fitting saddles that cause so much pain for so many horses. Emily was in the fortunate position of being able to take her old saddle, which was badly twisted and very heavy, completely out of circulation instead of needing to sell it on, to damage another horse.

  We still had to face the bit where the rider gets on. By now Jo and I were a pretty good team and we got better, going through each part of the procedure enough times to be sure that Amber would cope. To get her used to the sight of a person looming up above her, Jo jumped up and down next to Amber in what would have looked to an outsider like a variation on step aerobics. She immediately seemed to know what this was all about, but apart from trotting on the spot and pulling some spectacular faces, she accepted the process comparatively calmlv. We walked around with Jo bellied over the saddle, many times, to get Amber used to the weight of a person on her back, letting her work out that the saddle no longer hurt her. In this position, Jo could easily bale out if anything went wrong. Amber tried to shoot off at first, and when I finally persuaded her to stand still, bunched herself up like a coiled spring, waiting to explode. It took several sessions before she would walk around calmly with Jo lying across her back, but when Jo finally went for it, and put her leg over, Amber was magnificent. Not only did it pass no more eventfully than it usually does with a starter, but the last thing I had most dreaded – having to tighten the girth once the rider was on – wasn’t a problem at all, probably because it had never been done before. All my worst imaginings, of Jo being thrown backwards with her foot right up in the air while I fumbled with the straps, came to nothing.

  Amber has turned out to be our longest-ever resident trainee, having lived with us since we met her in the summer of 2000. Despite a long series of niggling setbacks as she slowly regained her physical condition, she has come on so well, proving that with the right approach you can make progress with almost any horse. Turning her into a youngster who can be tacked up and ridden away with little more risk than any other horse is probably the most difficult, and certainly the longest work I have ever done. I say that not only because of the type of horse she is, the delicacy of her physical and psychological condition and the extreme depth of her phobias of the saddle, ropes, and being mounted and ridden. Most of all, it was because three of the most valuable training techniques I learned from Monty – release of pressure, join-up, and long-lining – had little impact. Amber already knew about pressure/release, and join-up did not have the usual effect on her – she responded, but only as if going through the motions. Long-lining her proved almost impossible. My research on spookbusting was pretty irrelevant, too. She really was never spooky. Her fears were grounded in her reality, not her imagination. The best thing I could take from Monty’s approach was his attitude – stay focused on the end result, and keep thinking of ideas until you get there.

  Emily tells me she loves her pony more than anything else she owns, and although it isn’t easy for her to get to Moor Wood, I’m sure Amber knows who her real owner is. I take them out for hacks around the countryside, and Emily spends hours just escorting her to the best grazing on the estate. Perhaps Amber understands something of what she’s been through it all for. Or maybe Emily just gets to be the good parent and I’m the one who does all the disciplining. For sure, Amber likes her more than me. But I’ve never had a moment of greater satisfaction in my working life than the first time I gave Emily a leg-up, and she sat on her pony and just stood quietly in the closing gloom of a December afternoon, and did nothing else but breathe in a moment that seemed to last for ever.

  EIGHTEEN

  Flying high

  (Nicole)

  It’s not unusual for us to fall in love with a horse we’re training, often to the point that we get quite tearful when they leave. Sometimes one of us will fall more deeply for a horse than the other, and as a general rule, I prefer to work with nervous horses, whereas Adam seems to enjoy the challenge of big, bolshy horses who have no regard for one’s personal space. Even horses like Amber, who at times was so frustrating and difficult to train that we had to take it in turns to avoid going mad, nevertheless very quickly found a place in our hearts. It’s extremely rare, even when things are particularly difficult with a horse, that I find myself not liking them. In fact, I’m not sure I had ever really disliked a horse until High Flyer came on the scene.

  Right from the start, I didn’t like the sound of him. Adam had come across him, via another client, as a possible candidate for us to use for our first Open Day at Moor Wood. It was a typical scenario of an owner with a huge problem, but being the owner of a small stud, very limited finances. High Flyer was a bottle-reared yearling and had become almost impossible to handle. Adam went to see him to find out if he would make a good demo horse.

  ‘So how was he?’ I asked, when Adam got back.

  ‘Oh, fine.’

  ‘So what did you do with him?’

  ‘I didn’t touch him at all, didn’t do any training. I wanted to see what his owner, Lynette, was doing. Apparently he is so pleased to see her, being alone in a field all the time, that he charges across and rears up in her face when she comes along. She seems really scared of him and practically offered to give him to me. He was near the gate when we came along, and didn’t do much, but Lynette was practically shaking with nerves. At first, she just couldn’t get him to take a single step in any direction. She put on his headcollar and held on to the rope just under his chin, stood by his shoulder and pushed his head
as she told him to walk on, but he didn’t budge. Didn’t leap around or anything, just planted himself. Then she put a bridle on, and she could just about get him to move, but he was rearing up and striking out. It took ages to take him about fifty yards from the field, and even longer to get him back in. It was really hairy. At one point he practically tore her shirt off! I wanted to know if he could be sent away at all, so I went into the field and tried to move him away. He went off about fifty yards.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ Bottle-reared horses can be almost impossible to send away. Either they don’t understand their own body language, or they resent being manoeuvred. Either way, it makes join-up an unsuitable process for many of them.

  ‘Then I went passive. He stopped dead in his tracks, turned to face me, charged at me, reared, then wheeled away at the last minute, kicking out as he went. Only just missed me.’

  ‘Ah.’ I wasn’t sure how Adam had reached the conclusion that High Flyer was ‘fine’ from this description, but quickly rearranged the allocation of horses on the Open Day so that Adam would be working with him. We decided to put this particular segment on at the end, so that if Adam were injured, I could take him to the hospital, if necessary.

  It was our first summer in charge at Moor Wood and we were putting on our first Open Day, partly as a way of publicising ourselves, but also to raise money for the Brooke Hospital for Animals, a charity that does superb work in the developing world, providing veterinary care, water troughs and other facilities for working horses, mules and donkeys. Their owners often live in worse conditions than most horses do in this country, and not surprisingly, there is a great deal of ignorance as well as poverty to combat. As their publicity material was set up on display, it brought a few things into sharp focus. Although the potential is there – as Misty’s tragic past shows – for an animal to be as badly treated in this country as any other, some of the cases the Brooke Hospital comes across are almost too horrific for words.