We had a Lady come to the farm to look at Smuggler, who we are selling. We had him gelded last week, as most people don’t want Colts or Stallions as they believe that they can be a bit of a handful, especially if there are Fillies or Mares in the vicinity. I have always had entire Horses and have never seen them as a problem.
When I lived in London I had two Friesian Stallions, Jack and Sargent that we hired out to undertakers with our Horse Drawn Hearse for funerals. They were never a problem. They came to Denbury when we first moved here. They were wasted being out in the fields all day, when they had been trained for the Carriages Driving. It was not fair on the Horses not to be doing what they had been trained to do, and did enjoy. How do I know that, when they were working they were real show offs. We entered them into an International Horse Show at Windsor. If my memory serves me right it was the Royal International, it was the first and only one that we did with them. They were pulling a Horse Drawn delivery vehicle that I owned. We came second in the class, one of the Judges came up to us after the show and told us that the winner, was the winner only because of his previous form and that we should have one the class. It didn’t make me feel any better for not winning.
We have a bridle path that goes through the farm, some of the riders that come through the farm on their Horses are very inconsiderate, they gallop through as if they were riding on their own land, flattening the hay grass and digging the grass up and scattering livestock. If I catch them galloping, believe me they don’t come through again in a hurry. I didn’t do it on purpose, I really didn’t think when I started to let the Friesian Stallions have the run of the farm once the hay was cut. I never saw it, but by all accounts when any riders came through the farm, Jack and Sargent would join them. Being Stallions they would have been a bit frisky and would have found it a lot of fun. The rider didn’t, none came through farm when they were here, even now years later we don’t get many coming through.
Forget what I think of hunting, but the most inconsiderate Horse riders that I have experienced are from the hunts. We had to tell them that they were not welcome at Denbury. They charged around were ever they wanted to and what ever the condition of the ground, being that most of the hunting season was in the Autumn and Winter the ground is obviously wet and the riders would churned the ground up to acceptable levels. On one occasion they caused one of our Ostriches to die, it was spooked by the hunt riders and ran into a fence breaking its leg. We were compensated for the loss, but they were not that concerned as to the damage they had done.