Marbles came to us as a nine-year-old with a reputation for being lazy, which turned out to be the single best quality a horse can have when there are children involved.
He taught all three of them to ride. He knew exactly how much they could handle and gave them precisely that, which is a thing you cannot train into a horse. When Ellie fell off at the Pony Club gymkhana in 2011 he stopped dead and stood over her until somebody came, and would not be led away.
He hated the float, tolerated the farrier, and would do almost anything for a carrot but nothing at all for an apple. He had one ear that went sideways when he was thinking about being naughty, which gave you about two seconds' warning and was usually enough.
The last few years he was retired in the back paddock with Duchess, doing nothing much, which he had always been the world's leading expert at. He would still come down to the gate when he heard the car.
Twenty-seven years old. He had a good long summer and went in his own paddock with the family there.