Grantham couple who own rare Clydesdale horses training in 'intelligent horsemanship'
A couple who own a rare breed of horse have begun the initial stages of training in ‘intelligent horsemanship’.
Stuart and Bridie Fawcett run Fawcett Driving Horses from their farm in Great Ponton.
They keep four rare Clydesdale horses in a conservation effort to prevent the breed from extinction.
Stuart and Bridie attended a five-day Intelligent Horsemanship foundation course at Hartsop Farm in Oxfordshire, the home of Ian Vandenberghe, who alongside Kelly Marks was recently recognised by the Queen for work in promoting non-violent methods of horsemanship.
These methods are the work of Monty Roberts, whose techniques were first recognised by Her Majesty in the 1980s.
The Fawcetts took their newest recruits, Severus and Sirius, along with them to the course to start their training as a driving pair, before they can be trained as a four-horse team alongside Seumas and Silas.
Stuart said: “I was extremely fortunate to have been able to meet Monty Roberts and Kelly Marks in 2018 at Bransby Horse Rescue Centre; since then I’ve wanted to embrace their methods more in my relationship with horses and people.”
Intelligent Horsemanship was founded by Kelly, an esteemed horsewoman known as ‘the horse whisperer’ and author of several equine behaviour books following Monty’s methods.
They reject the use of violence or force and embrace Monty’s message that “no-one has the right to say ‘you must’ to an animal or another human”.
The basis of the teaching centre is on the evolution of ‘join-up’, which sees a horse taken into the safe environment of a round pen within which the horseperson will use the interpreted language of Equus, a non-verbal gesture based communication system, to move the horse around.
The idea is that they can then convey their understanding of the horse’s language and needs, so that the horse can feel safe enough to ‘join-up’ with the human as they would another horse in a herd.
The horse will often then ‘follow-up’ with the human by following around the pen of their own accord without a lead rope. This is not a dominance exercise but a bonding evolution based upon gaining a horse’s trust.
Bridie said: “I particularly liked how the skills we learned encouraged us to listen to the horse and their needs in our endeavours to train them, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach others encourage through some traditional horsemanship methods.”
Fawcett Driving Horses is trying to preserve the rare Clydesdale horse within the discipline of driving and harness work; with the skills involved in driving and training draught horses having been in decline since the Second World
War now being at a critical risk of being lost in the UK.
Clydesdales are now classed as vulnerable to extinction and very few heavy horses in the UK are trained in the work they were initially bred for – harness work.
Stuart sees the potential for them in work commercially once again. He draws examples from Europe where horses are used for refuse collection and farming.
Horsepower can embrace conservation agriculture and also has the potential to be used in pedestrianised town centres in the future for carbon neutral light haulage.
Stuart said: “Our efforts as a business are to reverse that trend and, as such, we have adopted a motto of ‘driving heavy horses into the future’ as we truly believe heavy horses have a role to play in the modern world.
“Horsepower isn’t the answer to climate change but it could be part of it.”
The Clydesdale horses are used by Stuart and Bridie for carriage rides and seasonal hospitality at Dunkirk Farm in Great Ponton.
Information: facebook.com/Fawcettdrivinghorses