I SAID goodbye to my old boy Bounce this week. Still haven’t really got my head round that if I’m honest. We’d been together for thirteen years so it will take a while before I can go to the field and not expect to see him there, especially as he would always come moseying over to see me, even if I was carrying a headcollar, writes Farmer columnist Gilly Fraser.

It was amazing that we ever came to be together in the first place. He was an ex-racer with a few wins under his girth, I was a rider with a pretty low but accurate estimate of my own abilities and absolutely no thought in my head of ever riding, let alone owning, an ex-racer.

Had the notion ever even occurred to me I would have dismissed it instantly, automatically assuming I’d never be good enough or brave enough to cope with a wired-to-the-moon Thoroughbred.

That all changed with Bounce. He belonged to a syndicate of which my older brother was a member and when he retired from the track, he came to live with me.

I was delighted to have him join the horsey gang, but assumed more experienced people would ride him. However one day, I found myself putting my brave pants on and taking him out for a hack. All by myself. They must have been very big brave pants.

I only intended to take him to the crossroads and back – an easy and undemanding twenty-minute ride that would ask no questions of either of us. I knew I could get off and walk him back in-hand if absolutely necessary.

Two and a half hours later I rode back into the yard, smitten. He had been positively angelic, and hadn’t put a hoof wrong, so when we reached the crossroads, we just kept going. It was the start of a love affair.

Sadly for Bounce his winning ways ended when he left the racetrack – I don’t think we achieved a single red ribbon together.

We did once get a special rosette for being the highest placed twosome riding western in an ex-racer class. And yes, before you ask, we were the only twosome riding western in the class.

But what we may have lacked in ambition, we more than made up for in variety. We pretty much tried a spot of everything – showjumping, cross-country, dressage, endurance, western and loads of very happy hacking.

On the roads he was about as bombproof as they come, never turning a hair at any of the heavy agricultural monstrosities or cement wagons we would regularly encounter.

Yapping dogs didn’t trouble him unduly, but if we spotted another horse and rider up ahead that could get him on his toes. In a group he remembered his racehorse days and definitely felt his place ought to be at the front, but otherwise he was pretty laid back about most things in life.

I can only remember falling off him once in all those years, which is pretty remarkable given my track record for unscheduled dismounts.

We were doing a cross-country course and his Harrier Jump Jet impersonation on entering the water jump proved just a little too exuberant for me and I performed an award-winning triple somersault before plummeting into the murky depths.

Even then his manners proved exemplary and he stood like a good ‘un to let me heave my soggy self back into the saddle to carry on and complete the course. It wasn’t my most glamorous look.

He wasn’t a saint of course. He never napped, reared or bucked, but I remember one very long and arduous ride when he jigjogged and pulled my arms out of their sockets the whole way round, executing some pretty impressive airs above the ground that convinced me I had zero hope of getting home alive. But I did.

A couple of years ago he let me know he’d had enough of being ridden, and spent a happy retirement bumbling about in the field with his best mate.

He owed me absolutely nothing but I owed him loads.

I also owed him an easy passing and made sure he got that. So bye-bye my lovely Bounce. You were a star.