Читать книгу Spunky Horses (Part One) - A Year With The Horses - Vaughn Bolder - Страница 3

As far as I remember, the next time I actually got anywhere close to horses was when I cycled down what I thought was a country lane and found myself in the middle of a busy working farm, and then thought it best to ask the way out again in case I got run over by tractors or a stampeding herd. The only people I could see were busy driving large hazardous-looking farm machinery around so I wandered over to the barns nearby where I thought I'd hang out until it was a bit safer to approach them. As I got closer to the barns I saw they were actually stables and in them were some very fit looking horses, so I got a bit closer and said hello to them and much to my surprise a human voice said hello back.

The woman behind the voice looked after all the horses on this farm and they were all beauties and many of them were the offspring of one of the older horses who had, a year or two before, won a 'Horse of The Year Show' award in England. I thought this might be the place to learn to ride, but the only person I ever actually saw riding them was a really talented rider who had been brought in specifically to train them, and it turned out these were far too strong for a wannabe cowboy like me.

On one of the next times I was in that area I popped back in to see the horses and I was given a more extensive tour around the farm and shown where a load of the other horses were. I asked if it would be OK for me to take my camera in with some horses to see what sort of shots I could get. The owners said they were OK with that, pointed towards a field I might be interested in, and left me to it.

I climbed the gate and in I went to this large field and suddenly I was in a different world of horses, where twenty or so beautifully-spirited horses were free to just run around and play. These weren't just standing in a field by the side of a road with nothing to do but eat grass and no other horses, or other animals, for company. These were all freely running around together, playing together and acting in such a way that I could actually start to see elements of their individual personalities.

I could get right up close to them, in fact they made it impossible for me not to by surrounding me and following me when I tried to get a bit of distance in between us so I could fit more of them in the camera frame. This was literally amazing to me and I just kept on shooting. I didn't have a plan for the shots I was taking as I was doing this just for the fun and I found being around these horses was a very good feeling, especially with how they were reacting to me being amongst them. This was one of those occasions when I also realized that I could get a pretty reasonable shot, because after their initial interest coming to check me out, the horses weren't bothered by my presence at all and almost seemed to play and pose a bit for the camera.

When I left the field, after saying goodbye to them all and giving some a hug when it felt like a safe option, I went back to the stable barns and was introduced to some more of the horses there, including the show winner. This big horse was super-comfortable with me being in his barn training area with my camera in his face. And after seeing how all the other horses came right up close to me this was definitely worth further looking into as a new source of adventure. I decided my new mission was to explore the world of horses and see where it would lead me.

Now I started thinking more about how I could get myself into the horse world to see whether the display team's horseman had actually been onto anything. And then, after a little bit of searching around, I spotted a potential door opening, gave it a bit of a push and stepped through the gap. I would find out over the next few years it would lead me into many different horse worlds with many different types of horses and the people associated with them.