As requested... Our stories.

Iv just found this thread and love it. :)
your mare looks like mine and the same behaviour although we have an understanding, just can't let anybody else ride or handle her.,
look forward to the next part I'm loving it
 
Boooooo!
I saved this thread for opening when I was all cosy at the back of Deano's stable with a cuppa so I could enjoy the update and now I find no update! *stamps feet*

Ha ha, welcome back QB what an eventful time away you have had. Massive well done on the job and super jealous of the holiday plans :D
 
Have been in tears, smiling and nodding knowingly at this lovely recollection, more please and try not to get banned again, not sure we can cope!!

Agree that you should consider publishing as a book, what a wonderful way to cherish your girl in print. You have a really nice way with words, totally drawing the reader in.

Next chapter please??!!!
 
Just cried and smiled my way through this thread. You have a lovely writing style, it's easy to picture the 2 of you through your story. More please x
 
Alrite! Gosh keep your panties on;):D

Are we sitting comfortably, no? Well I shall begin anyway ;)…

So, we had had our first and very elusive canter together since her accident and I was full of enthusiasm and happiness, but above all pride for my sexy diva, by now I had tidied her up (more to the horse you see in the photos) gone was the friesian mane, long and flowing and instead we had a beautiful strong striking neck with a short mane, a nicely cut and clipped tail showing off her sexy bum, but we had no topline, no muscle structure, we were fixed but essentially stripped back to a very nice looking blank canvas. The one field was transformed into a schooling area, and we started in earnest hacking for fitness and schooling for suppleness and finesse, although the latter was still very tricky, she was very stubborn and just didn’t know how to go ‘properly’ so Ebony and I continued to ‘train’ we sacked the schooling and focused on learning to jump.

I remember that I just couldn’t lunge her over poles, she wasn’t relaxed on the lunge like she used to be before her accident and I didn’t want to stress or push her, so we just got on with it under saddle. Looking at the pictures you would never think we had such a time of it learning to jump, but we did! We would go into the jump and she would just slow and stop, my friend Lorrae tried giving me a lead, that didn’t work, I tried ‘liberty’ style work… again same result. The woman who had suggested Bu come work on Ebony, suggested that I completely drop the contact… Literally baggy reins, this worked. Suddenly at home we were flying over jumps… this was it, this was what I missed and Ebony was just excelling, she was in her element, she enjoyed it, had confidence, she could do this and do it well and she knew and loved it :D…

Two weeks later… She just stopped and I ate dirt! God I remember how infuriating it was, I learnt to hate dirt with that mare :( I was not impressed, I wasn’t mad at her, I was just confused… she was sound, fit and happy, she was not being over jumped and I hadn’t changed anything… I couldn’t work it out. I decided that I would turn her away for a couple of days, this often worked and gave her time to sort her head out. Like the time when I was trying to teach her the correct leg to strike off in in canter, she just couldn’t get it and it felt like she was being deliberately obtuse, but she wasn’t her brain was just in overload and she genuinely just couldn’t work it out… she was given 10 days off that time and I bought her back in to the school intending to not even ask for canter, but I couldn’t make her walk, she kept bouncing around like a pogo stick at the corners, so I dropped the reins and sat back and let her do what she wanted, and what she wanted to do was strike off on the right leg in canter, she hadn’t just processed what I had been trying to teach her 10 days before but like a child desperate to please, she just HAD to show me, she seemed so excited and proud to have worked it out, and I was proud of her, I was always so proud of her, she was such a clever little horse. So I chucked her away, bought her in and nearly ate dirt again… I didn’t eat dirt (progress for my seat – Yay) but neither did we make it over the jump (not yay).

