It ended one farcical morning. If you remember there were two people we were dealing with - the woman (let’s call her Joan) who had originally run around to support the horse owned by the people who lived here before we moved in, and the woman (let’s call her Susan) who had taken on day to day care of the horse (which wouldn’t have needed day to day care if she hadn’t bought her own completely unsuitable breed of horse and added it to the field for “company” for the horse - and free field-use for her).
I hope I remember all this correctly! Joan had arranged with us that Susan would come and catch the horses first thing, and she would arrive later with a horse box to move them to their new home (which, funny story, they got evicted from the following year as Susan was such a nightmare, at which point the original horse was rehomed without its companion and lived out the rest of his life happily on a local farm with some Shetland ponies).
Only Susan didn’t turn up, so we messaged Joan, and she ended up going to her house and found them all still in bed.
Finally Susan turned up, went into the field and fed the horses - without catching them.
So when Joan turned up they wouldn’t come near her and it turned into a Benny Hill sketch of the two of them going round and around - which both horses looked to be actually enjoying.
Finally they were caught and all Susan’s declarations that they would never go into a horse box and would die if moved, turned out to be nonsense as they calmly plodded straight in.
That afternoon we took our dog for its first run on the field and reclaimed our space.
Susan also had an old falling- apart caravan that she kept stuff in over there. A few weeks later it was still there so we gave her a deadline to remove it by. She turned up once with and unsuitable vehicle and tried to drag it out of the field - it really wasn’t road-legal and needed to be stuck on a trailer to take it. Churned up the ground and failed to take it. We got a curt text letting us know she’d emptied the caravan and it was our problem now.
We got it scrapped at our own expense. She also threatened to take the field shelter they had built, but no one ever came for that. It blew down a couple of years ago and I used the wood to make some garden furniture.
I have since befriended someone who just by coincidence sold the caravan to Susan! She said she took fifty quid for it as they were friends, but had to physically go to Susan’s house several weeks after she’d taken the caravan to get her money as she kept “Forgetting to bring it”
Susan is well known and not well-liked. She’s a taker who believes the world owes her everything.
The thing that still frustrates me is that if we had moved in and there was a horse in the field, with no people attached to it or cheeky fuckers involved, I would have taken on its care without thinking twice. Because of their behaviour (blocking us in daily, using the sheds in our garden, letting strangers picnic in our field, using it as their own private park to run their dogs etc etc etc) there was no way to keep the horse without them feeling some ownership for it. Susan was a nightmare who made a difficult time so much harder.
I remember when we first moved here thinking that Susan might be a great new friend so I should make an effort to let things slide 😂
But the good news is that this place is now really special and 100% our home.
We have worked so hard on it all, and everyday I wake up I am so glad we are here.
It’s not a happy ending, because it’s not an ending, but getting rid of the horses was the beginning of making this place ours.
And in the immortal words of our nearest farmer neighbour, “I don’t even know why they thought the horse needed help. It had more than enough grass for one horse alone, and he was a grumpy old thing. Watching them piss him off with their fussing was funny though. They used to park across my field, but I put a stop to that - that’ll be when they decided blocking you in was the only solution. Bunch of interfering nutters if you ask me.”