‘He won’t go anywhere now’: former police horse reunited with owner who bottle-fed him as a foal

A one-tonne Percheron police horse who has retired after a distinguished career will spend the rest of his life with the woman who bottle-fed him as a foal – thanks to a post on Facebook.

H&H reported in February that Police Horse Putney had helped arrest a man carrying a knife, in what was to have been the last week of his 12 years with the Metropolitan Police.

The H&H article was shared in a Percheron Facebook group, where Alison Gardner saw it, and realised PH Putney was the foal she had known as Boris, 17 years ago. Having spoken to the Met, Alison finally welcomed Boris home on 31 July.

“It’s lovely, but it hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” Alison told H&H. ‘It’s awesome to have him home.”

Alison explained that she and her former partner bought Boris’s dam while she was carrying him, and his sire.

“His mum had just foaled, and everything was fine, and we left them for half an hour,” she said. “When we came back, his mum had died, she’d haemorrhaged internally.

“So we bottle-fed Boris; I used to sit up with him every night.”

Boris moved quickly on to a bucket, and at four months old, Alison and her partner tried to put him with the other mares and foals.

“But he just wouldn’t integrate with them,” she said. “He’d hear us talking and come through all the electric fence to get to us. I don’t play with bottle-fed foals but I used to sit with him so he had company. But he got used to it.”

When Boris was two, Alison was working with him on the ground, but her situation changed when she and her partner split up.

“I moved away, the horses got sold and I never knew what happened to them,” she said. “I was devastated but it was a messy situation and I just had to leave them behind.”

It was 15 years later that Anne Marshall saw the H&H post and shared it to her group. Alison did not realise PH Putney was Boris until she realised from comments that Anne had had Boris’s dam, Eltra Bella, as a young horse.

“She said ‘This is Edlingtons Boris’,” Alison said. “I hadn’t seen him, didn’t know what had happened to him; it was a real blast from the past. Anne messaged to say she’d been going to take him on as she’s got his half-brother but did I want to take him.

“I’ve got a livery yard and had three horses so I didn’t need another one but it was Boris; I couldn’t say no. And that was it; he’s come back.”

Anne contacted the Met, and the force was agreeable for Boris to go back to Alison. There were delays as he was unexpectedly called back into service, taking part in Trooping the Colour and on duty at Royal Ascot, but he was then officially retired, and delivered to Alison.

“He came in a huge great lorry, with a driver and a lady called Susie, and I told them ‘I am going to cry’, and I did!” Alison said. “It was awesome, seeing him again for the first time in so long.

“I’d forgotten how big Percherons are; he’s about 17.3hh but everything about him is just huge.”

Boris is now happily settled in the home he will spend the rest of his life in; Alison said he will come in and go out with the others and be ridden now and again.

“I took him round the village that Saturday and it was awesome,” she said. “All the sights and sounds were nothing to him after what he’s seen in the police. He enjoyed it and everyone who saw him was a bit blown away by this monstrous horse.”

Alison said Boris has already accumulated a fan club at the yard.

“It’s strange as I haven’t seen him since he was two but the things he does haven’t changed,” she said. “Little things like when he was a baby, after he’d drunk his milk, he’d lick the doorframe. I gave him some nuts the other day and afterwards, he went straight to the doorframe and started licking it. This great big walloping horse, who’s done 12 years with the Met, and nothing has changed; he’s still licking doorframes!

“I don’t know if he remembers me or not; maybe he recognises my voice, but I’d like to think he remembers me. He watches me and ‘talks’ to me, and his nostrils go so maybe he does. I was his ‘mum’, after all!

“It’s lovely to have him back and he won’t want for anything. He’s home and he won’t go anywhere now.”

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