Introducing Murphy part 2

I think it was when we began to ride Murphy that we began to fall in love with him. During his illness we felt sorry for him of course, and sorry for the scars he bore from his ill-treatment. We were adamant that we would try to improve Murphy's lot in life, but this didn't really amount to love. However, when he started to allow us to share in his world by being on his back, that's when the bond was forged.

While things seemed to be going better with riding Murphy, our relationships with other liveries at our stable had taken a turn of the worst: it was clear that others couldn't see what we saw in Murphy, after all he greeted every passer-by his box with a snaking neck and plastered back ears, so he did not do its own case much good. People are frightened of what they don't understand, they didn't understand Murphy and they didn't understand us for persevering with him. He had hurt no one but Fiona and I at that time, and we were careful to keep others away from him. However we found ourselves being treated differently, as if some of the perceived madness of our horse was rubbing off on us!
Livery yards can be quite bitchy places, and instead of support with our new and difficult charge, we found ourselves the target of behind the back comments, and even outright hostility. Fiona and I are friendly sorts, and these treatment hurt me particularly deeply. These problems were compounded when our lovely old mare Molly lost her battle with laminitis, and we had to take the painful decision to have her put down. In some strange way Murphy helped us with the pain of losing Molly, we had another life depending on us, we were kept busy.

Loving a horse at the best of times is always strange and largely unrequited experience. It's not in the equine nature to be hugely demonstrative of affection to any but their own species, most will gladly be the recipients of fuss, but seem unwilling, or perhaps unable to return it fully. Murphy was even worse than usual in this, there seemed no way into the defences he had built around himself. The friendly scratch of the neck or withers, which would be appreciated by most horses, he found disturbing; it would provoke a swift retreat to the back of his box, or an even swifter bite. We tried everything we knew to open some form of a channel of communication with Murphy; to find some form of physical contact that he liked, and that could be a reward for him. It was Murphy in the end who took the initiative and open a dialogue: he stuck his tongue out!

It was Fiona who first discovered Murphy's tongue language: we had always been careful to attempt to fuss Murphy's nose at arm's length as he leant over his stable door, avoiding the possibility of a lunge and a bite. But one day, whilst he had his neck fully extended, his ears up and alert, his head tilted sideways with an air of curiosity, he simply popped out his tongue, and Fiona, not really thinking, gave it a gentle tug. Murphy greeted this with the triumph and enthusiasm of a tourist learning his first word of a difficult foreign-language. Now he wanted to use this word all the time!
He soon learned that he could use his new word in several different ways: if he had been told off for misbehaving, out would pop the tongue, seeking reassurance, and possibly even offering a sort of apology. If he wanted yet more reassurance, he would curl his tongue into a sort of tube, and present just the tip of it out of the side of his mouth. When excited and friendly, he would make small enthusiastic licking and suckling motions, liberally interspersed with big floppy invitations to tongue-pull.
Some have attempted to explain this as simply pseudo foal behaviour, a desire to suckle, or some sort of oral fixation possessed by a horse that is not really grown up properly. However when you view this behaviour in context, it seems to be more complicated than that: an attempt, perhaps, to show us how to give him pleasure; in other words a means of communication.

Murphy had come to us with only one shoe on, so we soon discovered another one of its problems: he was not good to shoe, in fact he was impossible without sedation. It was clear that some trauma had caused a deep mistrust of anyone handling his feet, we could just about manage to pick them out, but even this was a struggle, and left us sweating and exhausted. The cost of Molly's treatment had left us financially battered, and now we had the extra burden of a vet call out at every shoeing.

To be continued

My first hack on "Murph"

I first rode Murphy out in the forest on a sunny Saturday morning in early summer, not thinking that where he came from in southern Ireland there were probably no prams or mountain bikes, no kites or screaming children. He bucked, he spun, he cat-leapt, in fact he went through the whole gamut of horse tricks calculated to get me off. I was intending to ride for an hour, in fact I came back after 20 minutes shaking and white as a ghost. He had not beaten me, I'd stayed on, but to this day I'm not quite sure how! I'm not sure if this was some kind of test, but I suppose I passed as he is never done this to me since. The fear and fury that was Murphy on the ground, concealed a wonderfully forward-going and reliable horse when ridden. Like a schizophrenic Murphy was two different personalities: in the saddle easygoing and considerate, on the ground and in his box, dangerous and unpredictable.
Of course he was "green", but his bravery and level headedness, would have done credit to a horse three times his age. We could truly feel closeness with Murphy on his back, and were able to share in his obvious joy at simply running of the sake of it.
Mounted on Murphy's back at the gallop is like being given the privilege of riding a tornado, your eyes sting with the speed, while you feel the energy surge from his bunched muscles, and for all too brief a time you know what it would feel like to be Superman.

