This week, we continue our Prince’s Trust course and the students are all in the classroom, working with their dauntless leader, Taff Teague, so the horses get to have a rest up on the hill. Our yard manager, Duggie, goes up to check on them and sends back photographs of sunny ease.
Although the horses do get a break in the winter months, we have courses which run throughout the year. The programme we run with local schools continues and we’ll often have mentoring courses, so many of these equine stalwarts will have been doing yeoman’s work. Quite soon, we’ll be into our spring and summer season, where there will be back to back courses for the military – veterans and those still serving.
Rest – such a small, humble word – is therefore of vital importance. The horses give a great deal of themselves, and their minds and bodies need time for restoration and recuperation. We train our herd carefully so that they can deal with the questions asked of them, but nothing really does the trick like lying on a Scottish hill in the sunshine, without a single thing to do except to be their sweet selves.
At HorseBack, we think that rest is vital for humans too. In this rushing modern world, where such a premium is put on achievement and goals and generally being busy, simply stopping and being still is incredibly important. We try to find moments in every day where we can switch off racing thoughts and active bodies and find a place to rest. If you can do that in nature, you get a marvellous two for the price of one. But even allowing yourself five or ten minutes in your quiet room – to listen to some music, or read a line of poetry, or sit with a sleepy dog or cat – can reset the human systems which are stretched thin by the demands of contemporary life. Imagine that you are these horses on this sunny hill, and give yourself a rest.
