15th June, 2008 Foxtrot

Happily Fox is completely better and is leading his Mum and Sheila a merry dance. The vets were unable to say what was wrong with him other than a roaring temperature and a terrible lameness - we suspected a broken rib but then he recovered almost as rapidly as he went downhill.

14th June, 2008 Antidote anecdote

I have spent the weekend working with the perfect antidote to my unjustified disappointment with Piper. Graylie is a four year old New Forest pony who has made his way bit by bit to Swanley, Kent (by trailer and not on foot!). Totally adored by his owner, Graylie has perfected the art of going away and staying away just as his mother would have taught him. By the end of today we were handling his legs and he was asking us to put the headcollar on; a combination of clicker training and careful body language. He is probably the most beautiful New Forest pony I have ever seen and looks more like a small Lusitano with his curly black mane and matching black eyes. I don't normally work this far away but Nina felt that I would bring a bit of New Forest expertise with me. It also gave me the chance to catch up with lovely Liz Pitman who is just over the border in Essex.

11th June, 2008 The plain zebra

For those of you who have been waiting with baited breath (I have received so many supportive e-mails in just one day), there was no great miracle in Fritham today. I suppose there is no real reason why Piper should remember the loving cuddles he got yesterday any more than the vet stabbing him with a needle and perhaps feeling unnaturally woozy all afternoon. I may be mistaken, but I do think his eye had softened towards me and he allows me to get much nearer in the big field than I could ever do before. Once in the barn I got his headcollar on easily and clickered him with his favourite linseed lozenges. I was also able to repeat everything I did yesterday, putting my arm over his neck and stroking him all the way along to his hindquarters. However, it was like having a time bomb under my arm and I could almost hear him going tick tock, tick, tock. So I just did it for old time’s sake and I shall leave him alone again now.

This is what the vet said today: "Glad we managed it in the end! It was a bit like sedating a zebra - but I reckon even he would improve if we did it every week - may get a bit expensive though! Best wishes - and thanks for the wine."

My own horses are perhaps not the best advert for me but by definition I get to keep the most awkward ones. Nelly and Blue are no trouble and little Chello is allowing himself to be touched all over – he especially likes his tummy rubbed. Nell has put on enough weight now to go back out on the Forest tomorrow. Pie seems to like his natural life style and his girlfriend has had another foal that he can pretend to father. Rosie is doing her own thing over at Blissford and her old owners keep an eye out for her and will alert me to any trouble. Petra Perkins is still a conundrum in her own way – she is always on a mission on the way home and quite uncomfortable to ride. She goes out calmly enough but quietly bolts in walk all the way home. I have done all the standard stuff including physio and chiro and having her saddle checked (over and over again). I have tried different bits and have been working with Amanda Barton to try and ride through the problem. We have been working on channelling the energy into a circle whenever Petra “leaves” me and starts to rush home. I have seen this work beautifully with other horses and I have tried to be utterly consistent and fair in its application. Somehow I am not giving her the right message and she hasn’t improved. Today I have started an entirely new tack, clicker training her to do one step towards home for a click and a treat. Hopefully I can extend this so that we can do a number of steps and then any number of steps and I can reward her for stopping when asked. My theory is that she will then be thinking backwards towards me as a rider and have a vested (and positive) interest in staying present. Watch this space…… Of course when I had quite a ploddy horse I used to long for something with a bit of oomph and now I am yearning for ploddy again.

10th June, 2008 She who pays for Piper calls the tune

Piper is still on the waiting list for a conservation project although the urgency has gone away. He became quite sleek over the winter and is still able to graze in the big field with the other horses at the moment. Chancer is doing what he can to keep Piper slim and fit, they seem to play all day - it's a delight when both of them, for different reasons, were rather remote. Piper borrowed half of Chancer's rug throughout the winter and is now sharing the field shelter. I have done very little work with Piper, resigning myself to the fact that he will always struggle to be around people and might need to go wild again at any moment. Luckily his feet don't grow like other horses and he only had his feet trimmed for the first time when he was seven and under general anaesthetic being gelded. Due to the wet weather, his feet have suddenly grown again this year and today I arranged for him to be fully sedated so that John Adams the farrier could attempt to trim his toes. Despite my best efforts Piper is still very wild - I can get a headcollar on him easily enough but he is desperate to get away as soon as he is approached and I have never been able to touch below his knees on his forelegs. One person is a person and two is a gathering (Exmoor round-up) as far as he is concerned. He was horrified to see Chris Pearce the vet who did an amazing job to get an intravenous sedative into him. With Piper almost completely out of it, John was able to pick up and trim his feet with Piper doing his best to be a tripod while he was so droopy. I couldn't believe it when John put Piper's foot between his own legs and finished the job as beautifully as he does with all the tame horses - that's one brave man.

Trimming over (and bottles of wine handed out accordingly) Julie, Sheila and I all spent the next hour or so stroking and rubbing Piper gently while he came round. This is an experiment I have wanted to do for some time but felt it was unethical to sedate him just to touch him. With a legitimate purpose to sedating him, I didn't have such a problem with exploiting the situation and using this time to get my hands all over the pony always taking care not to behave like a predator. Three hours later, Piper was still half asleep and Julie and Sheila had gone home. I had continued to work on him, putting my arm over his neck and massaging his neck, running my hands down his front legs - wouldn't dare do the back ones even if he was practically unconscious - and stroking his face. At times he was asleep with his head in my lap and I just worked my way all round his face trying to imagine what he would like the most. I talked to him calmly throughout and tried to breath as deeply as I could. Tomorrow I have got the day off and I will be able to check out whether it has done any good at all - if nothing else, I have had the opportunity to express how I feel about him and to touch him in the way that I have always wanted to. There's a song with the words "I stand alone without beliefs, the only truth I know is you" and I would love to dispel the beliefs that Piper has about people and to become his truth. At the moment he is more like "The Boxer" - in a clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down, or cut him til he cried out, in his anger and his shame, I am leaving, I am leaving but the fighter still remains. Piper, who in the end is actually very passive, is that fighter.

