Rule number one for horse-owners: every accident that happens to a horse is a freak accident

Every accident that happens to a horse is a freak accident. Rule number one. Once you grasp that as a horse-owner you are on your way to understanding the nature of the bind you are in.

When Gracie went suddenly lame on a routine hack a few years ago, you may remember, it turned out she had trodden on a piece of old animal bone, which pierced the soft part of her foot. The bone fragment travelled upwards, turned right and sliced into her flexor tendon. The head surgeon at Liphook equine hospital emerged from his operating theatre that night to declare that the chance of an injury like that was ‘many hundreds of millions to one’. Holding the two-inch-long piece of bone fragment in a test tube, he declared himself well and truly impressed.

Seven weeks and many thousands of pounds later she was almost completely better, and a miracle was declared by the experts.