When Sophie Met Darcy Day

‘I come to you for my fix of antibodies before the return to London life,’ he laughed, but I noticed when I served dinner later that he stared long and hard at his plate before picking up a fork.

Our breeding programme got off to a good start, and I was involved in every aspect of the foals’ upbringing. Often I was the one to check their position when the mare went into labour; one foreleg should emerge first, then the other, then the muzzle. I’d have to make sure the newborn foal could stretch up and reach its mother’s teats to get antibody-containing colostrum within the first few hours. And I’d be there for the first steps outdoors and all the major milestones of its first year of life. I hated letting them go when Newmarket sales came around. They were my babies. It was hard to hand over the responsibility to someone else, but that had been the plan. We hoped that out of our very small breeding operation we might achieve a winner or two. If they did well, that would be great, but if they didn’t we would stop. Whatever happened, we felt we had a responsibility for any life we brought into the world.

Neither Michael nor I are the kind of people who are driven to make a fortune, and it’s just as well. Belief in what we are doing has always been of primary importance, and we tend to make decisions instinctively rather than being guided by commercial logic. We both have strengths that complement the other, and together we usually seem to make the right decisions. But the day Michael went to Ascot sales on his own, with the idea of picking up another one or two well-bred mares, I should have had an inkling that the best-laid plans can go awry. He ended up coming home not with some mares but with a discarded gelding, an ex-hurdler that had never been particularly successful on the racecourse and would have been heading for the abattoir had Michael not stepped in.

‘It’s one thing raising your hand by mistake at a hen sale,’ I said caustically, ‘but to raise it deliberately at a horse sale is something else again.’

‘You would have done the same,’ he told me. ‘Just look at him.’

He was right. I would have.

Charlie was a sad-looking horse, so thin that his backbone was sticking out and we could count all his ribs, and he had the sour smell that we were to learn is characteristic of malnourished animals. What made me angriest when I looked closely was that someone had clipped him to try to smarten him up for the sale, and it must have been horribly uncomfortable for that poor horse to feel clippers running all over his sticking-out bones. It was shameful. We put some spare duvets under his rug to keep him warm, gave him a course of wormers, had him checked out by the vet and fed him carefully. Within three months of receiving this kind of care, he was a completely different horse. He was bay with white socks, good bones and a solid, dependable character. We found he was well trained and once he was healthy enough to be taken out hacking, he turned out to be a lovely horse to ride.

The transformation from the sorry creature Michael had brought home with him to this healthy, intelligent, good-natured animal was dramatic and it made us both furious to think that this young horse – only five years old – would have had no chance of a future. The meat man had actually been bidding against Michael in the auction. Within nine months we had found Charlie a new home where he settled in happily.

The last thing you should do as a breeder is take on ‘charity cases’ that drain your precious resources without contributing to the balance sheet. We kept selling our yearlings, but at the same time we could never walk away from a horse in need. We just didn’t have it in us.

One day we went to buy a new trailer at a farm that was miles from anywhere. In a field nearby, we could see three horses standing around looking dejected. One in particular looked up at us hopefully and within seconds Michael had leapt the fence to go and have a closer look.

‘Uh-oh, this is not good,’ I thought to myself. And I was right. The upshot was that the trailer wasn’t empty when we drove home later that day.

Red was a five-year-old stallion from a leading blood-line and although he wasn’t in terrible condition, he was unsettled because he had been put in a field with some mares and his instinct was to keep trying to mount them. This gave us a problem, of course, because where would we keep him that he wouldn’t be bothered by all our mares? Fortunately I found a knowledgeable horse-woman, Sandra, who lived near us and was happy to let him stay in one of her stables. After a veterinary check-up and a few weeks of intensive care, we found he was a happy and quite beautiful horse, with a deep red sheen to his coat. He didn’t like being turned out into a field for any length of time or he would panic, but he was perfect for our mares, behaved like a true gent around them, and did his job when required.