Being objective for a moment, there have been experiments before whether ethical or not, which have tried to investigate whether near death experiences can bring a horse round. In the States, a couple of men had a specially designed horsebox into which mustangs were driven and then, with only their head protruding from the side, totally immersed in grain. They reckoned that afterwards the horses were tame and this is some of the basis upon which some so-called horse whisperers lay horses down on the ground and on which some commoners used to put their horses in a bog to get on them for the first time. One can only imagine the psychological effects which may in fact be to shut the horse down completely - sometimes termed learned helplessness. Nevertheless I have had two occasions where due to accidents, animals were close to death and I soothed them and helped them and thought healing thoughts and the animals were totally amenable from then on.

The first was a stray cat that used to burgle my house when I was out and pee up the walls to mark his territory. One day he turned up when I was there and was obviously in trouble. He had a broken leg and for the first time I was able to get near to him and take him off to the vets. The vets fixed his leg and I brought him home and just lay next to him gently stroking him for hours. From then on he was my best friend and when he wasn't claimed I took him with me when I moved house and he lived until he was 18 and was an adorable cat.

The other concerned a New Forest pony called Beatrice. She had always been elusive on the Forest and came in on a round up. She was one of six ponies that I worked with for my MRCPH project. The first time I went into the pen with her she was very aggressive towards me. During the night, she was badly injured in her owner's field, tearing a 1" strip of fur and tissue off her face leaving the bone exposed. It was a real mess. Fortunately her owner decided not to have her put down and called the vet. Vicky from Endell's sewed her face up in some sort of mosaic whilst Beatrice was sedated in a crush. Obviously we couldn't put a headcollar on her to restrain or support her so throughout the operation I stood with her head in may arms and stroked her neck. The following day I approached her in the pen thinking she would probably chase me away. Instead she seemed to say "Oh thank God you're here, I've got such a headache - can you find me some painkillers and a fly hat?" Thereafter I spent hours designing a fly hat which stood off her nose which required countless fittings and I could groom her, pick up her feet and later go and catch her in the middle of the Forest.

I'm not holding out too much hope with Piper but watch this space.....

9th June, 2008 Another Arabian

A good start to this week too as I went back to an arabian stud to work with a yearling colt that has never been touched other than on his own terms. I was somewhat intimidated by how tall and leggy he is. Although there isn't an ounce of aggression in him, he could reach a long way if he decided to point one of his legs at me. He was very flighty to begin with but within a short time he was accepting touch and then obviously enjoying it and by the end of the session I felt quite a bond with him. He had his headcollar on and off three times to finish the session.

6th June, 2008 My friend Flicka

This has probably been one of the very best weeks since I set up my business. After Horseworld I have worked with four more lovely horses and their equally lovely owners. Three of them are newly bought horses and it brought it home to me how much we can do to help them settle into their new environment. At Horseworld most new arrivals are turned out into a mixed herd and allowed to chill out for at least a couple of weeks before work begins. Whilst being turned out won't resolve long standing behavioural problems, the herd dynamics can instill basic good manners in confused young horses and restore their equilibrium - they remember what it is to just be a horse. After that owners can use good quality groundwork to establish their leadership and introduce security and stability. There is even room for control freakery around horses - they like to have set rules as long as they are applied consistently, fairly and logically.

Yesterday I worked with a yearling New Forest pony called Flicka. While I touched her for the first time and then began to rub her neck and introduce her headcollar, I recalled the story of My Friend Flicka (Mary O'Hara) a book I read over and over again as a child and as an adult: still worth reading today. My current read is Mark Rashid's series of short stories "Big Horses, Good Dogs and Straight Fences". He describes how it is sometimes useless to offer advice where it's not wanted. He is told, never try to teach a pig to sing, it isn't possible and it irritates the pig.

I am also enjoying writing answers to questions posed by the readers of Your Horse. Some of then should start to appear in July.

Last night I went to see the final event of the Salisbury Arts Festival, a welcome dose of culture in my life. The Cape Dance Company were superb - oh to be so supple - and to cap it all they used music by Peter Gabriel from Passion, the soundtrack to the Last Temptation of Christ.

Sadly little Fox, Sheila's colt has had to be taken up to Endell's vets this afternoon because he has a raging temperature and can't put weight on his foreleg. Fingers crossed that they find out what is wrong with him and can put it right very quickly.

4th June, 2008 Horseworld Training

I have just returned from two days training staff from the welfare, husbandry and training teams at Horseworld. It's brilliant working with people who really care about the horses they are employed to look after and are just so interested in the nuts and bolts of horsemanship; oblivious to thing like tea breaks, people even came on their days off. Of course there is a huge selection of horses to work with, each one with a story and something to teach us. Little Oddbod, a 16 month coloured colt with a deformed back, has started to love people. He has been checked out to make sure he isn't in any pain and over two sessions we taught him how to lead confidentally and began to pick up his feet. He must think he has landed in Heaven. We had three relatively untouched ponies to work with, Errol, Bella and Alice and then a pushy pony called Burdock who relented straight away and provided a useful backrest when I sat on the floor talking to the students. Butter wouldn't have melted and I know the staff were willing him to be awkward!