Me versus Horses

Shut the stable door after the horse has bolted

Doing this is actually pretty unhelpful. Questions need to be asked about who opened the door in the first place.

It can take quite a long time to recover a loose horse so then having to unbolt the stable door to get it back in just slows the whole process down further. I went over to my friend Laurie's farm the other Sunday and found him in the lower field trying to catch a horse.

I don't know if it was my calm demeanour or maybe I smell of Polos but the horse (called Duke) came to hand pretty easily for me. I walked it back to the stable and, finding the door open, left it inside then bolted it in. I'm not sure what I'd have done if the stable door had been closed. I haven't got enough hands.

Conclusion: Keep the stable door bolted unless you actually want the horse to go out. If it has bolted then leave the door open for ease of access after retrieval.

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Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth

Laurie was so pleased (at least I think he was pleased) he said that I could have Duke as a present. This was too good a chance to miss. I looked in the horse's mouth.

I saw plenty of teeth and the other mouth furniture you might expect but nothing out of the ordinary. There was nothing to put me off looking in a horse's mouth again but also nothing to make me want to keep the horse and as I only have a small garden I gifted it back to Laurie pretty quickly.

Conclusion: Don't look too closely though, some horses can be bitey.

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Horses for courses

First course or second course, fine. But not for pudding! (Ah, the great horsemeat scandal. What a source for gags that was.)

It very much depends which course. I think I'd get in trouble for taking a horse to a golf course and there would be little point in getting a horse to take a course of antibiotics for me. However, as someone who makes an occasional trip to the races I know there is something in this.

Some horses prefer running clockwise, some anti-clockwise. Some like running on undulating tracks, some on flat tracks. La Estrella won 13 times in a row at Southwell over a four year spell.

If you are bored and can be bothered to find out more you can read my analysis of the great Kauto Star's course form.

Conclusion: Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. If you're going horse-racing and having a little wager give it some thought though like the horses' names and the pretty colours that the little people that ride them wear.