The next horse we ‘rescued’ was one that I found while I was out riding Chic. As we rode through a semi-deserted, dilapidated farmyard, Chic became uncharacteristically jumpy and unsettled, as if she knew something I didn’t. An instinct made me decide to have a peek inside a closed cob barn, and a dreadful sight met my eyes: a skinny chestnut mare was lying on a filthy bed, with some mouldy old hay in the corner beside a bucket of stale, greasy water. She had dark filthy patches on her sides from lying in her own droppings and she appeared listless, with her eyes closed, even when I spoke to her.

I had a lump in my throat as I stroked her and whispered words of comfort. It was hard to leave her there, but she obviously belonged to someone and I knew I couldn’t just steal her. Choked with emotion, I went home and told Michael about her, and within the day we’d tracked down the owner and agreed a deal for the horse, which was named Betty. I went back to the barn, slipped a bridle over her head and led her outside into the sunshine. She blinked hard, unaccustomed to the light, but let me lead her on the four-mile walk home, stopping every now and then to munch on some grass by the roadside. We put her in a stable next to Chic with a deep straw bed, and I could tell she was content by the way she settled down and closed her eyes. She knew she was safe.

It was gratifying how quickly horses transformed when they got decent care, turning from depressed, unhealthy animals into lively, happy characters in a short space of time. The more horses we rescued, though, the greater the financial burden on Michael and me. To try to make ends meet, I took a job as a chef at a nearby college, making lunch and tea for the students, and my days became completely dominated with producing food for animals and humans. I got up at five to do the animals first, then made my way to the college by seven. I’d cook until lunchtime then slip home for a few hours to do the housework and chores on the farm. At four I’d feed the horses once more, then return to the college at five to make tea for the students. Then when I got home at seven in the evening, I would tuck up the horses for the night and fall into my own bed not long after. It wasn’t ideal by any means.

Despite this extra income, we couldn’t afford to heat the whole house over the winter so we started living in our bedroom, where there was a sweet little Victorian fireplace in which we could burn coal and logs. We moved the television up there and were quite comfortable, except for the huge shock to the system when we had to use the loo or go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As soon as I left the bedroom, the Arctic air chilled me to the bone, and it took ages to get warm again afterwards.

It wasn’t long before we felt that we were perhaps outstaying our welcome on that country estate. Despite our best efforts, the horses had been nibbling at the bark of a few of the trees on the parkland, which wasn’t, understandably, appreciated by the owners. We also worried about the horses being out in the fields when there was farm machinery trundling past and umpteen different people going about their business. We noticed an advertisement in the local paper for the lease of a farm near where we had rescued Betty and when we enquired we found that it was just about affordable, because of the general dilapidation of the property. In the spring of 1995, we packed up lock, stock and barrel and moved to our new home, which went by the name of Greatwood.

Greatwood Farm was set in a steep wooded valley leading down to the River Torridge, and the farmhouse was built back into the hillside. The house was damp and unloved, with peeling wallpaper and an indescribably awful bathroom, but the farmyard was stunning, with plenty of barns, outbuildings and meadows. The tall grassy banks separating the fields were covered in primroses when we arrived, and wildflowers poked out between the cobblestones in the paths. Opposite the farmhouse, a granite track led down to some watermeadows along the riverside and in summer, when the water levels were low enough, there was a ford where we could ride across to the other side. Nothing had been touched for what seemed like hundreds of years, and to us it was idyllic.

The only drawback to Greatwood was that it was on an estate where they ran a commercial pheasant shoot, but the estate owners assured us that they would always give us plenty of advance warning when a shoot was taking place so we could take the horses indoors. We didn’t want to risk them panicking and injuring themselves at the sound of gunshots.

