Q&A with Lisa Miller

I start work at 7am, this is when the horses get checked and fed then hayed and turned out if they are not going out on patrol early. Then onto the mucking out, of which I muck out 8 then set fair their beds and sweep the yards. The next thing I need to do is ensure the horses are groomed / bathed and trimmed ready for their days work so that by 10am they are ready and the lorry is loaded with their tack, hay and water ready for their allocated officers to collect them and be off on their way.

After this the other horses need grooming before we ride which may involve schooling in the arena, nuisance training or riding out to train the horses. I also need to fit in riding lessons for the Police officers and planning the running of the yard and facilities. It is my job to oversee the health of our 8 horses and plan their workload.

I obviously care about all of the horse’s I look after, but if I had to say a favourite then it would be Rosie who was the first Police horse I found and trained, she has a lovely personality!

I discuss our horse’s needs with Claire Akers who helps plan our horse’s diets. Our horses get shod every 4 weeks and need strong feet so I like to use Healthy Hooves to assist with this. I use Hi-Fi Lite for any horses that need to lose weight or are starting to look a little too well. Both of these feeds allow us to feed plenty of fibre which helps keep the horses in good condition and calm which is very important for Police horses! For horses who do not cope with eating large quantities of fibre in their feed I use Fibremix which, compared to other mixes available, has a higher fibre content so helps with the horses digestive health as well as keeping them calm. All of our horses have Natural Vitality Performance Vits & Mins to ensure their diet is balanced.

I would say the main difference is the constantly changing routine for the horses and therefore the staff too. The horses may start work anywhere from 10am to 8pm as they do day and night turns with their officers. Plans are constantly changing due to the nature of policing so I have to ensure horses are still fed within certain time brackets and receive enough forage when out patrolling for hours at a time. I have to closely monitor their days off, which also change often, to make sure they get enough time off. There are also many similarities though, they all need mucking out and are all unpredictable which brings about many challenges!

Our horses work through 3 stages of training, when they reach green they are ready to be allocated to an officer. Nuisance training starts early on and involves getting the horse used to scary objects, noises etc and we do this by training them with a more experienced horse to lead them and keep them calm. I ride our horses out alone as I feel this helps them to become more confident and not depend on other horses too much. We use training days where all of our horses are ridden together, we practice troop drill and then we use people on the ground as our crowd. Practice for policing football matches begins on the training days where we have people on the ground being our crowd. They will attend football matches with a calm horse and start off further from the stadium and gradually once they are confident get more involved with controlling crowds if required.

I started working for the Essex Police Mounted Unit in Oct 2007 to assist with setting up the new unit.

The best part is definitely buying and training horses and seeing them go on to be fully operational Police horses, it is very satisfying. The worst part – drain cleaning!

That elusive good all-rounder, it can take months to find a suitable horse. Firstly they have to be over 16.2hh and under 18hh, then the right stamp of horse – I look for Irish Draught / Shire crosses as they tend to be strong and have a good temperament. They need a trainable nature and to be trusting of people. We have each prospective horse vetted then take them on a months trial where we can assess their suitability.