True Face

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's feeling useless. This is why I am a first-class putterer and someone who's always looking for a job. If I see an opening to get involved, to lend a hand, to make something better, I'm generally inclined to take it. I couldn't go to Wynn's and call myself a New Stride volunteer just standing beside Regal and contemplating life so I got into working with the other horses. As I mentioned, my two favourites were Platinum Trick and 'Nash', or 'True Face' to the Jockey Club.

Nash could best be described as a sensitive soul. The first day I brought him into his stall to groom him he presented as 100% adorable. He actually fell asleep as I brushed him and fussed over him. His lower lip went slack and he dripped drool over the stall door, half asleep and immersed in all the attention. It was hard not to hug him, though I didn't want to disturb his reverie.

On paper, Nash should have been a racehorse. In reality, he was just a long, lanky, sweet and maybe slightly neurotic baby with two bowed tendons and a very big heart. Life doesn't always go exactly as planned, but Nash dodged the auction and extinction and found himself a ward of New Stride and a friend of mine.

What do you do when you don't live up to others' expectations of you? I suppose, ideally, you get down into what you expect from yourself - after you've explored the various regions of that thing which is 'I' and mapped out who you are a little.

In the case of Nash, who is a horse and therefore almost always consummately honest while also almost entirely dependent, you don't have so much time for philosophizing. You just be.

What you must do though is trust that you can find a place in the world where you are wholly accepted for what and who you are and ultimately loved for all of it. That, I suppose, is a little bit universal. Don't we all want that really?

Nash is safe and, despite appearances, sound. There is enough beauty in his soul to make up for the blemishes on his body. In the spiritual sense, he is absolutely perfect. Just watch him carry this young girl so carefully and remember that he is only 5 and very green:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2L0sEF4dDk