The Grand National

I learnt to ride at nine years old; I had my first horse at fifteen years old. She was young, unschooled and as green as the grass she ate. She never changed. She gave me the love of my life when I put her in foal to a friend’s Arab stallion. Sarbo arrived, the ugliest thing I had ever seen but he became my soul mate. His mother had to be shot at the age of 21 and I was devastated. Sarbo grieved so badly that the vet told me to give up hope and have him shot too as he literally lay down and refused to get up, eat or drink. I didn’t. I kneeled every two hours, whilst 8 months pregnant, day and night for 48 hours, syringing an obscure concoction of kaolin, morphine and electrolytes into him. I talked to him, I begged him to live. I prayed to any god that may be listening not to take him away from me and he lived, thankfully.

I loved him with all my heart. When he was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease I knew, at 16 years old, his end was near. He had lost his sparkle, he was always pleased to see me but everything else just wasn’t ‘doing it’ for him. I could keep him alive with drugs but it was January and he had dreadful laminitis and was grossly overweight despite living outside and getting no ‘hard’ feed, other than a bit of hay. Come the Spring he would have had to have been stabled and kept on the tiniest patch of grass. That would have broken his spirit and mine. He was Arab, he loved to gallop across the field with his tail arched over his back and he would never be able to do that again.

On a Monday morning in January my husband went to work and unbeknown to him I rang round trying to find someone to shoot my horse. I rang my husband and told him. He refused to let me deal with it myself and I was too distraught to argue. The huntsman arrived, he was a small, calm and very, very gentle man. He said ‘Hello’ to my horse with his ‘gun’ tucked into the back of his waistband (so the horse couldn’t see it) stroked his head and with a slight of hand any card player would have been proud of, tucked Sarbo's forelock behind the headband of his head collar. Then I was told to leave, my husband held the lead rope and I stood in the road out of view. The crack came cutting through the air. Birds stopped singing and for an eternity the village was silent. My hands went from covering my eyes to covering my ears and back again and again and again and at the same time I spun in circles trying to escape the sound. Then I ran. I ran to my horse now lying on the ground, a trickle of blood running from one nostril and a vein slowly pumping in his neck as his heart ground to halt. My husband shouted at me to stop and I heard a voice say, ‘let her go, its ok’. I fell to my knees, lifted my precious Sarbo’s head and rested it on my knees. ‘Is he dead’ I whispered. The huntsman looked at me and nodded. I heard the huntsman saying to my husband ‘now you need to leave because getting him into lorry will have no dignity attached to it’. My husband picked me up and I turned my back on Sarbo. I vaguely remember being half carried, half dragged up to the house, my boots were removed and my husband ran me a bath and I sank into it and tried to wash away the utter misery that was literally, making my heart ache.

Horses have been in my life as long as I can remember. I love the smell of them, the sight of them, and the early mornings. I have galloped across fields; I have galloped across the beach and sat on my old mare as she played in the sea. I have seen the sun rise on the coldest of days when the only heat was from my horse’s nostrils as I put his outside rug on. I am no different to anyone else who owns, works with or trains horses. So when people call for an end to the Grand National on the grounds of cruelty, it insults those people who work with horses. I can assure you there is utter misery when anything happens to their precious animals. On TV you only see the bright dresses of the lady owners, the colours of the silks the jockeys wear, the shine that has been put on the horses coat by hours and hours of brushing using a brush so soft you would think it wouldn’t brush a baby’s hair. The owners, trainers and grooms dedicate their lives to caring for their horses and are fortunate to have made this way of life how they earn their living. Horses fill our days from early morning to last thing at night, they touch our spirit and they wind themselves around our soul. Racing isn’t cruel; no horse will do anything it doesn’t want to do. Any death of a horse is tragic. I should know and whilst I accept it, I can never truly live with it. That is a life with horses, it is not misplaced sentiment, just a pure, unadulterated love of a way of life and the magnificent animals it involves