The Unconventional Yard

After a number of years in the horse wilderness I decided to look for my perfect horse. Not having the amount of money my dreams required, I purchased the first horse I looked at. Not always a good move but in this instance I was lucky. I was now the proud owner of my first horse in seven years and it was great!!

My new acquisition was a 13 year old Welsh cross thoroughbred (or so I was told), dark bay, 15.2 and just right for my limited meandering over the hills. You can see that I had no great urge to do anything high powered!

I was offered DIY livery at the yard of a local racehorse trainer which I welcomed. It was not quite as I expected a training yard to be but it was friendly enough. That is if you could get past the army of geese which patrolled the drive, dodged the Jack Russell and remembered not to leave anything outside your stable door which the ageing mongrel would bury at the far end of the duck pond!

The owner of the yard was good natured, if eccentric chap, called Charlie. He had had some success back in the seventies with a particularly good racehorse and lived permanently on those memories, firmly believing that one day it would come round again. His training methods therefore remained the same in the vain hope that his horses would start winning again.

He did have limited success with his horses on the track but I have to say that it was despite Charlie and not because of him. I often pondered, wondering what these horse may have achieved if they had gone to a real trainer.

Despite all of this I had a number of fun years at the yard and have remained friends with the family. You could not help remember Charlie with affection and I still recall some of the antics he got up to, although Charlie never saw it like this they were normal working practices.

I will never forget the day the Jockey Club sent two of its gentlemen to inspect Charlies facilities in order to renew his licence. Having safely negotiated the geese and dogs, the two men were greeted warmly by Charlie who ushered them into his huge kitchen. There he chatted enthusiastically while plying them with whisky.

Once suitably oiled Charlie took the two red faced men out into the yard to show him how many horses he had in training. He stood them at some distance from the stables, explaining that his horses were highly strung and temperamental with strangers. What they saw, through their haze of whisky, were ten highly tuned racehorses. What they were being shown were, six 'real' racehorses, a thoroughbred mare aged 16 who had just given birth to twins, an old point to pointer who had a bowed tendon like a banana, a three year old that hadn't been broken and my Welsh cross!! Suitably impressed they then made there way to look at Charlies chase fences.

Again they observed these from a distance, over a five bar gate. They could not go into the field as he had let his neighbour turn his bull out in there. Had they have looked closely they would have noticed that the bull was no where in sight (indeed, did not exist) and the gate was padlocked by the said neighbour to keep Charlie out. He had developed a habit of tuning his horses out to graze and claiming they had jumped the fence!

Charlie then ushered the two of them back to the kitchen where the gratefully accepted another whisky. Then, having had a brace of pheasant thrust into their hand they were escorted to their car and waved off the yard.

Charlie had his licence renewed and I moved to a less unconventional yard some time later. I often wonder how my old mare would have fared on the racetrack!

Pauline Goodman