There's a perfection about Clydesdales.
They are incredible athletes, incredibly graceful
in their movement.
Just big personalities.
It makes you feel small and humbled
and incredibly privileged to be with them.
They're beautiful. They are just beautiful.
In order to have a Clydesdale become your partner,
you really have to put your ego to the side and really be there
for that creature...
..that depends on you.
I see them as just the most amazing breed.
It's a treasure trove of positive traits and characteristics
that I absolutely am passionate that we should not lose.
You only need to look at the herd books to see that it's diminishing,
there are far fewer horses.
You don't need to be an expert to know that. That's just obvious.
I started asking questions of the people who bred the horses,
and they were telling me shocking stories of the breed entering
what they call the extinction vortex,
when a number of factors come together
and, unless you react quickly, the whole breed
can just collapse.
So I could either pretend I hadn't heard that,
or else I could do something about it.
It's now or never.
We've really got to save this breed.
They touch the soul.
They really do.
I'm Janice Kirkpatrick, I'm a designer.
I have a business in Glasgow with my husband,
an architect called Ross Hunter.
We met when we were students.
This is perfect...
We work for some of the big global players.
British Airways, banks like RBS, a lot of... Janice!
Am I not allowed to say that?
No.
I suppose I've always been a big kid my whole life, in lots of ways.
I like toys. I like bikes. The power is remarkable.
Horses are the same.
I think women at a young age identify with the power a horse
can give them, and it's exciting.
I was always interested in the Clydesdale horse
through my love of horses,
but also through design.
30-odd years of practising as a designer,
I've come to truly believe that old is gold.
And, for me, the Clydesdale is very much this kind of a thing.
Do you remember when horses were here?
Yeah. But, I mean, I can remember when there was horses here,
but there's not much of it left.
Oh, boy...
This is a barn that would have at one time
had several horses in it.
These would have been big horses.
Clydesdales, the pre-eminent breed.
The best breed.
The most highly bred horses in human history.
And people were immensely proud of their horses.
The breed was born in the Clyde Valley,
to the south-west of Glasgow.
Everything that came from the Clyde was of incredible quality.
You know, the ships, the locomotives, steam engines.
And the Clydesdale horse.
ARCHIVE FOOTAGE: In the lowlands of Scotland,
let's not forget the great work that's been done,
and is still being done, by the ploughman and his good
servant, the horse. The heavy horse.
Scotland's pride and joy - the Clydesdale.
You need a really well assembled musculoskeletal frame
to get great power from the rear end of a horse,
because it's the great power that gives it its ability
to push into a collar and move, you know, a tonne weight.
And it's also the power you need for a great riding horse.
That's where the big horse race started.
The race to create the biggest horses,
which could produce the most power
that would fuel the agricultural revolutions
and Industrial Revolution.
PA SYSTEM: Second - Ronnie Black, number 10.
And third - number 11,
Amazing Grace, from Sandy Aitken.
Well done, Sandy.
APPLAUSE
I love coming to shows like this because it really reminds me
of just how long the Clydesdale has been part
of our culture, our history.
That's a nice one.
Is it square buckles, or...? Yeah, it's proper square buckles.
They're always putting a hand on them and stroking them
and trying to make them...
Try and get them to be your friend.
Mess on legs.
But we don't panic.
It's a proper kind of Clydesdale show as well.
There's a bit of a focus about it. Well, the only one that really gets
big numbers in that scenario is the Highland. Highland, yeah.
PA SYSTEM: Those who are taking part in the pairs competition...
I think my earliest memory is of being at
what must have been a country fair or a fete in Dumfries.
And I must have been really wee, not much more than a toddler.
I remember gripping onto the front of the saddle and looking down,
and the movement of the horse going like that,
and thinking, "Oh!"
When, I think, I was seven, I started proper riding lessons.
Thereafter, I became hooked.
When I was a kid, shows with Clydesdale horses
would have been packed and it would have been really exciting,
it would have been a real celebration -
go and see the big horses.
Today, it's a much thinner affair,
there are fewer people and older people.
Some of the older photography,
when they had dappled greys, they had horses of all colours,
which I think would have been quite amazing to see.
Today, there's really only one colour of horse, and that's brown.
And also there's not many horses.
Well, this class that's just being shown just now,
in the mid '90s there could have been 20 in that class,
and there are three today.
So we're not...
..quite sure why.
And that was number 27 from Charles Jamieson...
The overwhelming fact of the Clydesdale is that the horse
and everything that surrounds it is ageing.
