Hoof-beats Through my Heart: A Life Shared with Horses - Softcover

Edelsten, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 190612244X ISBN 13: 9781906122447

Publisher: Merlin Unwin Books, 2012

Synopsis

'They have been the signposts at crucial turnings in my life.'

So writes author David Edelsten as he looks back on the horses he has owned or ridden throughout the years, as a shy and awkward boy, a young soldier, for pleasure or for work as a sporting journalist for Country Life, The Field, and Horse & Hound.

No sentimental account, this; David writes with concise and delicate understatement as he records the important moments, big and small, where his horses have played their part in his world.

It is a personal account, but it will strike a chord with all who have shared a genuine, give-and-take partnership with a horse which has influenced their lives for the better in some unforgettable way.

About this title

About the Author:

David Edelsten bred horses, played polo, competed (disastrously) in Point-to-Points, hunted and rode for sheer pleasure along the country tracks of his beloved Dorset. He was educated at Clifton College then went on to the Royal Military Acadamy Sandhurst. He became a regular Army officer, serving in, and commanding the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own), until taking early retirement, at the rank of brigadier, in order to live at his boyhood Dorset home where he took up his career as a hunting and polo correspondent for Country Life, The Field and Horse & Hound. He died 1 February

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

ALMOST the first thing my father taught me as I learnt to ride was that, however attached to a horse I might become emotionally, I must never allow myself to be physically attached, by rope or leather - he didn't use the 'e' word of course, one didn't in those unenlightened days, reticence and the stiff upper lip had yet to be abolished. He particularly impressed on me never to ride in gumboots, for fear of one sticking in the stirrup, leading to being dragged should you fall, and getting your brains kicked out. As a country doctor he was no doubt speaking from experience.

The other early lesson I remember learning from him was always to stand close to a kicker, the damage from a mailed hoof being far greater when the horse's leg is at full stretch. This turned out to be sound advice with dangerous humans too: twice in the Army I was to find myself serving on the personal staff of notorious fire-eaters: they were much easier to manage and less dangerous close up!

Soon we were hunting, my sister and I. This was long before anyone other than farmers had lorries or trailers and petrol was anyway still rationed. Hunting meant hacking to a meet, anything up to ten miles, then sometimes much more than that home. Riding a tired pony back to its stable, perhaps in the dark, feeding it, settling it, checking that it had not 'broken out' in sweat, are among the strongest of memories of that very happy time. That, and the joys of the Pony Club, where one met girls!

One particular, marathon hack still lives in my memory. It was the last week of the summer holidays and I was shortly due back to school at Clifton, Helen at Roedean. We begged our reluctant father, who disliked early hours, to let us turn out for the only possible cubbing meet, at Waddock Cross, full eleven miles away by ruler on the map, nearer twenty in the saddle.

Goodness knows at what hour and in what light we set out, one of us on the treasured Punch, one on borrowed Bob; one of us managing the gates, the other leading my father's horse. The aim was if possible never to touch a road, our route being across the heart of Dorset's downland sheepwalks, by long-disused ways and tracks, now bridleways, the county's 'ghost roads' as I later learnt to call and to cherish them.

We got to that distant meet, but my father never did. As so often in his busy, devoted doctor's life, he had been 'called out'. There were of course no mobile telephones in those days, so we waited, then rode sadly home.

About this edition

• Publisher: Merlin Unwin Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 190612244X
• ISBN 13: 9781906122447
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128