Meanwhile our collection of horses kept growing. We were joined by Fasci, a pony with a dark coat and patchy mane, who we had seen grazing on her own in a field nearby, where she was looked after by an elderly gentleman called Peter. I never like seeing horses on their own, because they are herd animals, so I got into conversation with Peter and after a while I tentatively suggested that maybe Fasci would enjoy the company of coming to board with our lot. He agreed that she could join us, and what’s more, Peter came onboard as well, spending that summer helping us to convert the outbuildings into stables and feed sheds to house our growing menagerie in the coming winter.

We now had enough room for Red, the stallion, to come back and stay with us, and I became determined to find a pal for him to stable with. Horses aren’t usually happy without companionship. It would have to be a small gelding, I decided, with sufficient character to withstand any amorous advances from the lively Red. As luck would have it, I heard about a miniature Shetland pony called Toffee that needed a home. Would Red let a pony share his stable? It wasn’t a conventional pairing and it was with a certain amount of apprehension that we introduced them.

We were pretty confident that Red wouldn’t attack Toffee outright, but nevertheless we stood nervously by with head collars, ready to jump to the rescue if needed. For ten seconds there was silence, then Red let out a roar and tried to scoop Toffee up under his front legs. We were just about to dive in and separate them when Toffee turned, kicked out at Red with both hind legs, then began to explore the surroundings. Instantly Red’s body language changed, and he approached Toffee again with a little more respect and wariness. Toffee ignored his advances, and was clearly quite unfazed by the whole encounter, despite the fact that he was only 28 inches tall, while Red is a thundering Thoroughbred stallion of 16.2 hands (equivalent to 64.8 inches, so more than double Toffee’s height).

We continued to watch for several hours in case the mood turned nasty. Red was fascinated by Toffee now but kept a safe distance from those flying hind feet. As night drew in we decided we should separate them so we could get some sleep without worrying. We put a head collar on Toffee and started to lead him out of the door, and suddenly all hell let loose. Red threw himself around the stable, roaring and screaming, distraught at being separated from his new companion. There was nothing for it. We had to bring Toffee back and I spent a long, uncomfortable night on top of a raised platform at one end of the barn, from where I kept watch on the two of them as they snoozed down below.

The next day, when we turned them out in the field together, Red hurtled round chasing after Toffee but he was met with the same calm indignation as before and he retired sheepishly. They were getting used to each other, though, and it wasn’t long before they were firm friends. In fact, Red often started panicking if Toffee wasn’t in sight for some reason. Within a week they were inseparable.

It was the first instance of my ‘matchmaking’ at Great-wood but by no means the last. Stabling the right horses together made our jobs so much easier that it became one of the most important, and fascinating, of the challenges we faced. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and it wasn’t always the obvious matches that worked best.

Betty initially found the move to Greatwood disturbing, because she obviously remembered the bad experiences she’d had in that part of Devon. As we unloaded her from the trailer, she became wide-eyed, started snorting and shook from head to hoof. Thankfully, she had had time to get used to the other horses, and was especially close to Chic, a particularly calm mare, so she took the lead from her.

We’d sold the lambs but we still had our hands full tending the horses, goats, chickens and dogs, so we were more than happy when the local Sunday school started sending children to help us out at weekends. I’ve never been a kiddie-oriented person. I expect them to behave like mini-adults and treat them that way. Despite having five of them, Michael is the same. But the children who came to help at Greatwood were a terrific bunch, who were very helpful to us in mucking out, collecting eggs, sweeping the yard, grooming horses, and all sorts of other tasks. They never misbehaved because there was a certain healthy fear of the huge racehorses clopping around. They paid attention to instructions and were very careful whenever they were in the vicinity of the animals.

I was fascinated by the way the animals responded to children. Even the stroppiest of our horses, such as Jelly and Red, would greet them by lowering their noses so that the child could reach up to give them a stroke. They were careful not to stomp around when a child was in their stable, and stood still when they were being groomed. If only they’d done the same for me, life would have been a lot easier.

Several times Michael and I stood back and marvelled about how calm and gentle they were with children around.

