For quite a long time, I have been quietly writing a book. It has changed shape more than once. Chapters have moved, stories have come to the centre that I thought would sit at the edges, and the title itself has changed as I swallowed my pride and went with the better suggestion from Dan. So, I'd like to introduce Horse Before Us. The title has come to mean several things to me. It is about questioning what might happen if we put the horse before the other 'stuff': the outco

The Ex-Racehorse Giving Veterans a Second Chance Behind Prison Walls Johnny is a sensitive ex-racing Thoroughbred who has found a very different purpose in life. Through our Behind the Wire Programme, funded by AFEC, he works with military veterans in prison, and over time we have watched him form extraordinary connections with men who have often become disconnected from themselves, from other people and from any real sense of what comes next. One of those men had already giv

One handwritten thank you card from a military veteran reminds us why horse-human connection can reach places that words alone sometimes cannot. Sometimes, the most powerful evaluation form isn't a questionnaire. It's a handwritten card. At the end of our recent programme with military veterans in custody at HMP Leyhill, we invited each participant to write a thank you card to the horses if they wished. There was no expectation and no right or wrong way to do it. It was simpl