I ARRIVE at Philippa Verry's Devon yard to find her hosing down her hunter-turned-endurance winner Charterlands Melitta. With her feet.
Standing on one leg, Philippa squirts the stable stains of Melitta's dun-andwhite coat. She then leads Melitta across the tidy covered yard to tie her next to a rustic platform, where she perches to tack her up, expertly slipping the bridle into the mouth and buckling the throat lash with her dextrous toes, while performing what looks like an intense sit-up.
“I can do whatever anyone else does,” says Philippa, who was born without arms, a side-effect of thalidomide. “I am not disabled. I have never had any problem doing anything; some jobs just take me longer.”
Philippa has achieved more breadth in the equestrian world than most of us ever will. In her twenties, she won a dressage scholarship at Windsor Park Equestrian Club, which she took up with John Lassetter; she's hunted with various packs, performed at Olympia and become an endurance winner.
Philippa credits her “amazing” paternal grandmother, who brought her up, for giving her the “fantastic attitude,
