Saughs Farm

Sally Spencer

I have been involved with horses for over 30 years. I began life as a horse owner during my early twenties. As a child in Canada I was sent to a few summer horse camps. After moving to Edinburgh in 1967, I fed my horse appetite with sporadic visits to local riding schools and helping at livery stables. After a number of years nursing in Edinburgh, during which time I was given a horse on loan by a patient, I was drawn to combining my desire to assist people and work with horses. This materialised when I began working at the Drum Riding for Disabled, in Gilmerton, Edinburgh in 1974.
The experience I gained during my years at the Drum was a distinct privilege. It was at this time I came to own my first horse, Butterfly, a rising three year old TB. Looking back I was pretty clueless but with great intentions, like many other people entering into such an adventure with no reason to think otherwise. Butterfly and I developed an incredible telepathic connection that brought both joy and dilemma into our lives. I’ve never forgotten it and it has proved to influence me to the present day.

This period of my early education reinforced my core belief that there had to be a way of working with horses and riding them that was non-direct pressure-based for both horse and human. Needless to say, looking back, I was largely winging it, relying on my intuition and commonsense.  The snag about this is that emotions can get in the way. I was aware that I was not equipped with the appropriate knowledge and skills to really help my horse.  I subsequently discovered I couldn’t find any other people who possessed many of them either or could articulate their skills. As a result I suffered numerous bouts of heartache, sense of failure and lapses of confidence amongst my successes and magical moments. I am sure that I am not unique in this.

By 1985 my husband, Tommy, and I had moved to a small holding in Lanarkshire, Scotland. As I became a breeder of Morgan Horses, standing my stallion Monnington Andante at stud and marvelled in the world of raising young stock I faced various setbacks, the most debilitating suffering the effects of chronic fatigue. I simply adored helping youngsters to feel secure and have good grounding before venturing out into the world. Impairment of my mental, emotional and physical wherewithal occurred to such an extent that I had to notice that my horses were not only reading changes in my energy field but reflecting it, in particular my stallion. My dogs did too. Frustration abounded as I felt powerless to remedy what was happening for quite some time. Over the years I developed my interest in complementary therapies. I was instrumental in the promotion of nutritional feed supplements aiding joint function and soft tissue repair and studied care and trimming of the barefoot horse, transitioning all of my shod horses out of shoes.

By the year 2000 a window of change appeared. A virtual troop of remarkable horsemen and women seemed to be available to me through the efforts of Trisha Wren, now resident in New Zealand., who ran Centaur Clinics. They were Mark Rashid, Leslie Desmond and Peggy Cummings.  I have attended clinics and activities whether as an auditor or ride participant and through them and their associates my life, learning and experience continues to expand.  I moved to Saughs Farm in June 2007 with my husband, Tommy, and our family of horses and dogs with the intention of creating a facility offering core connected foundations for the benefit of humans and horses alike..

Trainers Profiles