So off I toddle to work, perplexed and disgruntled, whilst mrs ‘I can jump but won’t for some unknown reason’ suns herself in the field, and I discussed this with my friend who had told me to ‘drop the reins’. She offered to come and give us a bit of a lesson, well to be a pair of eyes on the ground. We approached the jump, and epic fail… we stopped. I was told to pick up the reins, she knows her job now, but she is searching for you, she needs you now… Problem solved and we are flying again. No matter how small the jump with Ebony, you can see from the pictures we always flew, she was never one to jump a small jump small :D


By now it was time to get to the shows, we were jumping small courses at home, had been for about a month and I arranged to take Ebony to a local show… Lorrae was there without a horse, and it was a lovely friendly show, the plan was to just walk madam around and let her see the sights for her first outing. She loaded well, a bit wary but ok and we got to the show… MY GODFATHERS! She turned into the deamon spawn, you couldn’t even consider tying her up, she would bunny hop, she was dripping wet by the time we arrived at the show, she had always done this, although this was her first ‘trailer’ ride. She would not drink at a show… she never would. I got on her back and she paced and jogged, I walked her up and down the road but it did nothing, she was tense as a tense thing, stargazing and hollow, ears pricked and buzzing. We tried so very hard with the walking around but every time we walked anywhere in sight of the practice jump she would bounce sideways towards it… she was saying ‘I know this mummy, that’s my job, its what I am here for’ So I though sod it, throw the rule book out the window… this horse doesn’t follow rules anyway! We sailed the practice jump, woo hoo! I remembered the feeling of competing Pickles and Cloud and it felt that good, and this was just a practice jump. We did it a few more times and my jogging mare simmered down and relaxed, strutting around the showground like the queen bee she really was. The clear round wasn’t open that day as there were not enough people to man it, and I was not ready to take her in the actual competition ring, but the next thing I knew lorrae was building the clear round and volunteering to man it, we came home with two clear round rosettes that day.

Unfortunately the journey home was equally memorable, but not in a good way. Ebony decided she did not want to load and we tried for 2 hrs to coax her in, hacking her home was not an option, and at one point all hell broke loose when someone that I would quite happily have killed, walked up to her and cracked her on the backside really hard with a spare leather headcollar. She couldn’t deal with this, and I will never forget that moment, I broke for her… still, at some point we got her in and made it home.

Boxing was obviously the next issue on the agenda, and all thoughts of showing were temporarily put on hold, the autumn was swiftly approaching and I bought my own trailer, thinking that we could work on this over the winter. It was nothing special, a bateson trailer, with a new floor, seen years of use but very well cared for… so into the breach I went… with Ebony, repeating to myself the mantra ‘don’t give in she will know she can win’ 5 hrs later, she was still on the wrong side of the box, the rain was coming down and it was unsafe to try and load her on the wet rubber matting… so I gave in, feeling thoroughly down trodden, wanting to make an Ebony doll and stick pins in it… God all mighty I was trying, really trying to give her everything in my world, the home with me, stable, horsebox, love, attention and she was defying me and chucking it back in my face. Once again the tears fell.

There is a fantastic chap around these parts called David Micklam, He builds courses, teaches, and is an all round good horseman. I rang him up, and explained the situation… I expressed that under no circumstances could my mare be hit, she couldn’t deal with it. He agreed to come out, and did say to me that it may be that she just won’t tolerate/cant deal with you hitting her. He took one look at my mare and agreed with me… hitting my mare would be like taking a hammer to porcelain.
 
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As luck would have it, Ebonys recent dislike of lunging and lunge lines came in very handy, we corraled her, making a box out of 3 gates and the back of the trailer, and just guided her up there with the leadrope behind her… god, he made it look so easy!! We must have loaded her 30 times that day, and from that day on we parked at a hedge wherever we went and always kept a lunge line in the boot. It was a rare occasion when she would question loading, but if she did she only had to see that you had a lunge line and she would be in there like a shot ;) even after she lost her worries about lunging and lunge lines! After about a year, she never questioned boxing and would load perfectly even if she hadn’t seen a box for a year.

That winter Apollo came to live with us, and so did my cousin… Apollo was a gangly gypsy cob, the other horses that had been left behind by the previous owner had been taken away, and so Apollo came to us for company, loaned by the person who sold Ebs to me… his time with us was short lived, which was unfortunate, because I really liked that cob, he was cut and shut and gawky and had a wall eye… but such a kind heart, he taught my cousin to ride, and lorrae who was also living with us by then once forgot to double check his girth before a hack when my cousin was riding him, so he taught my cousin how to fall off, spectacularly, from canter. Unfortunately he spent many days tied up because he kept scaling the walls and trying to make it off down the road in search of his old home. So he went back to his owner.