Catalogues are available from the marquee
at the top end of the arena.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning, Joseph.
Ugh...
Hello, Phoebe.
When I went to Glasgow School of Art, I was 18
and the awful thing was I had to sell my horse
because no-one else in the family rode, and it scarred me very deeply.
I still have a lot of regret over it.
I always had a heartening to go back and to ride again.
So I decided I wanted a Clydesdale.
I wanted a black one.
The blacks really appealed to me. And it's a personal thing -
I just think that they look amazing.
I had a look around and I couldn't find any black horses in the UK.
So I ended up with this one.
He's an American Clydesdale...
..from Oregon.
Joe.
He's got a really expressive face.
He's very old-fashioned in style.
He's a big horse by any...any measure.
He's about....just a shade under 18 hands.
Woo!
What makes the Clydesdale so special is, for me,
just the sheer power of them. They are just magnificent.
Guys like Joe can be so light, absolutely light as a feather,
and when you get that power with the lightness,
it's a really special thing.
When I'd made the decision to get a black Clydesdale, I got
really interested in why there were no black horses in the UK.
What had happened to the black horses?
Where had they gone?
I'm on my way to meet Shona Harrison, whose partner,
John Zawadski, sadly died a few months ago.
John was a real expert in the Clydesdale world,
and he travelled up and down the UK to visit different shows.
I think this is it.
There's quite a lot of horses around,
a lot of stables round about, as well. Yeah, there are.
And there's a livery yard up there.
I was born here, but I lived at a farm further up the road.
And then as soon as my dad and all that retired and the farms
were sold two years after that, John and I bought the place back.
Shona's family have been in Clydesdales for generations,
and I'm really hoping that she can tell me more
about John's thoughts on the breed.
Come into John's office. I'd love to!
A lot of it's just as he left it,
because it's going to take a long time to go through things.
Just watch the steps.
Photographs galore.
Fantastic.
There's one called Grand National that's used as a...
It's W Johnson, 1918.
I'm very interested in how the horses change over the centuries.
They definitely have changed a lot. Over here...
It's a very organised man.
..as I was saying, the breed histories are all down here.
Clydesdale Horse Society history.
All that up there's the history of Clydesdale Horse Society.
Just amazing. All the original documents like newsletters, letters
from the secretary, that sort of thing.
I'm just amazed. It's not at all what I expected.
What a job he's done. It's just amazing.
These are stallions, 19th century.
So he's pieced together all the stallion information.
This is going back decades and decades, you know, like centuries.
It's a cornucopia.
I've never known anything like it!
So did John map out the bloodlines?
Yes, he's got the male bloodlines.
Oh, my God! The illustrations, like, pre-camera.
That's your Prince of Wales again.
John Zawadski's bloodlines.
And he's got two male bloodlines, one for Prince of Wales and one
for Darnley, both of whom were foundation stallions.
It's like layers thick with information, bloodlines and people
exchanging horses over hundreds of miles and continents.
What strikes me about these documents is they were people
with a long term view, building
this industrial power plant of an animal.
Just glorious! Gorgeous.
Shona's collection includes antique sales catalogues from Scotland's
most famous breeder of Clydesdales, Lawrence Drew.
They are just exceptional,
I've never seen catalogues like this ever.
They are absolutely exceptional.
It's a sale catalogue for the Rolls Royces of horses.
Lawrence Drew, he knew he was doing.
You know, when you look at Prince of Wales, I'm sure there
must be a note somewhere about his colour,
but he looks like a very black horse.
I've not seen a Clydesdale stallion in the herd today
that looks like this horse.
Ross-o! Mm-hmm?
This is the treat.
Oh, aye.
Wow. It's the catalogue for
the dispersal sale of Lawrence Drew's herd.
This is 150 years old. That's amazing.
That's Prince of Wales, one of the foundation sires.
And these are all drawn.
Wow. It's just awesome.
What a size of a horse!
Look at that! It's incredible.
A lovely smile as well!
I would too, I think, if I were him!
I missed this the first time.
And I looked at the next page,
and then I flicked back and I found that. Does this still exist?
I don't know.
Merryton was where the first Clydesdale horses
were really created.
So what had happened to the black horses?
I started to dig.
At Merryton, there's a big arch entrance with what looks like
a statue of a Clydesdale horse on top, and lots of people
arriving with their horses.
I'm relieved to find that Merryton was still a farm.
It looks like the baronial tower is still there and many
of the original buildings.
It'd be really nice to track down some
of those black Clydesdale bloodlines,
because the breed originally had a strong black component.
