**REUNITED** Definitely the pony that broke my heart - this poor little horse had all my dreams pinned on him! But I am thrilled to see him again, especially looking so well! Crackberry (Willy) is a 15.2 ex racehorse whom I rode at 2* Level. He is the coolest little man that just knows he is awesome, in fact if he was a human wed probably all dislike him! He has a special air around him and he knows it. All the other horses know it too and are all obsessed with him, calling to him every time he is lead past. An extremely, extremely kind couple decided to help my career by stepping out and offering to buy a horse. I have never felt so lucky and spoilt in all my life! I was in Australia at the time and therefore looked at a few out there. We stumbled across this dynamic little God and it was love at first sight, none of the other horses stood a chance after I had laid eyes on this one! Everything was going well until we went into the XC at Aston Intermediate lying in the lead and he suddenly bolted going straight into a fence, not having seen it, we both went flying and I was airlifted out. Luckily both of us were absolutely fine. Hoping beyond hope this was an unexplained freak accident I took him to Highclere two weeks later where the same thing happened again and he bolted, I remember looking at the ground wanting to jump off as he galloped with his head up in a blind panic, but we were going so fast I couldnt bring myself to do it. We were heading for a barbed wire fence and I did my best to try and guide him towards a post wishing he would see that and stop or at least be able to judge a height to jump. He did see it last minute and I think he tried to stop (we later found his long skid marks before the fence) but he was going too fast to stop so he tried to half jump it and caught the top two strands with his chest which brought him down. Somehow I was still on, as he was getting up I just remembered relief that we were both relatively ok and thank heavens it was over....not so much luck - he took off again immediately, as fast as a horse can go, down a track through a field and straight into a huge rhododendron bush falling over about 5 metres in (later mum found my hat silk buried this deep in!). That bush could have been a brick wall and he would have gone straight into it, how lucky it was this extremely forgiving bush! I remember us both on the ground in deep thicket and as he got up my air jacket went off and he neighed, I immediately thought he was having/had a heart attack. I crawled out the bushes, coaxed him out too and we slowly retraced our footsteps eventually being found by a frantic family and Horse Trial Committee speeding in a Land Rover - the loud speaker had been asking if anyone had seen me as I had just disappeared between two fences.....(as we were both ok, we find this bit of the story quite amusing - the idea of a competitor just vanishing mid course with no trace)!! I ended up 2.5 miles away from the competition - mad! Luckily I was fine and only had a dislocated elbow, ripped some muscles and a few scratches, Willy was banned from British Eventing on the spot, I remember being absolutely mortified - we were supposed to do everything together. We took him to Newmarket to hopefully find answers. They found a chip on his first vertebrae where the headpiece on the bridle would lie over. They believe he could have done this on the flight over from Australia or randomly before or after just by hitting his head on something at a slightly odd angle, they said the main ligament had grown around this chip slowly pulling it away from the rest of the bone therefore making it constantly active and sore so when on the XC course, where I would be using my reins much more (setting up for combinations and slowing down etc) I would have been applying more and more pressure until he eventually couldnt take it anymore. Poor, poor man. We sent him back to his beloved hot homeland with his amazing previous owner Tarsha Hammond who loves him just as much as we do. They have incredible facilities at Werakata Farm and he loves ruling the roost there. I miss him too much though, the biggest dude ever!!! But it is such a relief knowing what perfect hands he is in and seeing how happy he is. The photos are of us catching up and the next two are of us competing back in 2009.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:00:01 +0000
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