‘Shame they’re only here at the weekends,’ I said, without any idea how prescient the remark would be.

Chapter 3

Flat Broke

During those first years in Greatwood we had about twenty horses to keep, along with goats, dogs and chickens, and our money was dwindling fast. I took a part-time job as a dinner lady at the local school, where I was shocked to find they never cooked any fresh produce – it was all ready-made meals straight from the freezer. Years before Jamie Oliver came on the scene, I battled the system and managed to get some local suppliers to deliver seasonal fruit and veg for the children, although it didn’t do me any favours with my supervisors.

My paltry earnings weren’t enough to keep us afloat, though, and gradually Michael and I began to sell off any possessions that could raise money. We got to know an antique dealer in Taunton who bought some pieces from us, including a gold bracelet my grandma had given me just before she died, and Michael’s father’s watch – both of which were very hard to part with. Even the dealer had tears in his eyes as we handed them over.

We had some inherited family silver and Michael decided to travel up to London in the hope of getting a better price for it there. He set off on the train, clutching a large holdall full of silver salvers, bowls and goblets, and made his way to a smart shop in Bond Street that we’d read about in the newspapers. He straightened his tie and brushed down his collar before walking in and placing the holdall on a counter.

‘Are you interested in buying some silver?’ he asked, unwrapping a couple of the items on top.

‘Plate,’ the man said, after a quick glance.

‘Pardon?’

‘They’re silver plate. Not solid silver.’ He picked them up and turned them over. ‘Not inscribed either. They’d have been worth more if they were.’

He made an offer for the lot that was only a fraction of what we’d thought they were worth, but with the rent overdue, and having come all that way, Michael felt he had no choice but to accept.

We didn’t tell our families about the trouble we were having but they must have realised, because every time they visited us another antique chair would be missing from the sitting room or there would be a rectangular space on the wall where a picture used to hang. My father dealt with the problem in a typical brusque farmer’s style: he gave us forty of his ewes and bought us a couple of Sussex rams to go with them.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said doubtfully.

He meant well, but it was then that our nightmare with sheep began. The soft, wet ground at Greatwood meant they kept getting sores and infections in their feet and needed to be rounded up daily for treatment. Some silly blighter would get its head stuck in a fence the minute you turned your back, while another would roll over and be unable to get up again. The rams were even worse. As soon as we set foot in their field they would charge at us full pelt and we had to hurl ourselves out of the way at the last minute to avoid being sent flying. Despite being a farmer’s daughter, I’d had no idea how high-maintenance sheep were. They really did seem to have a death wish, getting themselves into life-threatening situations on a daily basis.

The next money-making scheme was suggested by a chap called Stan in the local pub, who persuaded us to buy thirty goslings from the market, raise them, and sell them just before Christmas. We put them in a field to graze, not realising that they would have to be brought indoors and fattened to get them to the size customers expect of their Christmas roast. When I eventually tried to feed them up, too late in the day, they turned up their beaks and refused to eat anything at all. I had to cancel our Christmas orders and eventually passed most of them on to the Goose Rescue Centre, apart from five that we kept.

Amongst those five was Horrible Horace, a deformed goose my brother had dumped on us. Horace may have been crooked and bent, but his disability didn’t stop him flying at any children who came nearby. He thought he was a dog and would rush up to greet visitors, honk whenever the dogs barked and accompany us on walks. All our attempts to pass Horace on to other people failed, so we were stuck with yet another difficult, eccentric, bloody-minded animal to care for.

As if our financial troubles weren’t enough, word began to spread that we were prepared to step in and help with sick, temperamental or abandoned ex-racehorses. It seemed there were lots of people out there desperately trying to find a home for horses that were too old, past their prime or that hadn’t ever fulfilled their potential. Thoroughbreds need experienced handlers because many of them are unused to being ridden by anyone but a professional jockey and, what’s more, they are expensive to keep. Many of them need to be reschooled if they are ever to have a second career, but this took time, money and expertise.

