‘HE HAD COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN’
WHEN Melanie Richards first saw her double novice winner Floh while visiting a dealer’s yard, she was distraught.
“I’d never seen a horse looking so ill and skinny in my life. I couldn’t leave him there,” she recalled. “He had completely shut down, but once he had put on some weight, he became aggressive and would attack me in the stable or the field.
“I genuinely thought he might kill me, and
contacted Philippa Unwin, who practises natural horsemanship. She said I needed to relate to him more like a horse in his herd, rather than a human, and gave me the tools to do so.
“Things slowly turned around from that point, but I didn’t sit on him for another six months and then he would rear if we went near the arena, although he would happily hack out.
“It was three years before we went to a competition, but he’s taught me so much about how to behave with animals. We now have a level of partnership I’ve never experienced before.”