Melissa Kite
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I’ve tried everything to make Tara rideable, including having her fitted with £160 remedial shoes to aid her posture. She’s been X-rayed, blood-tested and physioed. She’s had more massages than I have. She’s been dosed with liver tonic, hormone treatment, calmers and supplements. She’s even had reiki.
But I don’t think she’s in any discomfort at all. She just doesn’t want to be ridden. She wants to be left alone in a stable to eat hay. But elderly horses have no business standing still in stables, running up hundreds of pounds a month in livery fees and stiffening their joints when they ought to be saving their owner’s money and kicking their heels up in a field. Besides, I have two other sweet-natured, rideable horses so there really is no need to do battle with a homicidal hunter as I approach the age of osteoporosis.
With a heavy heart, therefore, I decided to turn Tara away. I rugged her up and out she went. Every evening I took her a feed and she seemed perfectly happy. Whenever I drove past she was either munching grass, sleeping or chasing another horse around the field.
But after a few weeks she got bored and disappeared. One night I went to take her dinner and after searching for ages, I found her wedged in a ditch, wrapped in barbed wire. She’d broken through the electric fencing — she’s quite partial to a few hundred volts — in search of newer pastures.
She was standing stock-still and gave me a look out of the corner of her eye that said, ‘You took your time. Don’t tell me you haven’t brought wire cutters? This could get nasty, you know. Haven’t you seen War Horse?’
I called the gamekeeper, who came with pliers, climbed into the ditch and struggled with the barbed wire until Tara was free. She was unscathed but his middle finger was broken. ‘Good job I’ve got nine others,’ he said sarcastically, no doubt making a mental note to cut my venison rations further.
As I led her away, Tara tossed her head in the air and pranced past her field mates with a look that said ‘See ya later, mugs!’
‘If you are coming in, and I mean if, you are going to have to be ridden,’ I said, as she pushed past me into her old box and snatched up a mouthful of hay.
And so it was that in a moment of madness, I tacked up Tara and rode her down the lane. We had only been going ten minutes before she put in a filthy buck as we cantered around the meadow next to Wisley airfield. I landed on my back, rolled and banged my head. When I came round, the old girl was munching grass.
‘How could you do that to me?’ I shouted. She looked sideways, mouth stuffed full of grass: ‘Keep your hair on. A horse has to eat. I’ve barely had a bite since we left the stable.’
When I got home, cross-eyed and sleepy with concussion, the builder was aghast. ‘What were you thinking? Why on earth did you decide to give it another go? Never go back.’
So true. But we are even now on our way to Warwickshire in his battered pick-up truck, spaniel sitting between us, to spend Christmas with my folks.
We had a terrible time last year when he drank too much champagne and disgraced me. But you never know. If I give it another whirl, maybe things will be different.
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