AQHA MAGAZINE May / June 2020 AQHA May-June YB 2020 WEB LR | Page 35

PG.33
ARTICLE BY: EV LAGOON V PHOTOS BY: EV LAGOON PHOTOGRAPHY
Age: 38
Lives at: Melbourne, VICTORIA
Occupation: Accountant
DO YOU HAVE A FAMILY HISTORY WITH HORSES?
I don’t come from a horsey family so there really wasn’t much
horsey influence in my life growing up, it’s a bit of a mystery
where this infatuation with horses came from! I remember being
fascinated by them as a kid riding in the car past paddocks staring
out the window at them, watching them on TV and drawing them at
every opportunity, but I had very little physical contact with horses
that I can remember in my early childhood years.
AT WHAT AGE DID YOU START RIDING?
When I was nearly 12 years old, we moved from Australia to
Cornwall in the South-West of England, which is a very horsey
area. It was then that I finally had the opportunity to ride for the
first time – I was absolutely terrified the whole ride, I wouldn’t
have said I was a natural by any stretch of the imagination!
Throughout my teenage years I spent every spare minute at the
local stables on weekends and school holidays, working in
exchange for extra rides – some days I was fortunate enough to
be in the saddle the entire day helping out with trail rides. It was
such a great experience that gave me access to a huge variety of
horses to ride – anything from small native ponies and cobs all the
way through to giant warmbloods and thoroughbreds of varying
education levels, you had to be adaptable!
TELL US ABOUT YOUR FIRST HORSE.
I didn’t own my first horse until I was 26! The UK is a very
expensive place to own and agist your own horse so it wasn’t until
I moved back to Australia that I was finally in the position to have a
pony of my very own. After a couple of false starts with unsuitable
horses and encounters with some unscrupulous sellers I ended up
with an unregistered Quarter Horse mare called Montana – a great
trail riding horse with a bit of spunk – I learnt a lot of good lessons
from that mare during the time I owned her, including how hard the
ground was a couple of times!
HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE WESTERN SCENE?
I was getting bored of trail riding only at weekends and wanted
something to get my teeth into. I knew nothing about western but
think it appealed to me as the saddles looked cool and I could wear
jeans – I’ve never really been able to rock a pair of jods!! I saw a
reining clinic advertised a couple of hours away so packed myself
and Montana up and we spent the weekend way out of both or our
comfort zones, met a heap of great people and beautiful horses and
I was officially hooked! It wasn’t long after that my beloved Bubba
(Lethal Hollywood Q-50439) came along – my first registered
Quarter Horse and first trained reining horse – he’s retired from
showing now but is still being ridden at rising 22yo and will be
with me for life.
MAY/JUNE ISSUE ~ YEARBOOK 2020