Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2015 | Page 26

INTERVIEW

“It was probably the
hardest job I ever did
- working a sevenday week, travelling
round to shows and
with 19 horses to
muck out and look
after”

under pressure to decide what to do,
Caroline announced… she would be a
showjumper!

Life on the Mainland
Her first step to this dream was to set
off for the mainland, where she secured
a job in the yard of Hampshire-based
international horse trainer Fiona Dunning.
“It was probably the hardest job I ever
did - working a seven-day week, travelling
round to shows and with 19 horses to
muck out and look after” she says.
When the head girl left, Caroline was
promoted into the position, although she
was still on the YTS scheme and earning
a minimal wage.
She stuck at the hard routine because
she saw it as a route to her showjumping
dream.
“Fiona helped me to find a horse and I
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began to work my way up and win some
events”.
After three years at Fiona’s yard,
Caroline then moved to Shaftesbury
Showjumping Centre, owned by Terry
O’Brien (uncle of comedian Dawn
French), for whom she rode for two years.
Naturally, Horse and Hound magazine
was Caroline’s regular bedtime reading and she was excited one day to see a job
advertised with the late Lionel Dunning,
world-class showjumper based in Lincoln.
A total of 90 people applied for the job
– but it was Caroline who got it. Mainly
because of the impression she made
even before her interview began.
“While I was waiting, I started tidying
up the yard, which had been left in a bit
of a mess” she says. And so impressed
was Lionel that he made her his head girl,
which involved training foreign students,
and travelling to shows.

She was also taking part in
showjumping, with great success, and
enjoying every minute of it.
All of which might sound very
glamorous – but the fact was, she was
still earning only £40-odd a week.
“Horses were my world but really I didn’t
have the money to go any further with
competing. I was in my early 20s, driving
round in a crappy little Fiat Uno and
having to starve myself to buy stuff for
the horse. I was always hungry - but if it
came to a choice of buying something
for the horse, or something for me, I’d
always choose the horse”.
Gradually, Caroline was deciding that
if she couldn’t put 100 per cent into her
show jumping, she didn’t want to do it
after all - and that ‘100 per cent rule’ has
stayed with her.
She left Lionel Dunning’s stables at
24, moved to a Mansfield mining village