Let me introduce you to Murphy

Murphy and I met just over eighteen months ago, I was a regular mid-forties bloke, married with two grown up children, and he was a four year old Irish Draft gelding.

My wife and I had been bitten by the riding bug a few years before, but our lovely old Shire mare Molly had recently suffered repeated bouts of serious illness, and we wanted a young athletic horse to “take the pressure off” Molly, and allow us to retire her if necessary.
Fiona and I had come to riding late in life, and had owned Molly just over three years. She had taught us most of what we knew about riding, and about caring for horses in general. We loved her dearly but she was 18 years old, and in the past had suffered a considerable amount of neglect. She was a lovely gentle ride, but we were now looking for much more of a challenge. We saw Murphy advertised on a horse importer's web site, and he seemed to be just what we were looking for. We were green and stupid; we got carried away, and put a deposit on him.
Lack of experience and perhaps quite a bit of over confidence led us to buy a horse from a web site, un-seen. Those who know about horses will wince at this point. Yes we were stupid, but we thought this would be the only way we could get a young horse that we could afford. We had a budget of £2000 and we needed a big animal to compliment my gangly six foot frame!


Murphy was bred in southern Ireland, a country with a long tradition of producing winning horses, and sadly just as long tradition of brutality in their care. Already physically scarred at just four years old, he was exported to a dubious horse dealer in Yorkshire, where no doubt poor conditions and overcrowding caused him to be infected with the equine strangles virus. Underweight and in poor condition, with a raging fever of 104, he was loaded onto a lorry and forced to endure a nightmare journey several hundred miles, with three other unfortunate animals.
This is perhaps where Murphy's luck changed. You see he'd been bought by my wife and I, and we would become perhaps the only human beings who have been on his side in his short life.
The advert for Murphy said that he was a bit of a biter, and was known to be protective of mares in the field; however the dealers considered him to be a novice ride. The horse that was delivered to us two days before Easter, bore very little resemblance to our dream horse: he was painfully thin, completely exhausted from travelling, with a yellow nasal discharge, and careful cough. We had in fact bought a horse with strangles, a serious and potentially life-threatening virus, that is highly infectious too other horses.

Our haste and enthusiasm had led to our entire yard being quarantined, and our new acquisition been confined to his box and barrier-nursed for six weeks. With a horse of normal temperament this would not have been quite so bad, but we were to find out that Murphy was far from normal. The numerous scars especially round his neck, should have told us of rough and uncaring treatment in the past, but I found out the hard way the first time I tried to feed him: as I placed his bowl containing his hard feed inside his stable door, he charged like lightning and bit me hard under the heart. I staggered backwards in agony, shirt torn, blood oozing.
We had no choice however, he was confined to his box and we just had to work with it. Over the next few weeks we suffered a catalogue of injuries, most minor, but some more serious: a kick to the groin for my wife, a serious bite to the stomach that resulted in a hernia for me. In hindsight I suppose we were mad to try and keep him, but it didn't take much imagination to realise that his anger came from fear. It was clear that if Fiona and I did not take care of him his eventual end would probably be from a lethal injection or a bullet to the brain. I suppose I've always been a sucker for hard luck stories, the British love an underdog and all that, but I just couldn't get over how gentle his eyes were, or what pain you could see in them if you looked closely enough.

I would love to be able to say that Murphy immediately understood that we wanted to help him, that he treated us with gentleness and obedience, happy that he was now in safe hands; unfortunately this was far from the truth. Intelligent as horses may be, they lack the ability to make value judgments: to Murphy we were more humans bent on confining him, and causing him yet more discomfort. Thus we were rewarded for our care from day one, with kicks and bites.

The strangles produced a massive abscess on his neck, and at least he bore the grizzly task of draining it daily with a sort of stoic acceptance, in this at least he seemed to know that we were trying to help him. He would bite at other times but never when tending his wound. Every day was a struggle, just mucking Murphy out was a test: the young playful side of his nature meant that he would steal your muck fork, or tip over your barrow, the aggressive side of his nature meant that she could never be sure if the inquisitive nose over your shoulder as you worked, would turn into a nip, or that going behind his hindquarters would lead to a potentially life-threatening double barrel! Slowly but surely we found ourselves becoming attached to this complex character, they say love is blind, well, all I can say it must have some analgesic properties as well!
Looking back on it I suppose the six weeks went quite quickly really, we missed most of the good spring riding whether, but when the day finally dawned when his quarantine was over, we thought we would put all the bad things behind us.

