Elaine Walker - Horse

Once I am in the saddle I never willingly dismount, for whether well or ill, I feel better in that position.

Michel de Montaigne, Essays

The horse is a familiar animal. We do not think of it as rare or exotic. Even in an urban setting, horses graze in paddocks on the edges of many cities, control crowds at public events and pull carriages for tourists. Horses appear in films, adverts and logos and are among the few large animals that will interact gently with a small child, so that most of us have memories of offering handfuls of grass to an animal that loomed above us, its alarming size compensated for by tickling whiskers and a willingness to stand while we patted its neck. The presence of horses in our everyday lives is something we take for granted, regardless of our own familiarity or knowledge of them beyond the casual encounter.

Those who live alongside horses that are family pets or working companions may forget that not everyone has an understanding of them. New owners looking for someone to attach metal to the wood on their horses feet, or leaving a weeks worth of hay out and expecting the horse to ration itself, are alarming to anyone who has grown up with horses around. For those who know them only as an attractive sight in a field or on a screen, the complexities of their nature can come as a surprise. When a non-horsey friend asked what I thought of the fantasy elements of the film The Horse Whisperer, based on Nicholas Evanss book, I had no idea what he meant. The techniques of working with the horses natural instincts have become so common in the past fifteen years that I was bewildered to find he could think them entirely fictional. When I replied that the film had no fantasy elements, he was equally bemused.

Like many children, I began the gradual pressure on my parents to let me have my own horse at an early age. My father recalls that, at three, I demanded to know why I couldnt have one immediately. When he paused, in the process of shaving, to explain that he couldnt afford it, I scanned the bathroom for evidence of needless extravagance and replied that it was no wonder, when he wasted so much money on soap and toothpaste. The priorities of a horse-lover rarely change and thirty years later I was fortunate in having a bank manager who bred show ponies. When I cautiously approached for a loan to buy the wonderful spotted Appaloosa horse I was yearning for, she smiled in complete understanding and said, Lets say its for a conservatory.

The kinship of such anecdotes links the like-minded down the centuries. Back in the 1650s William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, exiled in Antwerp after the Royalist defeat at the battle of Marston Moor, lived so close to poverty that his wife had to pawn her jewellery so they could eat. Yet he recalls happily that, As poor as I was in those days, I made shift to buy, at several times, four Barbes, five Spanish horses, and many Dutch horses; all the most excellent Horses that could be. He was also freely disposed to giving horses as gifts, so his wife must have been in despair, especially when, in order to return to England, he had to leave her behind to secure his debts.

Tom Booker (Robert Redford) comforts Pilgrim in The Horse Whisperer (1998)

Before long, at the age of 67, Holt set out with his new friend and together they travelled 9,000 miles through western Europe.

The family pony from 1965 to 2007.

The decorative potential of horses: a composite horse from early 17th-century Golconda.

Yet stories of the abuse of horses fill hours of animal rescue programmes on television and neglect, from ignorance to wilful cruelty, seems as commonplace as the much-loved horse that is a family member. It seems that our interaction with horses can bring out the best or the worst in us. But, at whatever level we relate to the horse, it is so closely linked with human development that without it our own history would be completely different.