Janice’s Story
My earliest memory is raging at my slumbering parents through the bars of my crib. My second earliest memory is sitting on a horse at Dumfries Show. I’m told it belonged to Miss Brindle, a formidable lady who ran a riding school in the 1960s. I was so small my legs reached halfway down the saddle flaps. I clutched the pommel with chubby fists, enthralled by being so high up, and by the rolling stride, nodding long neck and big ears, and by the feel of the silky hair, and that intoxicating horsy smell.
I’ve always viewed animals as individuals -- as collaborators with superpowers who would help me sense things, run faster, jump higher and go further than I could on my own. My parents trusted my animal pals more than my human ones -- a quality I value dearly and hope to share as part of a plan for the future of the Clydesdale.
Unfortunately, that future is in danger. I suspected the breed was in danger when I first searched for a black Clydesdale and couldn’t find one in the UK. It was that discovery that led me on a two-year odyssey to prevent the Clydesdale horse from dying out in Scotland, where it was created.
Looking back, I realize my quest actually started long before this.
When I stop to think about it, which isn’t very often, my life is a blend of best laid plans and serendipity, but mostly serendipity -- horses, people, design -- the relationships and activities I drifted into because they felt right. And the things that folks much older and wiser than me nudged me to do because they saw my potential and cared enough to encourage me to try harder and reach higher.
My Mum and Dad emerged from WWII with the stuffing knocked out of them. They had few expectations, fewer friends and family, and meagre means, especially when compared to the relative luxury we’re used to today. They kept their heads down, relished simple pleasures, and instilled in me a cast-iron belief in hard work and education -- which, without money and connections, were the only means by which my brother and I could secure a decent future for ourselves. And they’d fought so that we could have free education, so we damned-well better use it.
My old-fashioned, older parents were also content to dig the garden, enjoy the peace and let me roam inside my head, and outside in all weathers on the back of a horse. This was great because I had the room to think and grow up. Mum and Dad were either too tired to tell me I couldn’t do things, or they didn’t know half of the things I got up to, or they just couldn’t bring themselves to imagine that the world actually could be my oyster, when it had not been theirs. Either way, no one thought to stop me being what I would be.
For as long as I can remember I pestered my parents to take me to places where I could be with horses. Then I had to ride… every weekend, every family holiday, every spare minute. I rode horses for anyone who would let me. I had years of lessons, and competitions -- jumping in the ring and cross-country over bigger fixed fences. I pestered my parents for a decade until, aged thirteen, they relented and let me buy my horse that I kept at Park Farm on the outskirts of Dumfries.
I had been left a bequest of £150 by my Mum’s Aunt Henrietta who’d lost her only son, John, in WWI. With it, and £50 grudgingly donated from the housekeeping budget by my Mum in a bid to end the endless weekend treks to farms and auctions markets, I bought my first horse.
He was called Forest Rex (aka ‘Raymond’). He was an un-started two-year-old Cleveland Bay-cross-Thoroughbred gelding. I spotted him as he tried to jump out of the pen at Stirling Auction Market.
Raymond taught me how not to start a horse, but we both survived the process and, gawd, he could jump! Forty years later my Clydesdale Joseph -- helped by the late, great James Roberts -- taught me how to start a horse naturally and correctly.
I’ve always rolled with things that felt right, and been reasonably sensible, and lucky too. I like to be busy. I’m also curious and I like to learn new stuff -- ideas from all kinds of places that might bring about something good.
I’m lucky to live in a civilized place, to have had a creative education at The Glasgow School of Art, and the freedom to live the life I choose. I also know that good things don’t last unless people with good intentions make sure they do. And I want future generations to enjoy the things that give me, and many others, great pleasure and a profound sense of humanity. The Clydesdale horse is one of these things -- not that a horse can ever be ‘just a thing.’