PIYAYO and the Friendships he Makes
While we still had not received any word from Spain to fill in his past
we, continued to work with Piyayo putting him in every situation
possible to 'see' what he was capable of. I worked full time in the
Armed Services so during the daytime Piyayo was left to himself in his stable
with a view of the village.
But as I soon discovered my 'dangerous'
horse was not bored. During the daytime Piyayo literally 'hosted' tea
parties in his stable; his elderly landlady and a number of the
pensioner retired stockmen of the village had, through their love of
animals become best friends to Piyayo. They regularly visited for
afternoon tea in his stable, through them Piyayo had acquired a taste
for rich tea biscuits dipped in tea, and toffees!
I did not need to ask or have pointed
out to me who Piyayo's new family were. The herd instinct in him meant
that he regarded himself as responsible for his elderly charges and
from his stable he could view the village cottages and thus the
homes/stables in which each of his human herd members resided.
If any
ventured out from their home while Piyayo was on watch from his stable
or working on the village green, then he would not settle until he had
spied them safely returning to their home.
It was a quiet friendly
village but I often wonder what would have happened if any mugger had
tried to do harm to any of Piyayo's human herd. Knowing him as I do
now, they certainly would have met the wrath of a herd stallion
guarding his strange human herd!
In the same village around the corner Piyayo had made friends with a ride and drive gelding that often rode out hacking with us. One evening two weeks into my ownership of Piyayo, while bedding him down for the night I turned from filling water buckets to meet my great big grey walking calmly towards me down the drive. He had executed his old trick of opening bolts and decided to take himself for a night time stroll to see his friend.
When confronted with 16hh of muscled stallion determined to go exploring there is only one thing to do; grab head collar and rope and calmly with feed bucket follow!
As later similar adventures were to prove Piyayo did not go mindlessly thundering out if he 'escaped', he always would have a set agenda of who he was visiting and that would be followed to the letter. On this night he was off to the smallholding around the corner to see his riding companion.
Unfortunately his navigation became confused and instead of turning up his friends drive he wandered up the drive next to the field and stables he was heading for and found himself blocked by a padlocked five bar metal gate securing the neighbouring pig barracks and yard.
As he stood there at the gate contemplating the problem I set too slipping his head collar on and had only completed buckling it up to have him sit back on his haunches beside me and launch straight up and over the gate effortlessly, leaving me standing outside the pig yard while he thundered around the concrete yard ringing the piggery building, working out the next route to his friend.
The commotion had brought out my friend, and she and I having assessed that we had no means to open the padlocked gate came to the conclusion that our only option other then leaving him for a night building up steam charging around, was for Piyayo to return the way he had come.
I had no choice but to climb over grab the head collar rope and jump aboard bare back to try and get Piyayo to repeat his flight pattern over the gate. It's one of those moments when your brain has a very warped notion of what is the better path and blocks all thought about it being suicide. The stressed reasoning was that 'the idiot horse had managed to clear the gate once so there was no way even with me hanging on top that he should not be able to repeat the jump'. Seemed a sensible plan at the time!
Amazingly we did it! Perhaps not so amazing given our later knowledge of exactly what Piyayo really was capable of. But for me, not something I would ever contemplate in the cold light of day when sane and not blinded by anger at the mess he'd put himself in and determined he was going to go home and sleep it off while I recover with a glass of brandy!
Retrospectively that moment of knowing the full power of Piyayo and trusting blindly in him as we flew over that gate was breathtaking.
As his fitness increased I looked to expand Piyayo's
work and experience, and I came to know a local self taught rider who
gave riding lessons on her family horses and ponies. Maria was an
excellent rider with a total love and empathy with her horses, and in
need of a horse to bring the children on from their ponies as well as a
good 15 stone weight bearing mount for adult beginners to ride.
I
had total confidence in Piyayo but it took a leap of faith and a
genuine love of horses for Maria to accept the challenge of trusting an
unknown horse, a stallion at that, to become part of her little
equestrian empire.
No need for worry, Piyayo and Maria fell in love
with each other, she talked daft to him and he drooled over every word
of nonsense that she uttered to him! If she had been a horse he could
not have been more in love with her. From then on Maria worked with
Piyayo when I was not free to ride him, she continued to schooling him,
used him to give lessons to adults on the lunge and steadily became the
first horse for the children to ride.
We discovered that Piyayo was a natural schoolmaster.
If, like Maria and I you could ride he expected you to ride and not be
lazy about it, he made you work equal to what you expected from him and
did not suffer fools pretending that they 'knew it all'.
But if Piyayo
felt he had a beginner or novice astride he gave all control to the
commands of the instructor on the ground. I had from the beginning been
aware that Piyayo's early voice commands would have been in Spanish but
with my spoken Spanish limited I had steadily reinforced every aid with
the spoken English word intially using polo mints as reward, you could
stop Piyayo at full gallop with the words 'do you want?'.
Maria
and I had hours of fun being entertained by Piyayo, the schoolmaster.
He hated rain and if it started to rain during lessons he would dive
for the instructor on the ground and try and hide his head inside your
coat. With the children we found he had similar notions of his own
about how to help them with their lesson, in essence as Maria put it
'he cheated' to help the child rider!
He literally listened to Maria's instructions to her
class and then did the exercise for the child, it made no difference
showing the children, by Maria walking the routine on foot around the
arena rather than saying the instructions.
Piyayo would still set off
and do exactly as he had 'seen' Maria do, turning on the forehand,
reversing, leg yielding, it made no difference he was going to treat
his child rider to the perfect lesson in which the child just sat
passively on top.
It became a regular sight to see Maria demonstrate a
lesson with Piyayo beside the other ponies and riders but with his back
turned to Maria in her attempt to stop Piyayo from 'cheating' by
watching her! Needless to say the children loved him.
At
this time we still did not know about Piyayo's prestigious show jumping
career, only that attempts by amateurs to hurl him at the Midland Bank
National Cross Country course on his previous owners estate had
resulted in disaster and of course the impromptue night time flying leap over that solid five bar gate!
For us, Piyayo's first lessons in jumping was with the
children over rainbow and poker dot coloured home made jumps. To our
amazement Piyayo calculated the distance and pace required to calmly
'puissance' jump, with child safely on board, every obstacle in his
path. He graduated from there to successfully competing in his first
cross country novice hunter trial with Maria's eight year old daughter
as jockey and Maria on her mare as lead.
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