Merryton. This is where Lawrence Drew had his operation.
He was absolutely clear that his horses
weren't just to be beautiful.
They had to be functional,
and, boy, they had to be sound.
Merryton is where it all began.
Your dad said that it was 70 years, I think, he arrived
here after Lawrence Drew had left.
Did he tell you stories about Lawrence Drew's era?
One of the things I remember Dad saying was that many
of the stable hands were actually female.
Gosh, it's absolutely huge.
It's stunning, isn't it? It's really lovely.
I love the colour of the sandstone and the different textures.
I think these will be oak beams. They are lovely.
Big building.
And it's been for big horses. The dimensions...
Dad said... Well, you can see where the stalls were,
you know, straight in front. Uh-huh.
That was where the original stalls were.
Do you see the height in the dimension of them?
The big upright and then...
I think Dad said there was 22. 22.
I mean, when this was full it must have been quite some sight,
and there'd just be those gorgeous horse bottoms all lined up.
Merryton was owned by the Hamiltons.
The Dukes of Hamilton were immensely wealthy.
Merryton was one of the big farms on the Duke of Hamilton's estate,
and Lawrence Drew was one of the Duke of Hamilton's men.
It's really interesting to be here in Chatelherault, where the Dukes
of Hamilton had their power base.
And they thought on a big scale.
Their horse breeding was on that same grand scale.
Lawrence Drew, he was an entrepreneur.
He was a showman.
Drew knew where he was going
with the commercial part of the business.
Thousands of horses were exported, and because this was very much
a business, they were building a brand and this was a big plan.
This was a worldwide plan.
This was about exporting to Australia and Russia and Italy
and North America and Canada.
And the blacks had been exported
as being amongst the highest quality.
It would have been quite a busy place.
But it's very quiet now.
If Drew had lived, I would just love to have seen
what he could have bred.
But he died, hence the dispersal sale.
This sale would have drawn people from all over the world,
and apparently 6,000 people attended it.
So all of his stock, which was really, you know, a treasure trove
of the breed, it was being dispersed throughout the world.
I had a hunch that, because Clydesdale horses had been exported,
that there was a package of genetic material
that had been exported with them.
I want to understand more about the underlying health
of the Scottish herd...
..and get a snapshot of whether or not our gene pool is healthy.
I quickly discovered that the UK has a very small and shrinking pool
of Clydesdale horses, which means it's very hard to keep the breed
healthy in the future.
I looked a bit further and started talking to people about it,
talking to the vets about it,
and they started telling me about problems with the breed.
I started asking questions of the people who bred the horses.
We lost five one year in a summer.
And they were telling me shocking stories of the mortality rate
and issues of breeding, like massively
reduced fertility in mares and stallions,
and increased foal mortality,
which means there are simply fewer horses
and there's less genetic diversity.
Clear signals of the breed entering what they call
the extinction vortex.
And, unless you react quickly, the whole breed can just collapse.
And that changed everything.
Everyone knows there's a problem. Nobody knows what the solution is,
and nobody wants to act first.
I just found it just incredibly sad.
So, like, I couldn't possibly not try and do something about it.
I really needed to go and speak to some scientists
to find out exactly what was happening.
The first thing we need to find out
is how healthy is the herd in Scotland?
I'm going to find somebody -
somebody who has the knowledge to find out
what's happening and what needs to be done.
Secondly, we need to find out
if there is an issue with inbreeding.
And the most important question is can the breed survive?
That is the really big question.
Hi. Hi, I'm trying to get through to Jessica Petersen.
RINGING
Hi, Janice. Thanks for taking this call.
I really appreciate it.
I'm really hoping that you can help
unravel this Clydesdale mystery.
I'm trying to understand how viable the genetic population
is in our Clydesdale horses in Scotland.
I'm wondering if there's a way that we can measure that,
if that would be something that you could help with.
It seems like something that we could get at
using genetic data.
How diverse is this population?
Are the Scottish horses different than North American horses?
So definitely something that's up my alley.
Jessica has agreed to do a genetic study of the Clydesdale populations
in the USA, Canada and the UK, and in order to do this
she needs DNA from horses in all three countries.
By collecting that DNA, she can get a snapshot of the diversity
and therefore the health of the populations
in those respective countries.
So Jessica is going to get 50 samples from Canada,
50 samples from the USA,
which leaves me to get 50 samples from the UK, and that gives us 150
hair follicle samples, which is 150 bits of horse DNA.
That should be great.
We should be good to go with that.
This is my little tool kit for my genetic collections.
