Restraint

Here is Doru, equipped for travel, tied to a gate leading to wild Welsh moorland.

He was tied up briefly because I wished to visit the bushes. I have previously had the experience of a horse that I was holding becoming alarmed by the performance of my large bodily needs. This is a bad situation in which to be dragged several yards forward. Whilst Doru was not the culprit in that situation, I did not wish to offer him the opportunity.

So Doru spent a few minutes restrained by a rope, during most of which he decimated all vegetation within reach in his customary manner as if he were famished. Which of course he was not, as he had been grazed in long lush grass barely half an hour earlier.

Danielle's hair needed restraint too when she wanted to photograph on a windy day. There's no point having a quality camera when one's hair blows across the lens. So I saved the situation and enabled her creativity to flourish unfettered by flailing follicles.

Personally I like to wear a hat. For summer, I have a Transylvanian forester's felt trilby, a rakish hat that demand a feather for greatest effect. But the days when I sported long hair are gone (by about five years). It was good for theatrical effect ("bohemian equestrian guide") but such a lot of work to keep clean and tidy. So, of course, on the trail it wasn't clean and tidy. Better to have the horses well groomed. Fortunately for me, Danielle never saw me at that sartorial nadir.