PART 8 - MY JOURNEY WITH MJ
One thing I never expected horses to give me was a genuine fear of towing.
Before the accidents with MJ, travelling horses was simply something we did. I wouldn’t have described myself as particularly confident towing, but I certainly wasn’t frightened of it either.
That changed completely after 2019.
Mum and I were travelling down to Lincoln for the BRC Championships with MJ and Mum’s horse Erin in the trailer. Near Penrith, on a B road, we hit extremely deep wet mud across the road surface. The Shogun lost grip, the trailer started fishtailing and within seconds the trailer had flipped completely onto its side,…the ramp side!
With both horses inside.
Even now, writing it down still makes my stomach turn slightly.
Unbelievably, both horses survived with only cuts and bruises. The roof of the trailer actually came away during the accident, which allowed them to escape out through the top.
At the time, I think adrenaline took over and I stayed remarkably calm considering the situation. But looking back now, I don’t think I processed the trauma of that accident properly at all.
The aftermath was incredibly stressful. The horses had to remain at vets near Penrith before they were fit to travel home and poor Erin was understandably deeply affected by the whole experience afterwards. When the horsebox came to pick up the horses to take them to the vets from the scene of the accident, it took over four hours to persuade her onto a horsebox.
Meanwhile MJ simply followed me quietly up the ramp when it was her turn. I still remember feeling emotional about how much she trusted me despite everything that had happened.
Although both horses physically recovered, I don’t think my nervous system ever fully relaxed around towing again after that.
Then in 2022, just as MJ and I were getting back out eventing after all the rehab years, we had another terrifying incident travelling home from an event. Late at night on the motorway, we hit something in the road and suffered a blowout on the trailer. There was no hard shoulder where we were, so we had no choice but to continue crawling along in the dark at about ten miles an hour with the hazards on, both of us terrified we were going to be crashed into from behind.
Eventually we managed to get off the motorway and stopped beside a tiny patch of grass in the middle of a housing estate so we could unload MJ safely and assess the damage.
I can still remember standing there in the dark, walking her round and round the grass singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” repeatedly because it usually helped calm her down. Although truthfully, I think I was probably trying to calm myself too.
Only a few weeks later, coming home from another event, the Shogun developed a hole in the radiator and overheated on a dangerous bend in the road. Once again we found ourselves stranded with horses onboard, worrying about being hit by passing traffic.
I think that third incident was probably the point where towing stopped feeling merely stressful and started feeling genuinely unsafe to me psychologically.
After that, every journey became difficult mentally. I became hyper aware of every little sound or movement from the trailer. Every lorry overtaking us made me tense. I constantly anticipated something going wrong.
At the time, I don’t think I fully appreciated that what I was experiencing was actually trauma.
I just thought I’d become nervous.
Eventually I decided to have EMDR therapy specifically around the travelling incidents because I knew I couldn’t continue feeling that level of fear every time we left the yard. It helped enormously and allowed me to start travelling calmly again.
More than anything though, it taught me how many experiences riders quietly carry around in their nervous systems without fully realising how much they’ve affected them.
From the outside, people often only see the competition photos and the results. They don’t see the emotional baggage being carried in the background just to get there.
And ironically, around this same time, although things were looking more successful than ever on paper for MJ and me, mentally I was struggling far more than most people realised.
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