It requires the breeder to provide a hair sample
of around 30 to 40 follicles,
which are pulled from the mane or the tail.
And that's really it. Then they're placed in a stamped,
addressed envelope and sent back to me.
So it's not a huge job for people to do.
I'm going to do three horses this morning.
Joe is in his usual domain, which is here.
That's us. That's our first sample.
So that's about, I would say, 30, 40 hairs, with the roots intact.
Stick that in an envelope.
What I'm going to do this afternoon is contact breeders
in the UK independently, explain to them the project
and ask them to participate.
Hi, it's Janice Kirkpatrick trying to reach Caroline Reynolds
regarding the Clydesdale DNA information.
VOICEOVER: There's this feeling generally
within the kind of Clydesdale owners in Scotland and in the UK
that everything's just OK.
You know, they see the horse outside in the field
and the horse looks healthy,
and I don't think we've quite got the urgency of the situation.
But people have been actually OK about it, saying,
"Yes, we will do it."
Thanks. Thank you.
Need to count the bags.
One, two, three, four...
You're a star. Thank you.
It would just really help.
16 samples. Fantastic.
I'm the sort of individual behind the Clydesdale project.
Another two. I've got another two.
Ah. Blackstone.
Thank you, Bob.
Two, three, four. 36...
..so far, so we need another 14.
Thank you so much. Bye.
49, 50.
We actually have...we have 50 samples.
We've got 50 samples.
That means that we've actually managed to find
enough DNA to do our survey of the Clydesdale population.
It's really good.
This just came in the post for you, Janice. Oh.
Thanks, Zoe.
These are the results of the DNA analysis.
Ah.
"Data generated from these samples support what you suspected.
"Based upon the relative isolation and small population size
"of Clydesdales in Scotland, they do have less diversity
"than Clydesdales studied from North America."
And there is an increase in inbreeding
within the Scottish population.
Jessica, I've only skimmed it, but it seems that our hunch was right,
that there is an issue with genetic diversity.
So, yes, the concern about the Scottish population
being very small in size held true in that inbreeding estimates
of the horses in Scotland were generally quite a bit
higher than from horses in North America.
And that goes back again to the small population size
where, if there's just not a whole lot of horses,
you're going to be mating relatives to relatives, whether or not
you are intending to do so.
For the first time, I think
we have definitive scientific genetic proof
that the Clydesdale herd in Scotland is in danger.
We have to do something about it.
It suddenly dawned on me that I could maybe bring back some
new genetic material, new genetic Clydesdale material to Scotland
that would give it some diversity and some sustainability.
The very best horses were exported
because they commanded the highest prices.
They were exported to Canada from Glasgow, from Liverpool,
and then from Canada they went down into the United States
and South America.
When the genetic material was dispersed, some pretty big herds
were founded across Canada, and some of the black bloodlines
are in these herds today, the black bloodlines that have their roots
in the old stud books in Scotland.
What I'm looking for is a great-looking
and great-performing pregnant breeding mare,
so I can create black Clydesdale horses in Scotland.
I think the time has now come for the horse to come back home
again to the place it was created.
It's important that I bring a horse back into the UK
that is as different as possible genetically from the horses
that we have at the moment because by doing that
I will strengthen and widen and deepen the genetic pool.
Most Clydesdales exported from Scotland
ended up here, in Ontario.
Many of them passed through a really famous farm
in Pickering Township, which is just outside Toronto.
We come here, where so many of those horses landed,
and it's like this...
..almost Scottish-looking landscape that's not unfamiliar.
This place is called Thistle Ha',
and it's where the Miller family had their operations.
The Miller family pretty much controlled the transatlantic trade
in Clydesdale horses all that time ago.
Welcome to Thistle Ha' Inn. Oh, thank you. It's a lovely house.
So this is a portrait of my great-grandfather.
He settled this farm as a pioneer in 1839.
It was the family business in Canada and the United States.
I recognise this name - Lord Harry.
This Lord Harry poster
was advertising when the horse is available for breeding mares.
It's wonderful.
And he's by the very famous Prince of Wales.
So this is going right back to the beginning of the herd books.
Bred by Lawrence Drew,
which was a famous Scottish Clydesdale breeder.
This is beautiful.
He was a champion everywhere he was shown.
He was an unbeatable horse.
What's amazing is that the Miller family were the first and biggest
importers of Clydesdales from Scotland into Canada,
and this small farm was once the centre
of the international Clydesdale trade.
After the Civil War, they had to start rebuilding
everything in the United States.
