BELLA isn’t bothered in the slightest by the stranger approaching. She keeps on munching grass regardless.

She’s not the only one.

There’s an eerie calm about the horses at Sarah Dent’s Gallabar Farm.

Go to an average racing yard and it’s a hive of activity. Lots coming and going, thoroughbreds on the horsewalker, others being attended to in their barns.

This is the rat race for a star of the track.

Here on Dent’s 60-acre farm at Marton-cum-Grafton, the occupants are chilled. They let the day go by.

Bella is a three-year-old who is going to be a showjumper. When I go to scratch her nose, she pushes her head forward. But there are no teeth on show. My hand survives.

It would be easy to say that Gallabar Farm is a sanctuary for the problem horse. But while horses with problems, whether it be the starting stalls, psychological, or just youngsters starting out in life, are regulars at Dent’s horse hotel she caters for all sorts.

Dent, who has worked out of here for four years, has learned from Monty Roberts. He’s famously The Man Who Listens To Horses. Specialising in pre-training, she uses a method called Intelligent Horsemanship.

“I started training with Monty Roberts and Kelly Marks, his chief instructor, in 1999,” Dent said. “Monty wrote the book The Man Who Listens To Horses. It’s amazing and you are blown away by the man’s life story.

“I looked him up and he was doing a demonstration not too far away. I bought a ticket, went to see him and thought ‘This is incredible. This is the way forward with horses’. I haven’t looked back from that.

“Using these methods for racehorses, it’s more popular in America but over here it’s still seen as a bit quirky and for problem horses. What we are trying to say is that you don’t need a problem horse to come and use us.”

When it comes to racing, there is little Dent can’t do. Whether it is handling, saddling, long reining, hacking out or schooling, Dent’s work in training, retraining and rehabilitating thoroughbreds has seen hundreds pass through the gates.

“We take in youngsters that are presumably going into racing and we will do some basic handling with them on the ground,” she explained. “Sometimes they come in and they can be quite wild – they will only have had a little bit of handling at a stud or wherever. Some have been to the sales, some have not. Some have been home bred.

“They can have seen very little of life. We will also do a first saddle, long reining in a round pen. We always use the round pen for the first time in everything and afterwards, out around the farm tracks.

“It’s really safe because we can shut ourselves in behind the gates and we have 60 acres. If the worst comes to the worst and we ‘lose’ the horse, it isn’t going anywhere. It’s all enclosed.”

They can’t talk but horses, like people, are all individuals. They have different quirks and different needs. So Dent has a job which requires patience, understanding and ingenuity. She added: “Some of them we put the saddle on and they think it’s all right and others of course have a huge explosion and will go round the pen bucking and careering.

“There is a lot of patience involved and trying to see things from the horses’ point of view. Rather than thinking, ‘it’s bad, it’s difficult, it’s obstreperous’, it is more ‘that’s how you have chosen to react, how can we make it easier for you to understand’.

“We have recently had a horse, who was a Flat horse, and the owner wanted to try him over hurdles. We don’t know what had happened with him but they had difficulties with him in the indoor school and with jumps.

“Whenever you took him in an enclosed school-like place, he was really, really worried. We thought we need to train him to jump but not in the traditional way. So we thought, ‘what can we do?’ “We took him in the back field where we have a lot of logs and log piles and we made little fences for him. There was none of the pressure of the school environment. He was safe and he was being taught how to jump in a natural environment.”

Dent works with an indoor arena, two round pens, a set of starting stalls and miles of grass for long lining. Dedicated paddocks and a three-furlong grass gallop means she has her ideal home.

“This is perfect for the job,” she said. “We are really safe round the land. We have an indoor round pen. I have starting stalls in the outdoor arena, so we can do problem starting stall horses.

“We can give the youngsters – the yearlings and the two-year-olds – brilliant preparation for the stalls. It is quite often overlooked. Trainers put a lot of effort in getting their horses fit and ready to run and then need to put them through the stalls. It can be a bit of a rush.

“What I would really like to think we are doing is preparing horses for racing but also giving them the skills to have a normal life after their racing career is finished.

“Instead of legging a rider up, how they are mounted in a yard before work, we teach a horse to stand still before a mounting block. The rider can get on normally like any other horse.

“It doesn’t affect their performance that they are taught to stand still and have good manners. It just makes life easier for everybody. We put the time in.

“We develop their boldness and confidence.”