WHEN Sue at my yard introduced her new pony, I quietly chuckled to learn he was 18. Yet his age didn’t particularly surprise me; between a third and a half of the horses at Dorney Court Stables (DCS), near Eton in Berkshire, are this age or older at any one time, and not a single one is currently on bute.
The yard never intended to become a specialist centre for older working horses (no horse there is retired), says Julie Rainer, who has run it for more than 40 years, and now does so with her daughter Steph Read.
“We’re not a typical livery yard because we just don’t have a turnover of clients,” she explains. “Most of our liveries have been here 20, if not 30 years. We have plenty of clients who are in their seventies. They get a horse and it stays here until it dies really. The riders have grown older with their