Michael and I couldn’t possibly accommodate every single horse that was offered to us, but we spent hours on the telephone giving advice and trying to find potential owners for each animal, because the alternative was too awful to contemplate. For such beautiful, intelligent animals to be discarded simply because they couldn’t run fast enough was not morally acceptable.

As a farmer’s daughter I know there are hard realities to be faced in livestock breeding. My blunt Yorkshire father once said, ‘The very word “livestock” implies “deadstock” and if you can’t handle it, you’d better do something else with your life.’ But my heart always melted when a seriously ill or badly treated horse was brought to us. I could never turn them away.

In the first year at Greatwood, there was a mare called Kay whose owner hadn’t been able to afford proper medical care for her. Kay was in a lot of pain when she came to us and kept trying to kick up at her stomach. The owner said she’d tried to train her out of kicking herself but to no avail. But why was she doing it? What was the problem? I called the vet, who detected a sizeable growth in her stomach, and told me that sadly it was inoperable. There was nothing he could do. It was a horrible night, with rain lashing down and gale-force winds ripping around the barn. We had no alternative but to have Kay put down, with the other horses standing round watching. There was a collective whinny as she fell to the floor and a few came over to sniff her but most carried on eating their hay. They didn’t know her, so weren’t directly affected. As we left the barn, I felt unutterably sad for that poor horse, who’d obviously been suffering for some time. Vets’ bills are expensive. That’s why we had to be sure that when we rehomed horses, we only did so with people who could afford to keep them properly. We couldn’t risk any horses that passed through our hands ending up like Kay, or Betty, or Charlie.

Our own financial situation went from bad to worse. Each new bill was greeted with much head-scratching and the scribbling of frantic sums on the backs of envelopes, and every month rent day loomed like a sick headache. How had we got ourselves into such a pickle? The inheritance from Michael’s aunt and the money from the sale of our house had long gone, and we had very few, tiny sources of income. Then one day, I got a phone call that gave us a glimmer of hope.

‘My name’s Vivien McIrvine,’ the voice said. ‘I’m Vice President of the International League for the Protection of Horses. I’ve been hearing a lot about you and everything you are trying to do for racehorses and I wanted to tell you that I’m full of admiration for the work you’re doing.’

‘Thank you. That’s good to hear. But I’m afraid it’s just a drop in the ocean.’

We chatted for a while about the horses we had at that time, the ones looking for new homes and the ones we’d managed to rehome already, then she got to the purpose of her call.

‘The work you are doing with racehorse welfare is invaluable and rare. You must carry on and, as I see it, the only way that you can do that is if you put it on a firm footing and become a registered charity.’

Michael and I had already been considering this option but the call from an icon of horse welfare pushed us into thinking about it more seriously. It was a great compliment to hear of her admiration for our work and for a few days afterwards we mulled it all over. We knew there was a chance our application wouldn’t be successful anyway, but if it were, we’d become accountable to the charity commissioners and would have to be much more professional about the way we managed what had been, until then, an instinctive kind of operation. But we really had no choice. We had already become heavily involved in not-for-profit work on behalf of ex-racehorses by funding it all ourselves, but we couldn’t go on like that because our funds were rapidly evaporating and we would have become insolvent. That would have brought an end to our work and most certainly an end to the lives of the horses in our care.

Decision made, we started the lengthy process of applying to be a charity, which initially involved filling out an extraordinary number of forms. We were warned that the granting of charitable status could take a while – always assuming our application was approved – but it felt like a step in the right direction.

We had decided some months before this to stop breeding horses. We had only bred a dozen or so before we realised there were too many being bred that didn’t ever reach the race course, either because they weren’t fast enough or for some other reason. There was no organisation in place to care for these unwanted horses and, at that time, no one was encouraging ordinary horse owners to take on a Thoroughbred. By breeding horses, we were contributing to the problem and as soon as we became aware of this, we stopped.