With the loss of my grandmother, and the bequeathel off a small sum of money to my mother, my sister and my mother, both having enjoyed horses in the past now had their passion rekindled by Ebony, she was not just my horse, she was one of the family, everyone had seen her journey and my fear that she would never be ridden had been shared by them. As I said earlier, mine was not a particularly horsey family, in the sense that I was the first person to own and care for a horse, but both my sister and mother, had years before ridden suddenly there were two more horses at our home, the three that had been left behind by the previous owners had long since gone, my sister losing the one she had been given so it was fantastic to have two more mares at the yard. One was a beautiful shire, 13 years old, a gentle matriarch for my sister, and a gypsy cob for my mother unbroken and previously badly treated. My mother only ever rode annie twice, but both times she was overwhelmed and so happy, unfortunately my mothers back became very bad and continuing to ride just wasn’t possible. Still, we kept her for a few years hunted and showed her before finding her a fantastic owner. Suddenly the 3 horse we had became four with the arrival of Sprite, lorraes little welsh b and then five, with the arrival of her new unbroken warmblood ollie! The herd just kept growing, although it became apparent, that there was one definite boss, and her name was queen bee. Annie did the ‘bullying and booting’ she was the muscle, but she deferred to ebony. At a later point in the story, I acquired three more, and you could feed all of these individually within their field. That was contentment :D

So, that winter, ebony and I, we hacked when we could and started hunting, Annie went off to boot camp and Lorrae started to help me exercise her, we hunted together, no jumping but just four girls having a lot of fun. I got a new job, I wanted some time out and decided to work at a local stud, I got to hack ebony to and from work everyday which kept her fit, was a lovely experience for me and more importantly it was during one of these hacks that ebony had her ‘lightbulb’ moment, suddenly, something felt wrong, so right, but so wrong because for a couple of years now I had been riding her and never felt this… she just started to ‘grow’ one minute Im riding Ebony, the next it feels like Im riding a 17hh horse… this was later lovingly referred to as the ‘power-house’ Ebony had finally found her outline, and from that day forward she found it everytime we hacked or schooled.
 
Sometimes you read something and it touches you in a way you cannot express, I look forward to the next installment thank you so much for sharing your amazing story.
 
I've only just found this thread and it's enthralling!
So much emotion, love and frustration, comes through in your posts - she must have been such an amazing character. Please keep the instalments coming, and you must definitely contact a publisher to make this into a book.
 
The following spring saw the dawn of a new era, Lorrae, having settled her personal issues moved back home and Ollie and Sprite left the fold… never far away and always in touch, we started to go to shows together and really enjoy ourselves. My cousin had also settled her personal issues and had since moved in with her partner. Over the winter I had been working at the stud, this didn’t last long because what the owners knew about horses and the management of mares foals and stallions could be put on the back of a postage stamp… a really small postage stamp. But during my time there, I met a chap who also worked there, we became good friends, nothing untoward, just good friends… one day he turns up at work looking pretty ashen, he tells me that his daughter is on her way to live with him with her little girl. He had only seen his daughter once in 17 years, since he split with her mum that was at his wedding the year before. Well, his daughter is horse mad, having worked in the racing industry before she had her daughter, so she comes up to the yard. There are times when you meet someone and you just know, there is just this magnet that holds you two together, that is what we have, we became the best of friends at that very moment I think and two weeks later she and her daughter were living with me in my caravan. We had such amazingly fun times, and she and her daughter did a lot of bonding and emotional healing whilst they were there. We had midnight shopping expeditions on payday to tesco, my mum babysitting we would toddle off and wait for our cash to go into our accounts. Her daughter cut the hair off the kittens and smothered herself in lip balm… K cried, broke down, and healed a little bit more each time. K, is a lover of spiders (the only reason I think she is an idiot) and she refused to remove a spider from our bath… for a week! I had to have a bath at the big house until I told her ‘chuck it or I drown it in scalding water’ it bit her! :D:D:D She eventually met Lorraes brother and the rest is history, wedding bells and children. At a later date she taught Annie to jump, we went to scorrier and practiced on the xc course, I will never forget Ks face, the woman who loved only TB’s sat on the back of a full on Gypsy cob, screaming ‘Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy’ as she went up the steps on the xc course, cheeks flushed and a huge grin on her face, her new found man watching and filming her in her element.

