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Coming down to the water now, we've got
some men working up in the trees with a chainsaw.
Not something he sees every day, lots to look at
leaves and branches all over the road, cones either side
noises rustling up in the bushes
but he's walked past it
no problems at all.
Its these sorts of things you can encounter
anytime while you're out driving and certainly on a road like this where its so narrow
its not easy to turn your horse around and go back the other way, and sometimes you can't do that
so its nice to know that your horse will go past it, and thats what we train them to do.
We've got Fletcher driving him
today with
Barry on the back
coming down into town a different way.
They've just finished doing the roadworks up this stretch of road, so we've got
different coloured
road surfaces for him to go over.
They've painted all these arrows on the road as well.
It's not something he's seen before.
There's also
three lanes of traffic
now instead of two which is lovely, because
if you're going into the middle lane you get cars
pulling over into the filter lane
and also coming up the inside.
So its a lovely thing for them to experience.
You can see no hesitation there,
going over these different surfaces,
not bothered about those
white arrows on the road.
We're still driving him in just a soft rubber bit.
We're going to bring him down to this roundabout, and take him round
a couple of times so we can
get some traffic going around him.
When this
horse came to us to be broken his owner said
that he was very very nervous in traffic.
Very bad, even to the point of being turned out in a field
next to a road
and he was still terrible
even though he was turned out.
So its certainly taken us a while to get him to this stage. But we're driivng him round here,
a newly-broken horse, only in a piece of rubber. No metal bit on him to hold him back,
just a rubber snaffle.
No brakes, no curb chains,
and you can see he's coping with this
brilliantly
just being driven on a nice soft rein. All the different
motor vehicles around him
overtaking and waiting by the side of him while he's standing
at the lights. Cars just going up his inside there.
Lots and lots for a horse to see.
This is exactly what we want; to train them to
remain calm and confident
even in heavy traffic. You can see Fletcher's just holding the reins up,
he's not running off, he's not speeding up at all,
just going on a nice slack rein
right in the middle of town
with all this traffic around him.
We're taking him round a couple of times today
There's lots of people who say roundabouts aren't the safest place for horses
but if they're trained properly there's no reason they shouldn't be treated like any other
road user.
So they blend in with the traffic, they flow with the traffic,
they don't cause a problem.
So on a roundabout like this you can't stay in the lefthand lane
in this case it would be more dangerous to stay in the left lane to go
completely round the roundabout.
So if you do go into the correct lane as you would do if you were driving a car
your horse has got to be able to
cope with traffic coming up
both sides of him
without panicking.
And that's what we've trained him to do.
This is the busiest roundabout we have near us. Lots of different entrances and
exits on it.
Its also a route that you get lots of lorries going down.
So really good for training horses. See Fletcher's still
holding the reins slack;
he's got to steer him round the roundabout obviously to keep him in the lane
but the horse is as good as gold.
Moving to the outside now
about to come off the roundabout
so its different again because this time he's got traffic
coming up the outside
and also going past traffic waiting
on the entrances to the roundabout.
Sometimes they can hear all the noises, the revving of the engines
but because the traffic's
back a little bit from where the horse is it can upset them
so its another good thing that we like to train them for,
by bringing them onto a roundabout
just helps them get used to
different situations.
This time he's brought him back onto the roundabout, lights are red so he's got to stand still.
Just to show he'll wait perfectly happily,
with cars beside him,
no groom at his head; we don't believe in that.
The horse has got to stand still because he's been
told to and because he's happy to do so.
In any case there's
nobody been born who's strong enough to stop them from
leaping sideways and smashing into a car if they wanted to,
so it just shows
the level of training, if you like, that he will stand there
without anybody at his head,
just because the driver's asked him to,
and remain stood still
regardless of cars revving their
engines around him or
moving off beside him.
Different view now, I'm filming from the car
again, its a red light, just showing that he's standing still,
and moves off when he's told.
There's cars behind him.
overtaking him.
So I'm going to stay in this lane now.
I know
Fletcher's going to be moving over into the left lane to come off
so what I'm going to do is
come and overtake him.
So the horse can hear me accelerating,
I've got to stop now for the lights but he can carry on,
so he's just had the noise of me
the engine of the
Land Cruiser behind him then all of a sudden that noise disappears
because I've had to stop.
You can see
he's not been bothered by that, he's carrying on -
they're just bringing him back to a walk up ahead to let me catch up.
So again more acceleration behind him,
and he can hear the car approaching.
Coming up out of town now, going to have a little break
before heading home.
Faster section of the ringroad here,
but he's still nice and relaxed.
In this section of road there's a footbridge overhead, you've got the shadow on the road he's got to go over,
there's also a slight echoing noise as he passes underneath it as well as the noise from the traffic.
But as you can see
no speeding up,
no reaction to it at all
just trotting away nice and happily.
On this stretch of road not only has he got the roadworks on this side, but further ahead
they've put some
temporary traffic lights.
So the road goes down to a single track,
he's got to go past it and that's another situation where
you want to know that your horse will go forwards past everything because
if you're in a single lane of traffic, there's a hedge one side, security fencing on the other, security fence in the other
there's no escape route. If you've gone through the lights
and you've got cars waiting behind you,
you can hardly stop and
take your horse out of harness and get out the way, so you've got to know that
he's got the confidence to go forwards
and go past
anything that might be there. And that's what we train them to do, to be safe
confident and happy.
He's got to have confidence in the driver in order to go past everything
so you can see there's the cones
these different mounds of earth to look at
on the side of the road.
Everything stacked up there, the plastic flapping in the breeze.
Coming up to these traffic lights as well, I think
he's got to bring him back
to a standstill because the lights are red.
So he's got to wait with a car in front of him and a car behind him.
Got to stand still when he's asked, you don't want him
spooking and jumping onto the car ahead so its nice to know that he will wait
in a queue of traffic because that's exactly the sort of situation you might find yourself in at
anytime.
It can't just happen in a town, it could happen down a country lane as well.
Moving off again now,
and this is the part I was talking about. You've got the lights on this side of the road,
the security fencing making it single track. Now
if you got into trouble out here or your horse wouldn't go
past this digger on the side of the road for example
there's nowhere to go - you can hardly take the whole
turnout through the hedge, so you've got to know that your horse has
got the confidence to go past it.
If your horse has been trained properly it shouldn't be a problem.
We've got these railings at the side of the road,
lots for him to look at, just by
the Mayfly pub so you get
a lot of noise from
people eating and
doors slamming shut that sort of thing. The road also slopes
down towards these railings so
it can be quite daunting for a horse to walk past.
Scooter coming past;
different noise of the engine.
Still being driven in a soft piece of rubber, Fletcher's just letting him walk
along
calmly on a nice slack rein. Flapping flag on top of that red car,
and again he's quite content just to walk along the road
not getting upset by anything, all the cars passing,
and that's exactly what we want to see, that he's nice and relaxed in traffic.
And that he'll walk when he's told, he'll trot when he's told.
Cyclist going past him, no reaction.
Here, you can hear this car accelerating, coming past quite fast.
Exactly the sort of thing that can happen; sometimes people don't want to wait
and that's exactly why we train horses to cope with the things we do, because
those sorts of things can happen
but you can see the little chap never bothered about it at all.
Having these cars passing
on a narrow lane as well,
so things like that car overtaking quickly can happen on a country lane
as well.
Fletcher here just driving him on a nice slack rein,
to show you his head carriage.
And all this is being done
just on a soft rubber bit.