The best place for me to start would
be to
explain what ignited my passion for horses.
At the age of 3 my mum was rapidly running out of ideas to keep me amused and occupied and she took me to a local stables for a half hour ride on a Shetland pony. This quickly became an hour and progressed even further to daily hire of a pony.
This obviously did the trick, as by the age of 8, I was the very proud owner of my first
pony Peter, a little 12.2hh grey who was a star when it came to Prince Phillip games and Pony Club, but I very often ended up dumped overboard where Show Jumping was con
cerned, with my mum forced to hide behind the secretary’s caravan barely able to watch!
So it was time for Badger to enter the scene when I was 10. He started off on loan from a local trekking centre and when they were selling him, we seized the opportunity to buy him. He gave me immense confidence when it came to jumping, so Max and Mouse have a lot to thank him for!!
After Badger, came Lance when I was 12. We competed at Junior BSJA, one day events, Pony Club Eventing and Tetrathalon.
Then came Chatterbox when I was 14 years old. He can solely be attributed with providing me with ‘stickability’. He was so naughty, bucking was his weapon of choice! However, once I found my glue, we happily competed at Pony Club Eventing and Show Jumping for many years.
Then came my serious mission to find a decent event horse. I bought Max as an unbroken 4 year old who proved almost impossible to break, but with much perseverance we got there and with a somewhat chequered few years as a 7 year old, he made his debut at his first event, a pre-novice. As you see from my results profile, he has been a rising star ever since and recently won the Advanced Intermediate at Stockland Lovell, 5th at Aston-Le-Walls Advanced and double clear round Hartpury 3***, finishing 20th.
In 2003, I bought Mouse as a 3 year old with the sole intention of breaking him in to sell on…….which didn’t work out too well in terms of following the plan to the letter, as his is still very much part of the family and has just upgraded himself to intermediate following his recent novice win at West Wilts.
So in a nutshell, that’s most of my history and what paved the way.
