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The rainbow above MJ that appeared just after the vet had left - a sign? Or at least a chink of positivity! When I wrote the original version of MJ's story back in May, I genuinely thought I'd reached the end of it. I'd written everything that had happened from the day I first brought her home, through all the injuries and setbacks, our return to eventing, Blair, the DSLD diagnosis, the unexpected second chance and eventually finding ourselves in a much smaller world where we

After deciding that hacking and jumping were no longer right for MJ, our world became very small. That sounds quite sad, and sometimes it is, but it isn't all bad. She was still being looked after like the princess she is, she was living out 24/7 as much as possible, and we found other things to do together. I continued riding her in the school around four or five times a week, we did groundwork including TRT, and I would take her down the lane in hand to eat the verges. She

By May 2025, I was still trying to get my head around the fact that MJ and I were actually doing things again. We'd been told she'd never jump or compete again. Then she'd been given another chance after the SI treatment. We'd jumped again. We'd competed at combined training. And now, somehow, I'd entered an unaffiliated 80cm event. I genuinely never thought I'd be writing that sentence again. I didn't want to get carried away because I knew that the situation wasn't necessar

In November 2024, after I'd made the decision to retire MJ completely, a client of mine recommended a specialist equine vet based in Newmarket who was a friend of hers. She asked if he would be willing to come and look at MJ, and as a favour to her, he did. I wasn't expecting a miracle. I'd already accepted that MJ had DSLD and that our jumping and competing days were over. I'd spent months trying to come to terms with that and had started to adjust to the idea that our relat

After being told that MJ had DSLD and would never jump or compete again, I had to start accepting that our life together was going to look very different. The vets felt that the only thing she could really do was hack, so that was what we decided to focus on. At the time, I thought that sounded quite straightforward. After everything we'd been through, surely hacking out quietly and enjoying each other's company couldn't be too difficult? The problem was that there was someth

One of the hardest things about owning horses is when you know something isn't right, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is. In some ways, I think that's actually harder than getting a diagnosis. At least when somebody tells you what's wrong, you know what you're dealing with. You can make a plan, work out what comes next and decide how you're going to move forward. This wasn't like that. All I knew was that MJ wasn't herself. Looking back, it had started with tho

If somebody had asked me at the end of 2022 how I felt about the future, I think I would have said hopeful. After everything MJ and I had been through together, that wasn't a feeling I'd experienced very often. For years it had felt as though every time we made progress, something happened to knock us backwards again. There had been injuries, rehabilitation programmes, ulcers, confidence issues, travelling disasters and countless moments where I wondered whether we'd ever get

Even now, writing this nearly four years later, I still smile thinking about Blair. After the mad scramble to get our entry accepted, organise stabling, learn a dressage test I'd barely looked at and get everything packed, we loaded up and headed north. Because Mum and I had already volunteered to jump judge on the Thursday, we took MJ up a day earlier than we otherwise would have done and settled her into the off-site stabling we'd managed to find. Thankfully she had turnout

After Glamis, life carried on pretty much as normal. In fact, things got even better. Our next event was Hopetoun and somehow MJ went one better than she'd done at Glamis and finished 2nd in the BE100. To this day that's still our best British Eventing result. I was absolutely delighted. What's funny is that only a few months earlier at that exact same event, I'd been ready to give up eventing altogether because of a disappointing dressage score. Now here we were, getting pla

Three weeks after Burgie we headed to Glamis for our next BE100. Looking back now, I think Burgie had done us both a lot of good. It had shown me that we belonged at that level and that moving up to BE100 hadn't been quite as ridiculous a decision as it had sounded at the time. Burgie had definitely been big. The fences were right up to height and there were certainly moments walking the course where I wondered what on earth I was doing there. But despite the size of it, I ac

There are some moments in life that look incredibly confident from the outside but feel anything but confident when you're actually living them. For me, Burgie was one of those moments. By the summer of 2022, MJ and I had finally fought our way back from what felt like endless rehabilitation programmes. We'd started the season at BE80, moved back up to BE90 and I'd recently made the slightly mad decision that we should stop worrying about results and move up to BE100. At the

The funny thing about horses is that sometimes the days that change everything aren't the days you win. They're not the days you get a rosette or achieve a goal you've been working towards for months. Sometimes they're the days where something shifts in your thinking. For me, one of those days happened in 2022. After everything MJ and I had been through with injuries and rehabilitation, we'd finally managed to get back eventing. We started the season at BE80 and quickly moved

Towing Terror One thing I never expected horses to give me was a genuine fear of towing. Before the accidents with MJ, travelling horses was simply something we did. I wouldn’t have described myself as particularly confident towing, but I certainly wasn’t frightened of it either. That changed completely after 2019. Mum and I were travelling down to Lincoln for the BRC Championships with MJ and Mum’s horse Erin in the trailer. Near Penrith, on a B road, we hit extremely deep w

One of the hardest lessons horses have taught me over the years is that people can sometimes be surprisingly unkind when you’re already struggling. During MJ’s rehabilitation in 2020, shortly after the suspensory injury had been diagnosed, somebody I knew through horses messaged me to tell me that I’d effectively brought the injury on myself. They said I shouldn’t have been riding her and that she’d probably been favouring the other leg while I was working her. The comment co

Grazing In Hand....was how I spent most of my time with MJ in 2020. I don’t think I fully understood how mentally difficult it could be watching everybody else move forward while you feel completely stuck until 2020. At the beginning of that year, things finally felt as though they were coming together for MJ and me. After everything we’d already been through, we’d started having some really lovely results and our confidence together was growing all the time. In January 2020

Managing a hormonal mare! One of the hardest things about owning MJ over the years wasn’t necessarily the injuries themselves. As difficult and upsetting as injuries were, at least they usually came with some sort of answer. There would be a diagnosis, a treatment plan, rehab instructions….something concrete to focus on. What I found much harder were the long periods where I knew in my gut that something wasn’t right, but couldn’t work out what it was. The first really major

MJ's First Event When Things Start Going Right Our first event came just 4 weeks after that first competition. Looking back, it was probably too soon. But at the time… it felt like the next step. The Reality I was more excited than nervous. Until I got on. Then she felt like a coiled spring beneath me, waiting to explode...then i was nervous!!! With no martingale, warming up for dressage in an open field with horses cantering past us...well we didn't even get out of walk in t

MJ's first competition The Moment I Fell in Love MJ hadn’t done much jumping before I got her. But it didn’t take long to realise one thing. She absolutely loved it. Even in the early days, when she didn’t fully understand what was being asked…she would always try. Grids could be messy. Poles could go flying. But stopping? That just wasn’t in her. Moving Faster Than Planned Because I still saw her as a “project,” I moved her on quicker than I ever would now. At the time, it f

The Horse I Wasn’t Supposed to Love MJ getting to know my old retired horse Will on the day she arrived After losing Bailie, I was certain of one thing. I wasn’t getting another horse. The pain of losing him so suddenly…was something I didn’t want to risk going through again. A Different Kind of Plan It was actually my coach, Olivia Wilmot, who changed things. She pointed out something I hadn’t really considered. That working with such a sensitive horse had improved my riding