PONIES' OWN PAGE
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If anyone had told me
that I would one day be a horse owner I would have said they were stark,
staring mad! People like us didn't own horses, they were for the gentry,
people with land, people with time and money to spare - people with SERVANTS,
for goodness sake!
But the children had other ideas. Andrew had always liked horses, and
constantly pestered me to let him take riding lessons. I repeatedly put
him off with a vague "You're not old enough - wait till you're ten." Eventually,
his persistence paid off and, at the age of eight, I booked him a single
lesson, convinced that he wouldn't like it and would say no more on the
subject. He DID like it, though, and the next week Christopher went along
too - Catherine was only two at the time and too young to start. From
then on we made the weekly forty-mile round trip to the riding school
and the boys became more and more proficient : Christopher in particular
proved an absolute natural on a horse. Catherine joined them on a lead
rein at the age of three, and as they grew older they started spending
the whole of every Sunday at the stables - and because of the distance
it meant the whole of my Sunday was spent there too!
We carried on travelling backwards and forwards across the county until
both the car and I had had enough. I did the sums - just because the children
spent a large part of the day mucking out, grooming, mucking out, tack
cleaning and mucking out didn't mean I didn't have to pay for the privilege
- and horse ownership began to look like the cheaper option!
We came across Barley quite by chance. A visit to the tack shop
for yet another pair of riding gloves, boots, jodhs, something like that,
and Andrew spotted a "For Sale" postcard. The tack shop owner knew the
pony and said that he was an absolute gem, but warned us that the owner
was in no hurry to sell and had indeed turned down no less than six prospective
buyers because she took a dislike to them/their children/their dogs, or
any combination of the above! Nevertheless we phoned and went to "just
have a look" at him and it was love at first sight. Andrew would have
taken him if he'd had six legs and a head at each end, but he didn't -
he was a pale gold palomino pony and absolutely beautiful. For some inexplicable
reason Barley's owner took to my children and we became the proud owners
of our very first pony.
It wasn't very long before it became obvious that three children into
one pony doesn't go - for a start they wanted company on rides, and a
bike isn't the same. So, we went hunting for a second pony - something
a little bigger than Barley's 13.2, perhaps? This took longer than we
expected - we followed up ads. and put out enquiries and adverts of our
own, but the ideal pony proved elusive. We looked at some apparently promising
ponies who failed the boys' test by being unable to jump or my test by
having no brakes, until eventually there came a phone call from a small
riding school not too far away who had two ponies they were about to sell
- would we like to come and have a look? Would we ! We went straight there
to find two ponies ready saddled and waiting for a trial ride (I checked
them over - they weren't all lathered up after being ridden hard to tire
them out - somebody had already tried that one on us and we wouldn't get
caught!) Bachelor was an elegant 14.2hh strawberry roan and Benji was
a distinctly un-elegant coloured pony, a 14.3 cob with enormous feet and
a multi-coloured mane. They had been carefully groomed, their tack gleamed,
and their owner definitely wanted to sell! Andrew and Christopher mounted
up, took a few turns round the paddock then felt confident enough to take
the ponies out to see how they would behave in traffic. They came back
an hour later, having swapped over midway, and pronounced both ponies
bomb-proof (and motorbike and lorry-proof!) So, it was down to which one?
Both could jump after a fashion, so we decided to take Benji as he was
the larger of the two and Andrew was already showing signs of the size
he would eventually grow to! Christopher declared that no horse of his
was going to be called Benji, and he immediately became plain Ben,
which suits him much better.
The years rolled by and Barley and Ben became inseparable. The children
grew up but continued to ride the ponies. Chris and Andrew shared Ben
as they outgrew Barley and Catherine had Barley all to herself (and all
the friends you gather when you have a pony......). Chris left school
and went to the local Agricultural College to study Horse Management and
qualified both as a groom and a riding instructor, then declared that
"There's no future in the horse business" (for which read no money etc,)
and went off to university to study engineering instead!
When both of the boys were away at university, Catherine and I had to
do all the work with the ponies but eventually they came back home again
and the load eased, and the ponies' exercise increased again.
Life continued as before until Christmas Day 1997 when we had a phone
call from the house overlooking the field where the ponies lived : Barley
was down and showing no signs of getting back to his feet. We rushed round
and realised that something was terribly wrong. We called the vet, who
to her credit left her meal and was with us in a quarter of an hour. Barley
had had a stroke and there was nothing to be done for him. We said our
last goodbyes, and he died cradled in Christopher's arms.
Barley is buried in the field in which he lived and died and Ben has a
new friend, a skewbald mare called Bronte, and does not seem to miss Barley
at all, but even now we all miss him dreadfully. He was a wonderful pony
who can never be replaced.
