My Equestrian Journey
How I became a riding instructor
I was taught to ride by excellent riding instructors and use many of their techniques in my own teaching. If I had to choose the three who influenced me the most, I would have to say Christchurch-based dressage rider and instructor Pam McGregor (now Australian-based Pam Read), New Zealand show jumping trainer Jill Ullrich and international eventing course designer and rider Captain Mark Phillips. There were many others, many of whom competed at the highest level of their sport but these are the three I hold in highest regard and credit them with the successes I have achieved as a rider. All three of these instructors taught me in a way which made sense and because of that, I was able to pass on my knowledge to others who were struggling to master their chosen discipline. Inevitably, strangers saw the progress these riders were making, and they too approached me for help.
With thirty-plus years of equestrian experience and knowledge under my belt, I have decided to devote more of my time and resources to teaching and instruction. The part of teaching I really get a kick out of is seeing that ‘lightbulb moment’ when a rider clicks with their horse and suddenly everything is possible. It might simply be that their new riding position is allowing the horse to use itself and therefore work correctly under them. All of a sudden, a dressage move or show jumping turn that had always eluded them has become possible and a door to a whole new world has opened.
The Physiology and the Biomechanics of horses has always fascinated me. As an elite athlete during my teenage and early adult life, I learned how to train and condition my body and mind for peak performance. I now use this experience to train our equine athletes.
Always on call as my mentors in equine biomechanics are British-based friend and equine massage therapist Debbie Biles of DB Muscle Therapy and local equine veterinarian Dr. Peter Gillespie at Vet Equine Otago.
My journey with football and representing New Zealand as an athlete
In the days before cell phones, children occupied themselves in other pursuits. For me this meant football. If I was heading home from school or running to the corner shop to collect the bread, I always had a football at my feet. Every lamppost and pothole was my opponent. Try kicking a ball as you run up an incline only to have it hit a lump of asphalt and hurtle off at a ninety-degree angle toward the road, just as the huge wheels of the local carrier's truck are passing. I never lost that burst of speed needed to get the ball back under my control in this situation and it stood me in good stead on the playing field!
Football pre-dated horses in my life but for many years the two ran in parallel. I use football as my team sport where I must work as part of a group, whereas horse riding is my individual pursuit when my horse and I compete against ourselves to better our last performance.
At the age of fifteen, national football tournament selectors chose me as a player in the senior Otago squad for their tournament team. Not only was this quite an accolade but it moved my name to the top of the list for inclusion into national development and age group squads. International Women’s Football was in its infancy in those days, but things were beginning to happen. National training camps were often held at the Canberra Institute of Sport in Australia where we were joined by Australian and South Korean national age-group sides for an end-of-camp competition. Games for the senior New Zealand team against Bulgaria, Chile, Ghana, Australia, and a German team, followed until Football NZ offered to find me accommodation and a job in the Waikato area. Moving from Otago meant that I could play for a strong and competitive team and travel to Auckland for national squad training camps. I was now twenty years old; it was time to decide, football or horses. I chose horses.
But I still love my football.
My earlier days in horse riding
Just like my pony-owning friends, as an eager ten-year-old, I attended the local West Harbour Pony Club's Sunday morning rallies. Having a horse or pony in the 1980s was different from today. Horse floats were a rarity and horse-carrying trucks even rarer, so if you wanted to compete at an A&P show, gymkhana, or attend a camp you often had to ride to it. Sawyers Bay to Tahuna Park was sixteen kilometres each way, much of it on State Highway 88. Sawyers Bay to Waitati to attend the ‘local’ A&P show meant a round trip of thirty kilometres on paved and gravel roads, with a ‘rest' between each stage to compete in any classes and jumping rounds that you could fit in. The sun would be setting as we rode the final kilometres of our trek home, but those hours spent trotting along with my pony, often on our own, established a bond between us that many riders miss out on these days.
Eventing, or Horse Trials as it was known, was and still is my passion. I competed at all levels on ponies and horses but the partner I will never forget was a sixteen-three hand high thoroughbred I named Klinsmann. I found and purchased him when he was a somewhat unruly six-year-old and owned him until he died at the ripe old age of thirty-two. Maybe he was my once-in-a-lifetime companion horse, who knows, I do know that he was very special. We competed at and often won, the major South Island competitions and for several years made the long drive, in my little truck, to the Taupo and Puhinui (Auckland) three-day events, the top competitions in New Zealand eventing. It was while training as a member of the New Zealand Development Squad that Klinsmann and I were taught the intricacies of riding cross-country courses by Captain Mark Phillips.
To be a good eventing rider, each horse and rider combination must be proficient in dressage, show jumping, and riding over cross-country fences. Klinsmann was good at the dressage part and exceptional in the cross-country phase but wasn’t always the neatest in show jumping. I needed a horse that could show jump to improve my technique. So ‘Jacketto’, a chestnut-coloured crossbred joined my stable. Jack could jump and with Jill Ullrich’s tutelage, we progressed through the heights to Grand Prix level.
Horse husbandry
Over the years I’ve learnt that riding the horse is only part of the equine experience. Horse husbandry is a huge and fascinating subject encompassing everything from what, why, and when to feed, all the way through to breeding and foaling, vetting, and euthanasia. It’s all part of being responsible for a living creature. Your horse.
