Free Whispering Back by Adam Goodfellow Page B

any or all of the demonstrations for free, it almost seemed like too much indulgence. As a child, I once had the experience of going to Horse of the Year Show the night before a riding holiday. Having two such momentous events happening so close together was almost unthinkable, like having two Christmases at once. To see Monty start a horse in front of 1,800 enthralled spectators made me realise just how privileged I was to be on the course. And even though the graduates from the first course who were now helping on the tour clearly felt that as new students our group were all impostors, I felt a tremendous sense of belonging.
    A common student fear was that once Monty left, at the end of the first week, the rest of the course might seem a little flat. We needn’t have worried. Kelly stepped into the fray, and we got straight back into the swing of things. It soon became clear why Monty considers her the best teacher of his methods anywhere in the world, and whilst I may have initially felt a little regret that I wasn’t chosen to work in the pen while Monty was on the course, I quickly realised that having Kelly teach me didn’t constitute ‘second best’. My concerns about her unhorsey feminine appearance quickly dissolved. There was serious horse work to be done on the course, and Kelly was more than up to the job.
    The weeks settled down into a steady rhythm: Tuesdays to Fridays at the college, then the weekend teaching riding, with Monday to myself to catch up on the muck clearing and to try out new techniques. Sensi was astonished when I started visiting her every morning at 6 a.m., practising halt transitions by the circular light of the street lamps that overhung the edges of her field. Monty had told us that he had taught his horse Dually how to do those amazing sliding stops by riding straight at the walls at the end of the school. As the horse gathered himself to stop, Monty would sit back and say ‘whoa!’ Once Dually understood the association, Monty would sit back and say ‘whoa’ before Dually reached the end of the school. The idea was that the walls were quite a long way apart, and after a while the horse would eagerly start anticipating the command. If, however, he failed to stop, Monty could push him on until he reached the wall. The field where Sensi lived had tall hedges all around the edge, and I would ride her at these as fast as I dared on the frosty grass. She very quickly got the idea, and would do some pretty convincing transitions from canter to halt.
    It was fascinating to see how the horses on the course developed over the ten weeks. The two ‘starters’, Candide and Magic, which Monty had worked with on the first day, progressed steadily, calmly, with no problems. The third horse, Rosie, turned out to be quite a challenge. Athletic and sharp, she was wary and distrustful of everything. It soon emerged that she wasn’t a ‘normal starter’, but was in fact ‘remedial’. The owners had already had a go at breaking her in, but by the time she had reared over backwards twice on long-lines, they had decided to send her away to the course. They hadn’t explicitly lied about her background, but they had omitted to tell us some very important facts. Then, in my naivety, I was shocked. Now I know this is commonplace, and we always ask very specific questions before horses arrive with us for training, and take the horse’s word for it rather than a human’s. Even the most honest owner may not have been told the truth by those who have trained or owned the horse in the past.
    Other horses arrived on the course – four more starters, a terrified pony, a huge two-year-old with attitude, and a napping horse that wouldn’t nap. I soon got my time in the pen. I was lucky enough to be closely involved with two of the starters, and spent a lot of time working with the nervous pony, particularly in the evenings after the course. It was fascinating to see how Kelly approached the training of