A lot of horses were killed in battles, so they came to Canada
to re-establish their herd.
The other thing that was happening too
was the opening of the prairies.
To plough, harvest, cultivate a farm that ran from horizon to horizon,
the Clydesdale was king.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
Wow.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
I've come to Saskatchewan because there are
descendants of the original horses that were exported
from Scotland to Canada all these years ago.
SAT NAV: Turn left at the stop sign.
Here we go.
Yeah, I think we've got some Clydesdales.
It's just such an amazing country. It's so big,
you know, flat and vast and endless.
It's so different from Scotland and the land that we bred
those horses on originally.
With me I have got John Hankinson, who is a longstanding good friend.
He's an equine manipulator.
He's a master farrier.
He's got a whole bunch of tools in his box.
Let's just go in this way. Is this it?
Yeah.
We're here.
At last!
CHILD SHOUTING
Janice, how are we doing? Good to see you. Good to see you.
The place looks so different. This is John. Hi there.
How are you doing? This is Derek. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
Derek Cey is from a family of Clydesdale breeders.
I think they're in their fifth generation of Clydesdale breeding.
CAR HORN BLARES
They're coming.
They're coming. Look at the sight!
Awesome.
DEREK WHISTLES
Come on.
Hello.
Hello!
It's just great. This is what I came here for.
It's just... It's like swimming with horses.
It's just brilliant. SHE LAUGHS
I mean, Derek's herd is vast compared to anything
I can look at at home.
And it's very moving because it evokes the images of these huge
studs that we had in Scotland 100 years ago, 150 years ago.
It's just such a treat to see that.
CHATTER
First impression - is that where you start?
Janice was looking for a sound horse, who's going to remain sound
for the next ten years.
John is so used to looking
at the minor discrepancies in horse movement.
This is years spent looking at thoroughbreds, where you're looking
at, you know, every time they plant their feet
what bit strikes the ground - is it the outside, is it the inside?
It takes years to kind of tune your eye into that.
And one of my biggest problems coming out here
was, like, if I came out on my own,
I'm never going to see half this stuff.
I just do not have the skill and experience to pick out
those little bits and pieces.
My face should tell you how I feel about horse shopping today.
I'm very excited about it.
All of our land is named around here, so we are going
to Keasey Pasture.
We'll be going to see Jack.
He is one of our three main stallions in our operation.
Nice, big, gentle giant, and he
has his core mares with him
that he's been hanging out with all summer, so...
It's going to be a very long few days.
There's a lot of horses to look at.
Can't wait to get started!
OK, so that's a yearling.
Mitzi is just behind, if you want to have a better
look at her while she's standing there.
So this is Mitzi. This is Mitzi, yeah. Mitzi's nice.
How are you doing, my dear? Eh?
That is Bacardi, nice little fancy mare.
I've got to be really objective.
When I see a horse I like, I'll write down the name,
I'll take a photograph on my phone.
I want a horse that has a good length of neck,
because you need that in order to produce a good riding horse.
It needs its neck to balance.
It needs big hindquarters.
Not fat hindquarters - big, muscular hindquarters.
That's where the power comes.
The limbs have got to be straight.
I also want a horse that has got really great rhythm, great movement,
that has got a kind of cadence to its step.
Amber, a three-year-old.
She's got a little bit of an attitude.
Can we take a closer look at her? Yeah, you betcha.
She caught my eye, she caught John's eye, and she's got nice shoulder...
All her zones are good.
And she's actually got quite a nice rear end.
What do you think?
Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Yeah.
The other thing about Amber is she is in foal.
Derek thinks it's Willow Way Nightlight,
who is the big black stallion.
So that adds a different dimension.
He's quite a rare black bloodline from an excellent
herd of Clydesdales.
A lot of checkmarks you've got going there and stuff.
I'd like to see that book when you're all done.
It's tiring because you're concentrating.
You're thinking, I mustn't mess this up. I mustn't miss something.
So where do you keep your good ones, Derek?
THEY LAUGH You know how that works.
So, Janice, what are your thoughts?
I really liked Amber.
What did you think?
I think you've mentioned the one that I've got on my sort of list
as being the prime candidate.
She's in foal. She's got the right attitude.
She's got a nice action.
She's good, clean-limbed. Looks to tick all the boxes.
As I say, she, at the moment, is the one that I'm thinking
is probably the best one for you.
What's the plan now? Are we going to do the hands on bit?
I think that would be a good idea.
I wanted a pair of eyes on this horse
and a pair of hands on this horse.
