Horse_amp_amp_Hound__06_February_2018

WORKING IN THE CITY
CITY LIFE
O Until World War I Bruges had more than
200 licensed “equestrian cabs”.
O Today there are a total of 13 licences
run by five companies, with 85 horses
altogether, showing nearly 300,000 tourists
the sights each year.
O Carriages circulate between 9am and
10pm, and when a horse has been
working for eight hours, it’s entitled to
a 48-hour rest.
O Together the 13 horses circulating the
city at any one time produce around 50kg
of manure and urine a day — most of which
is caught in the poo bags that hang under
their tails. The bag is attached to the front
axle, so the weight is kept by the carriage,
not by the horse.
O The rest is cleaned up by the city council
— a service that is included in the hefty
annual cost of a licence (€6,500/£5,700).
O They tuck into 15kg of hard feed a day
when working, taking breaks to eat and
drink in between tours.
‘If you never cheat on trust, they follow you,’ says Mark, who once invited a horse into his pub
While he was there, one of the drivers from
the city came with his carriage and asked if
Mark would be interested in doing that as
a job.
“And the next Saturday I was in the box
seat,” he says. “My mother, who was not horsey,
was completely against it at the beginning
— she thought it was an exclusive sport for
wealthy people and that you couldn’t live off it,”
he says. “But when I could prove I could make
money from it and pay for my studies while I
was at university, I proved her wrong.”
Some years after university, he was working
in a publishing house and living outside Bruges
with his wife and small child.
“One evening someone was ringing at my
door without an appointment, and it was the
man I had worked for as a student, Luc Laloo.
He said he was stopping his business and as
he had no one to take over in his family, asked
if I wanted to take it on,” remembers Mark. “I
didn’t have a penny to buy the business, but in
20 minutes we made a deal and agreed that
every month I would pay him 10% of
my income.”
“I have quite a lot of horses that were
imported from Romania, Bulgaria and
Hungary to Belgium as slaughter horses,” he
says. “Sometimes they are a little skinny but
most of them have been working in agriculture,
so when you put a harness on they are used to
the work.”
But of course not all horses take to the job.
“I have bought horses that didn’t work out
— it’s often in their character,” he says. “If you
buy them from a dealer, you don’t know what
might have happened to them previously in
their life. And if you get a real sport horse, they
can flip sometimes and get stressy in the city.”
Twenty-five-year-old Rex, Mark’s oldest
resident, knows the route of the tour, stops for
the buses and cars, and helps the new horses
attune to city life — “the music, cars, flags
and people”.
“Eventually they aren’t afraid of anything,”
says Mark, which means they make the ideal
The American-style barn at Mark’s yard. The
stables can be mucked out using machines
and there is a ‘washing parlour’ and solarium
O A new carriage costs in the region of
€20,000 (£17,600) — made using light
aluminium and kitted out with modern
suspension, disk brakes and electric lights.
O During peak season (July to September)
the farrier is at Mark’s yard at least twice
a week and the vet comes once a week for
preventive check-ups.
equine film stars (including rubbing shoulders
with Colin Farrell in the film In Bruges…).
His old Welsh cob Lucky, whom he drove
at Royal Windsor — where he is now a
commentator — once came on stage for a play
his daughter was in, which involved taking him
up two floors in a lift. For a TV programme his
horses came into his sitting room — “my wife
thought I was mad” — and they’ve stopped by
at the pub he owns while he pulls a pint.
“It proves that if you have a good
relationship and you never cheat on trust, they
follow you,” he says. “In America being a horse
whisperer is a job — here it’s logic. You need to
be able to communicate with them so they can
tell you when something is wrong.”
And looking out on to the horses grazing on
Mark’s 27 acres, nestled between the walls of
the city and the canal, you can’t help thinking
that these horses have got their work-life
balance just right. H&H
WAS Mark ever cautious of this
new departure? Stepping into the
unknown, to dedicate his life
to horses?
“No I wasn’t nervous, I think I have a little
talent [with horses],” he says. “And I have
always been the sort of person that decides that
if I’m going to do something, I want to do it
really well.”
The secret to his line-up of gleaming
equine tour guides is, he says, “in the eye of the
master”.
“We pamper them because I want horses
that are full, so I need to be able to see which
horse needs more oats, or one that is not in
good shape.”
Not all the horses that come to Mark start
off looking quite so fit and healthy.
38 Horse & Hound 8 February 2018