I realised that there were other people just like me

Well, about almost exactly five years ago, just coming up to five years ago, I inherited the ride on Layla.

I'd planned for it before that.

So what happened was that my daughter, I've got two daughters, my older daughter, Daisy, had a horse who was lovely called Jack that she rode at pony club and doing really well on him but he had underlying issues um health issues which sadly had to be put down and that happened during covid and we looked for another horse for her we didn't have a big budget we could not find a horse it was and she was so upset about Jack that you know we had to find something quickly and we ended up buying Leila unseen from Ireland and it sounds so dodgy and I won't go into the whole story and it kind of was a bit dodgy but we did go into it knowingly and we did get her through a dealer who we knew had brought lots of ponies over from Ireland and a lot of them were lovely but it did feel like a real stab in the dark and I'd seen videos and everything and anyway This five-year-old mare arrived and she was just so different from what Daisy had had, which was a lovely thoroughbred cross Connemara, honest as you like gelding and her pony before that had been a very honest gelding.

I didn't worry too much because in the interim, when Jack, Daisy's old horse had been a bit kind of on and off being able to be ridden, she was always offered the ride on other people's horses.

And we found that quite often people offer you a ride on their horse.

They're not riding it, their own horse for a reason.

So, you know, she'd ridden a variety of horses and she's a nice rider, but She just didn't really get going with Leila.

So my idea, my plan had been that Daisy would bring on this five-year-old in a year, then she'd go off to university and I'd have this beautifully produced horse and it would all be great.

In reality, it didn't really go like that.

They never really got going.

They had so many setbacks.

Leila turned out to be, I mean, she's beautiful, but she turned out to be quite opinionated, difficult.

We did get in touch with her original owner and we said she's the most difficult horse she's ever had.

And we had Daisy and I had no handover whatsoever.

So Daisy had gone off to university and I'm left with this horse and I just thought, well, I'll try it for six months.

And I hadn't really ridden, you know, I'd been on occasionally, but at the time I was 49, the last time I'd really ridden, I was 18 and you know,

The whole thing is

just like

what as a coach we would

say, don't do.

It's a very long gap.

And obviously when I was writing as a teenager, I thought it was great looking back.

No, I was awful and I was just full of teenage confidence.

So, um, yeah, so I, you know, I'm riding Leila and it used to, it would take me 20 minutes to get on her.

She'd spin, she'd run backwards.