John's a very, very good judge of how a horse
is put together physically.
That's you.
So far, so good.
John's also got a good feel for personalities.
This is good.
A hell of a girl.
I like this one.
What are you...?
Awesome. Awesome? Yeah.
Thank you, John.
She's a cracking girl, isn't she? She's... Yeah. Fabulous.
Hey, good girl.
And I think that really affected John.
Very rarely he ever finds a horse that tries so hard.
And he was just amazed that this horse, which was really a wild
horse, was trying so hard to understand what he wanted.
Team hug.
Team hug. Thank you.
I'm so pleased that you came with me.
That's the right horse.
Her energy is just amazing.
Hey there.
VOICE ON PHONE: Have you organised it?
Yes, I've not organised it all but, yes, we have a horse.
You are going to love her.
John is absolutely in love with her.
Like, unbelievably in love with her.
What this horse is bringing over is a whole toolkit of genetic
lovely things that could, you know, take the Scottish herd in different
directions, and that for me is really exciting.
This isn't just about even my lifetime - this is about, you know,
other people's lifetimes.
Of all breeds, the Clydesdale deserves a future.
Good run? Oh, not too bad.
Ah, so... Nice to meet you.
This is Amber.
Her maiden voyage.
Come on, sweets.
Do you want to give her a last petting?
Just everybody walk up nice and slow there.
Oh. Atta girl.
All right.
CHILDREN: Bye, Amber! There you guys go.
She's now got the beginning of a very big journey to Scotland,
back to Clydesdale heartland.
Copy for your records. Thank you.
That's everything done here.
So today is D-Day.
It really is the conclusion of Amber's journey over here.
She's had 3,000 kilometres by road and then another...
She's had an eight-hour journey
from Chicago that's been delayed for five hours.
So she's going to be fairly tired.
I'm really looking forward to seeing her.
My husband Ross hasn't seen her at all.
So it's a big deal for both of us, really.
Amber coped ridiculously well with the travel.
It's now beginning to feel a bit like Christmas.
I'm very relieved that she is so...cool with everything.
She just looks really alert, really interested in it all.
She's not fazed by it. So that's good.
Oh...
Yeah, I don't need your help.
You're such a pest!
Come on, missus.
This is our Canadian lady.
Don't be cheeky.
She's very cheeky.
I don't call my horses by their pedigree names.
It's quite nice just to hang with them for a while and find out
what their characters are like.
She just doesn't feel like an Amber.
She's not an amber light.
This horse is a full-on green light.
She was just so audacious that I decided to call her
Jesse James after the outlaw.
Good girl. Good girl.
Right, Steve-o.
We've got John Morris, my local vet,
coming to have a look at Jesse.
SHE SIGHS
I'm knackered!
Is this your new girl, Janice?
This certainly is. Good girl.
Good girl.
All right, so these are the identification documents
for the Clydesdale Horse Society.
She looks a very different type.
It's interesting to see that there was another line
of Clydesdales differentiated in another country.
In terms of her pregnancy,
we don't know quite how far on she is.
It's really very difficult to try and get a date.
It's not unusual to find that people sit up for about two weeks
waiting for their mare to foal,
and then they go to bed because they're so tired,
and then guess what happens - they foal that night.
And are there any particular features of a Clydesdale birth
as opposed to a normal horse birth?
Clydesdales can be more difficult.
If the foal is not in the right position, then they can get stuck.
Beyond that, there's a sort of inner sack - normally the foal bursts
through that, as part of the birth process.
But if the foal is born and the sack is over its face,
then it can't breathe.
It's quite scary stuff, actually,
especially when it's horses that you love.
If things go wrong, they go terribly wrong,
and they go wrong very, very quickly.
I've got a very good imagination.
I'm very good at imagining horror stories.
To re-establish a viable Clydesdale herd in Scotland
is going to require a lot of support.
The change from the wooden plough,
sort of early 1800s, through to your
typical Scottish ploughs to your North America...
Is that a Ronaldsay plough, the little, tiny mobile one? Yes. Ah.
Bob Powell's an agricultural historian.
He understands everything Clydesdale, and there's not much
he doesn't know about this horse. Like me,
he thinks there's a really deep, almost ancient passion
for the Clydesdale that I need to tap into.
The old boys that I speak to,
they really miss the horses, by and large, you know?
People used to ignore me when I went
through the countryside on a normal horse.
The moment I started riding Clydesdales,
old guys would open gates for me, they'd stand and talk,
they'd tell me stuff.