That spring the competing started in earnest. We shared transport with Lorrae and Ollie, being picked up by her husband en route. We kept it small, more of the little shows, working hunter, in hand showing and showjumping. We had a ‘mixed bag’ of it that year to say the least:

Showing in hand: Best Grass Kept…
As you may or may not have gathered by now, Ebony was not one for doing things as requested, she was a free spirit, a strumpet and a diva, she was her own little bundle of frustration and that didn’t bode well for showing. At the first show, we tried showing under saddle but she just wouldn’t stand still, so for the purpose of ‘experience’ and ‘training’ we entered into ‘Best Grass Kept in-hand’. It is not often that a judge feels the force of the lash of my tongue, but that day she did. So, it is the beginning of the season and I take a gleaming TB x who had wintered out all winter, coat shining, looking drop dead (in a good way) you can see her ribs, but only the slightest shadow. In the ring with us are the fluffy, fat and scurfy brigade, you know the sort… And we are pulled up last. I am not overly worried because my mission, to get ebony to stand still and calm in a line up has been thoroughly accomplished and I am very proud of her, but I am also upset for her, she has come last. So I stop the judge and ask why. Her response was the good old ‘I’d like to see her with a little bit more weight on’ she says smiling sweetly… She wasn’t smiling so sweetly by the time I left the ring, having mentioned words like laminitis and overgrown hooves on the competition and glasses.


Show Jumping. Gwenapp
Well, showjumping was interesting, and Ebony soon became well known, understood and loved at Gwenapp. She was not so confident away from home and we always went into the mini stakes first, and she always had some kind of problem at every jump going around. At this show they keep the course the same and just raise the height for the next class, and for a while, we would get the smug looks from the competitions when we entered the next round the ‘she’s no good and no competition’ looks, but we knew better, once Ebs had done it once, she dominates it. And we wiped the floor with them, and it was so much fun. We once took such a sharp route round from one jump to the next and when lorrae pointed out I could have taken a much smoother route, I pointed out that my brakes failed when I got in the ring and that I would not have been able to stop her locking onto another jump and taking it… she was that on fire where jumping was concerned.

Working Hunter
By this time Ollie and Lorrae were rocking and rolling, we were competing in the working hunter novice and our friend was helping the judge. We went in to jump, I was clear and Ollie and Lorrae had one refusal (which considering Lorraes nerves re jumping was fantastic) We then went in to the show ground to do our ‘show’. I cannot stress how much at this point in her life, jumping was Ebonys firecracker… you did not jump, then show her… that is red rag to a bull, showing in an arena with jumps, that she has just jumped… Epic fail! When we broke into our gallop along the longside, the judge muttered to my friend ‘is that controlled, no, I don’t think it is controlled!’ as we handbraked it around the corner managing god only know how to stay inside the ring and slow down. You know those moments on TV where someone is caught behind the bike sheds with someone they shouldn’t be and they come out straightening their clothes and their hair, lipstick smudged trying for all the world to look like they were just looking for a lost earring and nothing is wrong, but it so obviously is… well that was me :D but Ebony, oh you could not be mad or frustrated with her, she was buzzing and happy and so proud, thinking she had done me proud. Bless poor lorrae who put on a fantastic show with her young boy, she was the only one to have a refusal so we beat her.

Showjumping. Frogpool
Towards the end of the season we were truly flying, the progress we had made was amazing. Ebony no longer needed to practice over mini stakes, she was way more confident. We took it up a gear and went further afield, we were doing so well, that I backed off with my leg, had we made it over the jump… it would have been a box jump of that I am positive, but it was the first Blue jump we had encountered (I mean really blue) a big wall, and we didn’t make it over, but I didn’t hit the ground. I called it a day, took the practice jump a couple of times and went home and made a blue wall. We went off to some other shows and everything was fine.

Autumn came, and with it came the XC season, We did Gwenapp, and scorrier, I got ditched at scorrier because madam had only ever been there practicing and the flags were bad enough but when we rode through a gate and saw a human and a dog, well, it was all too much and there was me on my butt with my beautiful, sharp, silly mare gazing down at me like I had obviously done something wrong because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be! The second time at scorrier, we went clear, just as we had at Gwenapp but the best of it was that we were galloping up to the water jump… ebony hated water but had practiced this many a time so we should have been ok, but theres this young chestnut horse backing off and posing a right stubborn argument to its owner, the steward is heard by me to say ‘back off take a lead from this one’ Instantly I inwardly groan… there is no way in hell that Ebony will take the water jump after seeing another horse not want to go in, she just isn’t like that. Suddenly, my horse steps up a gear, surging forward with knew intent, she knows what to do and it is her job to show the young’un the ropes. I can feel her saying follow me, this is a since, see how I do it and suddenly, my beautiful and inexperienced darling mare is being the teacher.
 
