Visitors to The Horse Trust Meet Spindles Farm Colts for First Time

Visitors to The Horse Trust in Speen, Buckinghamshire are now able to meet four colts that were rescued from Spindles Farm in January 2008.

For the last 18 months, the colts – Ben, Dazzle, Star and Walt – could not be brought into the main yard as they had not been gelded, so had to be kept separate from the mares. However, when the Gray family lost its appeal against the RSPCA in May 2010, and the ownership of the colts was signed over to the charity, The Horse Trust was finally able to get the colts gelded.

The colts have now fully recovered from the operation and are enjoying getting some well-deserved attention from visitors to the sanctuary.

Despite the temperamental weather, visitors from across the South-East have been flocking to The Horse Trust. Heather Mower from Kingston has been visiting The Horse Trust for 20 years and was keen to meet the Spindles Farm horses during her latest visit on Wednesday.

“Everybody saw pictures of the Spindles Farm horses on TV. It’s nice to be able to see them fully recovered. The work The Horse Trust has done with them is amazing,” said Heather.

Judith and Bob McSavany from Dunstable visited the Home of Rest for the first time on Wednesday.

“This is the first time we’ve visited – we’ve been saying for ages that we’d like to visit. The main reason we came was to meet the Spindles Farm horses. It’s nice to visit them and see how well they’re being looked after,” said Bob McSavany.

Also popular at The Horse Trust are the “have a go at grooming” demos, where visitors have the opportunity to try grooming one of the horses at the sanctuary.

Charlotte Gammon, 6, from Silverstone, Oxford, visited the sanctuary on Wednesday with her mum Sarah and enjoyed grooming George, a 9.3hh skewbald gelding. “It’s the first time I’ve groomed a horse. It was fun,” said Charlotte.

Its not just the visitors that enjoy the “have a go at grooming” demos – the horses enjoy it too, in particular Tessa, a 14.1hh grey mare that lives at The Horse Trust’s sanctuary.

“We recently used Tessa for a ‘have a go at grooming’ demo and she enjoyed it so much, she didn’t move for 2 hours. She fell asleep while she was being groomed,” said Tessa’s groom Claire Clark.