After losing my horse of a life-time, Cheeko (a 16hh IDxTB who had been to PC Championships more time than I could count, evented very successfully up to Intermediate,) I had to find myself a new best friend to embarrass myself on!
Cheeko had got me onto PC Teams and it was going to be hard to find something to match his ability as well as quirk. I tried all sorts of horses from a lovely 5 year old TB mare, who unfortunately was not quite level headed enough for 14 year old me; a showjumper that only jogged sideways unless 2 strides from a jump, and nice Welshie cross that unfortunately was just a bit of a plod. After a few weeks of looking, my mum showed me a post on Facebook (The go-to place of finding your next steed back in the day, before the ban 🙄) In the post was a scraggly little pony that I wasn't interested in what so ever! I think my first comments were that he looked like an Icelandic trekking pony. Outright I said NO to going to see it, but since it wasn't me dishing out the cash for a new pony, mother decided she liked the look of this muley looking thing. Nevertheless, I thought it would be worth the ride if nothing else, He was quite a sensitive ride, but knew when to switch his brain into gear. He had only just learnt the basics, hacked and been over a few jumps. I tried him over a few poles and then tried over a filler and god did this little cobby mess have a pop! I fell in love, but the back story to this pony made me love him more!
Gally was born on a hillside in Wales. The story is that a local man put his well bred eventing mare to a wild stallion and they just carried on breeding and we were told that there were at least 300 of these wild ponies. The owner sent a lorry load a week to the slaughter house but other than that, they had not been touched or seen a human! The lad that we purchased him off, who was based near Buckingham, so not far from us, rescued 3, one unfortunately died due to the severe malnourishment and one just couldn't bring himself to trust humans. G is the only one to survive out of that lorry load.
When we purchased G, it took years and a hell of a lot of patience to get him to do simple things most people take for granted with their ponies; brushing his legs, washing off and even touching his hooves was a huge task. I must admit to thinking about giving up a few time, but eventually they begin to trust you. Trust makes everything so much easier.
Over the first year of owning G, we overcame lots of problems with his ridden work as well. It took us a good 6 months to be able to get on via a mounting block, riding next to another horse was a big thing after a mare tried to kick him and still to this day we have problems with other horses riding towards him in the school (god only knows why, but it causes a few problems in the collecting ring at shows 🤦
Having a rescue an be an absolute pain in the arse some times, when you would really like to catch your horse because your booked in to go bloodhounding, but no, he's being a knob today so that wont be happening 🙄 or the times when you would quite like to put fly spray on and not be knocked over by a swinging arse in the process but I suppose for all the times of despair, you will feel a hell of a lot of pride for that one time where it goes to plan!
He has grown up over the last few year, THANK GOD, and has proved to me that he was worth the viewing of the hideous pony that I saw on facebook. To anyone wanting to buy another horse, look into getting a rescue, you wont regret it (in the long run!)
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