We plan one more trip out before calling competing a day, a fantastic and impressively built course at Porth Valley, Slightly more challenging but no higher, this should be the perfect end to a season during which my mare has come so far and excelled herself, and I know in every sense that we are ready, her confidence, technique and ability is there. Lorrae works herself up to doing it too with Ollie, this is a huge step for her, and we decide since it’s a new course we will only do the 2”6 course, We walk, memorise, and turn up on the day. Suited and booted we mount and prepare to warm up, Ebony, as ever these days is feeling exceptional, she knows her job and her job is jumping and going swiftly… she knows whats coming and can’t wait. The right amount of tension is there, the anticipation without her boiling over into some foaming fury, I don’t quite know how but we have it all nailed. Warmed up on the flat we take the practice jump a couple of times, surprisingly it is not a wing and poles but a proper xc jump set aside for the purpose of warm up…


Then it happens, everything unravels, our happy little bubble is burst… Ebony hits the jump, it’s a log, it doesn’t give, it just stays there… she doesn’t falter, or stumble or fall, but she hits it and it doesn’t give, and it hurts, more than normal and she isn’t used to jumps not giving. I try with earnest to get her back over it, and I manage it, but the damage is done, her confidence is knocked. At this point I am thinking that because she jumped it, we are ok, that she will be ok and that she may just jump bigger this time. We get into the starting gate and are off, its like riding her a year ago all over again, she is hollow, she barely breaks into canter, preferring instead to trot to the jump, backing off for all she is worth, she refuses the first time, takes it a second, but the next jump, no matter how easy it is is just not going to happen…and we retire, my fragile little girl is broken, and it is another hurdle we will have to overcome, more confidence to build, more lessons to learn, at least we have all winter. But I don’t have long because as I am riding back towards the start/finish. Lorrae has bottled it and is waving her bib in the air telling me to give Ebs to her and get on Ollie… I have never sat on Ollie and this is his first ever xc course, but I dutifully do so and I barely have the bib on and my bum in the seat and I am off, someone else has my mare and her husband is going off to inform the stewards of the swop! Oh christ, I am on an alien horse who has never been xc before… apparently everywhere around all people could hear was me screaming ‘Good Boy Ollie! Good Boy!!!’ as he pulled a blinder and came around clear. So very proud of myself that day and pleased as punch for Lorrae, but I remember looking our of the window on the way home and feeling once again a bit of despair. Over the years there were many times when I considered that I wasn’t cut out to ride such a sharp haughty mare as ebony, but then I also knew that I would never forgive myself if she ended up hurt and broken because she ended up down the road in the wrong hands, with unsympathetic owners or someone who didn’t understand her. I understood her, but my god, it was a challenge owning her and fixing her issues as and when they decided to crop up and sometimes I didn’t feel like I had the energy and sometimes I didn’t feel I had the knowledge and experience, but I knew I loved her and would drive myself into the ground for her. I knew enough of Ebony to know when I was sat in that car, that that ‘solid’ practice jump had just opened up another can of worms for me to deal with, and just the thought of it made me weary.

Within days, I knew what my tactic must be, I had to get her out in the thick of it, my spindly legged dainty mare, had to become a die hard hunter, for real. She had to learn to jump out in the thick of it…
 
Thank you to everyone who is reading and enjoying or has commented on the thread. I am so glad you are enjoying this story of me and my beautiful mare... It is fantastic to be able to share it with you all and I just wish she had not been taken from me so soon
 
Mrs C said:
Welcome back QB and thanks again for sharing. It sounds like you had a wonderful relationship xx
Click to expand...

Thank you Mrs C, yes a wonderful relationship but certainly the most challenging one, but isn't that always the way with the one. In any context the one is someone who can and does make you feel every kind of emotion possible, to extremes sometimes... but they are the ones who make you feel whole, or rather less complete when you contemplate or experience their loss.
 
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