So many, it’s hard to count. I think perhaps the greatest is learning that I could build a bond of trust between me and my mare, that it was not just about getting on and riding and kicking on, but about building a relationship. I’m slightly obsessed now with watching her and her little herd, with trying to decipher what it is she does with them and how they react to her.
I think a lot about feel and about softness. Those were words that did not mean anything to me before I started on this journey.
What fascinates me the most is that if you really delve into good horsemanship, you find it is a perfect marriage of the intellect and the instinct. I think a lot about this stuff, and I learn new things as if I am back at university, and I cogitate and ponder and muse. At the very same time, I let my instincts come out to play.
I’m getting braver. At the beginning, because all this was so new to me, I wanted to do it all perfectly and get a gold star from the teacher. I did want to impress people. Look at me, with my brilliant red mare! Now, I don’t think about that so much. I let my imagination dance. I try new things. I take the foundational principles and play with them. I’ve learnt that my best lessons come from my worst mistakes. My greatest professor is my red mare, and I have found that if I listen to her, she will tell me the secrets of the universe.
As for a moment, there have been too many to count. Maybe the most glorious was one morning when we were out in the woods and bird flew up out of the undergrowth. In the old days, that would have sent the red mare three feet into the air. On this sunny morning, she flicked her ear back towards me as if to say: are we all right? I told her we were all right. And she believed me. That was an extraordinary revelation.
The other greatest moment was when I started teaching a young friend called Isla to ride the red mare. Isla is eleven and I offered her a ride on a whim. She and the mare fell in love with each other so it became a regular thing. They ride now every Sunday, and we go out into the woods and hills, and they canter on a loose rein, and they do obstacle courses and groundwork and even, as of last week, a little jump. I would never have dared offer a grown-up a ride on this horse in her first incarnation. Now she takes care of her precious cargo with all the sagacity and grace of a schoolmistress.