It’s an open letter to my horse. Dartmoor. Some days his nervous antics are funny, and others – like Friday – he makes me want to cry. I would never sell him because I can’t be sure that someone else will be able to give him the patience he requires. Things could get messy if they don’t – the accident I spoke about was a number of years ago, when I pressurized him to hard to perform a certain movement, and he reared up onto his hind legs, lost his balance and fell over backwards onto me. I needed 6 weeks of physio, he hurt his jaw and wouldn’t eat for weeks which enabled us to spot the bigger problem: he lost enough weight that we could see the break in his rib through his skin. The vet didn’t pick it up when we were trying to figure out what was upsetting this horse so much that he wouldn’t move at all if he could help it. Like I said in the story, it was my fault. I should have known better. But when things go wrong with this horse, they have the potential to go very wrong.

He’s had some sterling moments and achieved a fair amount of success. When he’s relaxed and confident he is truly brilliant. He has such an outstanding jumping technique. He jumps clean and carefully. He hates to touch a pole. But his confidence is so precarious: a couple of wrong moves on my part and it can take weeks for him to regain it. He’ll also never do a derby course. Banks, ditches and water-jumps scare the living daylights out of him. We once spent over an hour trying to get him to cross a ditch, 5 people. We eventually physically pushed him through. His mind had gone totally awol, his body was still with us, but he’s face had gone completely blank, you couldn’t get any reaction out of him.

All of this adds up to a competition show-jumper that isn’t really worth the effort you have to put in. Part of me wants to give up on him, but I can’t. I’m still trying to prove to all his detractors that he can make it in the higher grades, I want to reach the limits of his talent, not just the limits of his mind / confidence. He’s also too expensive to just have hanging around and like I said, I couldn’t sell him. So I keep working with him.

Occasionally I train a couple of other horses, as I am doing at the moment, and I’m struck by how much easier they are to work with. It makes me start to resent Dartmoor. I feel like after all this I deserve something easier. I have dreamt before that I had killed him (well, somebody had, I think it was me). When I saw his beautiful though lifeless face I sobbed and told him how sorry I was, but even in the dream I was secretly relieved that I could now move on. While I wouldn’t kill him in real life, I imagine that’s how I would feel if anything did happen to him: Terribly sad, but guilty relieved.

I found you 6 and a half years ago. You were young and enthusiastic. A blank canvas, if you will. We started out slowly, just getting to know each other and having some fun. I could tell you were an anxious type from the start, but it was something I thought you would grow out of as we built our confidence together.

Time passed, and we started getting more serious. People started to notice your raw talent. Not typically handsome, you have an elegance about you that is rarely found. Such talent from an unlikely source, we were itching to see how you would mature and grow.

Things ran quite smoothly for a while, but you never did truly settle down. As the going got tougher your anxiety increased. I didn’t know how to help you. Then we had the accident. I take full responsibility for that – I should have known better. I pushed you too far. We both took months to recover from the physical damage: your broken rib, my torn muscles, but those paled in comparison to the mental scars we probably still carry with us. Nursing you back to health helped heal the rift between us, slowly you started to trust me again, weather you have completely forgotten I’ll never know.

People still admired you and noticed how talented you were, but now they also started noticing your issues. You started to get a reputation as difficult. To be fair, there is nothing mean about you, but you just can’t ever relax. Others started to write you off as no good: all the talent in the world means nothing if you can’t realize that potential. I stood by you though. I was determined to help you realize your full potential. I did it as much for you as for me, I needed to prove to myself and the world that I wasn’t a quitter, that I wouldn’t bail out when the going got tough.

Over time I started to lower my expectations of you. I began to realize that whatever goes on in your head would always stand in the way of you being all that you could have been. Still, I was still dedicated to helping you achieve your best within these limitations.

Lately I’m not so sure. I need to start making other plans. I won’t abandon you ever, but there are things I want to achieve too, before I’m too old or life gets in the way. I love you like a child, a frightened and damaged child that I feel compelled to look after. I don’t resent that, but I also realize that things would be so much easier with another. One who is more confident, less afraid of the world around him. I feel like my time with you has earned me that. With you every victory is hard won, and there is joy in that, but nothing is ever easy.

When you are on your supplements life seems more manageable for you, but then there are days like today. Days when you are so wound up that even the air around you seemed to cause you distress, when I can do nothing to soothe you, and I grow frustrated with you, as well as with myself for not being able to help you deal with whatever it is that’s upsetting you.

I wanted to prove to everyone that they were wrong about you. I have spent so much time and energy defending you, I stand up for you because I’m afraid that if I don’t, no-one will. But then I have dreams where you die, and I’m sad, but I’m also relieved that I don’t have to do that anymore, I can stop swimming upstream, stop worrying about you, stop fighting, just relax for a while…