There was a clear... Some of it's misty-eyed, I'm sure,
but I think they also missed the companionship.
Oh, I mean, there's no doubt.
I mean, going into a stable and having something sort of snuffle
at you, and it's a warm body and it's living...
..I mean, is different.
And, you know, a lot of these old guys, I mean, some of them
may have never worked horses, but their fathers will have had them
and they'll have been in the stables when they were kids.
Yeah. And the memory's still there. The memory's still there. Yeah.
And, you know, for all of us, whatever our memories are,
for most of us, anyway, you know,
they bring back happy times. They all smile.
One thing that's become really clear to me about how we save
the Clydesdale is, if we can't tie it to a hopeful future, it will die.
I really want to create the world centre for this horse
that has got some permanence, that's got some
sustainability going forward.
That builds some value into the horses...
..so that there's a market of people who want to buy them and look
after them and enjoy them and keep breeding them.
The actual archway is 17th century.
I've not been here for years.
Absolutely years.
I think Pollock Park stables are fabulous.
They are fabulous.
They are beautiful early 18th-century stables.
So they fit entirely with the story of the Clydesdale.
It's actually done well to stay up so well. It has.
The roof's not exactly straight and I see the pigeons have moved in
but it's not the worst.
So these would have been the original stables.
Tell a few stories.
Lots of teeth marks and foot marks, but no horses.
Be great to get them back again. Oh, it certainly would.
That's the plan. Yes, I hope so.
It seems to me that Pollock House stables is a bit of a gift
because it's right in the centre of Glasgow, in the Clyde Valley -
the source of this amazing Clydesdale horse.
I'm doing a brain dump,
which just gets out of my head and onto a whiteboard
the different dimensions of this project.
Pollock Park could be the thing that helps save the horse.
I'm going to start speaking to the people who actually own the park,
which is Glasgow City Council.
Hello. Hello, hello. Nice to meet you. how are you?
I'm very well, thanks. Good. Come in, please.
Thanks for taking time to see me. No, a pleasure.
So, Janice, the stable blocks at Pollock House and in the park
have obviously been derelict and mainly unused for many years,
many decades in some parts of the building.
In terms of being able to bring them back to life and use them
differently, what is the plan that you've brought today?
Well, it's really bringing the horse back to Glasgow.
It's quite interesting, when you look at the buildings
on the estate, I hadn't been down to see them for decades, actually.
The side that's nearest the river is the biggest problem.
And apparently it's been shored up since either the late '50s
or the early '60s.
But it's all repairable
and it's in much better condition than I thought.
It can help us be better.
It can also help save the horse.
Great. I mean, I think that's really exciting.
There's so much potential behind that story.
It's something that we should certainly be supporting as a city.
That's a Clydesdale.
It is such a cracking painting.
There's a little grey in the background as well.
Absolutely wonderful.
The murals tell the story of Glasgow,
and I think a pride of place for the Clydesdale.
Trying to keep sight of Jesse today because she's really close to giving
birth, and I don't want her to creep off and give birth in the field
shelter or in some other corner of the field.
She loves having her udders scratched.
That's a huge udder.
I mean, that udder feels and looks pretty fully formed.
There's always a worry, you always think about
what's going to go wrong.
I try very hard to make sure that Ross is at home
when we're in this foaling window.
But it could happen during the day, I could be on my own.
The muscles around her pelvis are slackening off,
ready for her giving birth.
Because things happen really quickly in foaling,
this is me being organised.
I didn't want to get caught up in the action and not know what to do.
At what point does it get dangerous?
Just watching the time again, with the foal standing, sucking.
There's a one, two, three rule, which is foal standing
within an hour, sucking within two hours, and placenta passed
within three hours.
If anything goes wrong, it goes catastrophically wrong
very, very quickly.
We installed a little Wi-Fi camera, which is brilliant
because it connects to my mobile phone or my other devices,
and it means I can watch what's happening in the foaling box
so I can check during the night and just see where she's at,
and if there's much movement, the camera tells me there's movement.
All we can do now is wait.
I want to bring people together who have an interest in the future
of the Clydesdale horse in Pollock Park.
So, breeders' societies,
there are those of us who are individuals.
There's no real mechanism for us all to come together, you know?
There's people know people, you know, see people at shows
and all the rest, but actually as a group with a common passion,
it doesn't really exist.
Around 30% of Clydesdale foals are dying from a range of disorders
commonly associated with a diminishing population
and a thinning gene pool, and compared to most other kind
of common horse breeds, deaths are really rare.
So 30% is a huge number.