The reaction of other liveries at our yard shocked us. Rather than seeing him as we did: a traumatised, semi wild animal, reacting with fear/aggression to his perceived tormentors, we started to hear dark mutterings to the effect that we had an evil horse.
It's always been part of my philosophy that evil is a label that can only be put upon the deeds of humans, who are able to reason the long-term effects of their actions. A man-eating lion, for example, could not be called evil; he is simply making a logical decision: a man is slower and less well armed than for example a Wildebeest, and is thus less likely to tire him out in pursuit, or injure him in death throes. Logic without sentiment is something that humans are not noted for. I suppose I can partially understand people's attitude, if all you have ever dealt with are well domesticated obedient horses, or at least only those disobedient enough to be termed "naughty ponies", Murphy must have seemed like a raging psychopath!

Fate has not dealt Murphy a particular good set of cards: in his short six years of life he has suffered much at the hands of people. His physical scars show only part of the sad story, his mental scars made many view him as a monster. It's strange that as society we can understand the pathos of Frankenstein's creation, brought into being through no fault of his own, vilified and mistreated, but we seem oblivious to the plight of an animal like Murphy, brought into the world to satisfy the need for a horse for sport and recreation, forced into anger and aggression by ruthless cruelty, then consigned to the scrapheap by those would brand him a dangerous animal.


Murphy never raped a child or started a war, he doesn't understand or care about politics, if you don't bother him he won't bother you, in fact all he really cares about is a warm safe place to sleep and the sweet taste of grass: yet I have often been told by the ignorant or stupid that he deserves to die.
I am repeatedly told that he is a bad horse, yet at doing what horses are meant to do, being in the company of other horses, running, playing and enjoying life he excels. It's only when we make him try to fit into our world that we get a problem.

It's strange is it not, that people like my wife and I who have had a scant five years experience with horses, seem to have little problem in handling Murphy, when professionals like vets and farriers give him up as a lost cause. Perhaps years of involvement with the institutionalised brutality of the professional equestrian world has dulled their compassion. It may be that some of them never had that much of that in the first place

It is traditional to say that we British are a nation of animal lovers, what might be more correct is that we are a nation of animal users. I'm guilty of this myself as much as anyone else: domestic animals like cats and dogs hamsters and yes horses, are bred to be targets for our love, participants in our recreation, yet are and expected to behave like dutiful children rather than the animals they are.

Surely we owe a duty of care to these creatures we have caused to be brought into the world. Yet so often in the equestrian world I see animals cast aside due to rigid thinking, dogma, stupidity and callousness.
It's the pony outgrown and an able to understand why it is not cared for any more, it's the racehorse dying in agony behind green screens at Aintree to save our sensibilities, it's the "spare the rod and spoil the beast " mentality that we would not suffer to have inflicted on our children, but we tolerate, or at least do not speak out against, when it is applied to one of nature's most innocent but guileless souls: the horse.

I'm not a crusader by nature, like most people I like to keep my head down and not buck the status quo, however I have is stubborn streak a mile wide, and perhaps feel the burn of injustice a little more keenly than most. To me Murphy has become to me more than simply a horse that has been singled out because he does not fit in with our perceptions of good behaviour, he's become a symbol of the way in which our treatment of horses has advanced little beyond the mediaeval and barbaric.

Forced into close proximity with Murphy by having to attend to his everyday needs during his six-week confinement in quarantine, we started to see evidence of a different side to his nature. Under Murphy's aggressive exterior was intensely curious and playful young horse. We had to muck him out with him in his box, and he took every possible opportunity to steal tools, play tug-of-war with the broom, or slyly tip over your wheelbarrow while our backs were turned. Yet we had to be ever mindful that in an instant, fear could turn playfulness into rage and put our lives at risk.

With his illness on the road to recovery, and with a good diet, Murphy filled out rapidly: his coat began to take on a shine, and the " toast rack" ribs became better covered.

Since Murphy had been with us, we had never presumed on others to try and handle him. But with the end of his quarantine, the yard staff volunteered to head collar him and turn him out to grass when we were not there. He was strong to lead, but to our surprise, gave them few other problems. Other horse owners of a yard however, refused to allow their horses to be put out with him, not understanding that Murphy's problems were with people, not with other horses. In fact whether it's with one other horse, or a whole group, Murphy is invariably gentle and submissive. So Murphy's first summer of grass with us was spent in solitude, calling to horses in neighbouring fields, but lacking closeness with his own kind.