And it's heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking for breeders and it's heartbreaking for the mares
who can carry their foals for a year before they give birth.
We can do something about it.
What I'd like to do now is to explore how we might create
a sustainable world centre here in Pollock Park.
Pollock stables -
something that's vibrant, that's world-class.
I have been involved in this project.
It makes sense to me, and this is the moment when I discover
if it is actually going to make sense to anybody else.
SHE LAUGHS
So there's a lot riding on it.
All breeders as well,
I think we need to actually work as one.
We need to research old methods, try to find a way of replicating that,
look at what's missing.
We're seeing how important
it is to have somebody like Janice, who has the energy and drive
to just say to people, "Let's do it."
The urgency of the situation to sort the gene pool out
and have a breeding plan that will ensure the health
and the continuity of this breed.
It was really good, really positive. Really positive.
I really feel that we can make something happen.
I feel very good about it.
You know when something feels right, you just know it.
Hi there. It's Janice Kirkpatrick at Lindsayston.
I've a mare who I think might foal tonight.
Thank you. Thanks.
It got to half past five in the morning and...
Nothing was happening. ..nothing.
So I went back to sleep.
HORSE WHINNIES SOFTLY
I don't like looking back at that bit of film very much.
The foal can't breathe on her own yet because her face is completely
covered in this amniotic sack that has to be removed.
And Jesse needs to break the sack,
she needs to do it quickly so the foal doesn't suffocate.
Jesse just instinctively knows that she's got to get the sack
off the face of her foal and help her breathe.
Woke up again...
..ten past six, and...
..there's this little white face peering out from the straw
at the back of the loose box.
Absolutely shocked.
It was like, where the hell did that come from?
Ross is going, "There's a face!
"There's a face!" I woke Janice up.
It's a wee girl!
A wee girl!
That's a good girl.
Yeah. Your beautiful foal, yeah.
Yeah, that's a good girl.
HORSE WHINNIES
That's your mum!
When Jesse was pregnant,
I was convinced that this foal wanted to be called Snowy,
and Ross thought I was mad.
She's got a big white face, and she's this weird lavender colour
with flecks of white through her coat, so she is quite
a snowy horse.
She'll go pretty much black.
Thanks for coming along, John. I really appreciate it.
She's finding it really hard to stand.
And we've just been doing a combination of letting her sleep...
..she then gets up. She can actually latch onto the teat now,
but she can't stand for long.
Oh, oh... She's so slippy.
We really want to get Snowy standing so that she can suckle
from Jesse and get milk, especially the first milk, which is called
colostrum, which has got antibodies in it, which will help
build her immune system.
And that's one of the things that can cause mortality in foals,
is not getting enough colostrum.
We thought, oh, my God, something's going wrong here.
The structure of the foal's stomach changes after eight hours
and it becomes impossible for the foal then to benefit
from this immunity given to it by its mothers milk.
John wants to make sure that we've got her immune system
kicked in, so he's going to...he's putting a tube into her stomach and
putting in...quite a lot of colostrum.
He's got to be very careful to get the tube into the stomach,
not the lungs.
See it there? Yeah.
And if we can see it... Yeah. It's in the right place.
..it means it's not in the airway. It's away down here.
Snowy's... Snore and drink at the same time.
Just pull it off. That's good.
There we go. Well done.
So all that milk in you, you're going to be strong now.
There we go.
Now she's had some colostrum, the biggest problem is getting
them up and getting them sucking within a reasonable amount of time.
Yeah, good girl.
Up we go...
Get it right here, you're a wee bit too far back again.
She's going for the right bit.
It's always in my mind that I could lose a foal,
I could lose a mare.
I really, really, really want this foal to suckle.
The sooner she can stand up on her own and suck, the better.
If only she could stand on her own, it would be perfect.
HORSE WHINNIES
Whoa!
And we're up!
Oh!
That's it...
Are you going to be a big grey girl? Are you?
Are you going to be a black roan?
Are you going to be black?
Have you got little teeth? Are these your teeth?
They're tiny teeth.
Imagine having tiny little teeth like that.
Yeah.
Good girl.
So I never intended to have spent this year
like I've spent this year.
I really, really love my Clydesdales.
Come.
I think they're brilliant big people to hang with,
and I think the world's a better place for them being here.
Come on, Janice.
THEY LAUGH
I believe I've at least started the journey of helping
them flourish again.
I have a great belief that others will join me.
How could you not be excited about something like this,
that was created in this place?
We need to be proud of it and own it and embrace it,
and make sure it has a bright, shiny future.