I was eight years old when I desperately wanted a pony.
Like most pony-mad little girls, I dreamed about having one of my own. My dad told me that if I could save half the money, he would find the other half.
For an eight-year-old, that might as well have been a fortune.
But I took him seriously.
I got a paper round. I sold my toys. I saved every penny I could, until eventually I handed my dad £250.
And off we went to buy my first pony.
I don’t think that little girl could ever have imagined where horses would eventually take her.
Nearly four decades later, I was happily minding my own business, competing at local shows and jumping clear round after clear round, when an email arrived from British Showjumping asking whether I would like to put myself forward for the Team GB Veteran Squad.
I remember thinking, why not?
I would put my hat in the ring and see what happened.
Then life changed very suddenly.
Jason suffered a brain aneurysm.
I was selected for the team, but there was no question in my mind that I could leave him while he was going through something so serious.
So I withdrew.
The chef d’équipe told me that perhaps I could try again the following year.
At the time, I never really believed I would get another opportunity. In horses, so much has to come together at exactly the right time. You need the right horse, good form, soundness, confidence and a huge amount of luck.
And alongside all of that, Jason was recovering.
It was an incredibly difficult period of our lives.
But throughout it, my horse Heron became my safe haven.
He was my happy place.
When everything else felt frightening and uncertain, I could get on my horse and, for that little bit of time, everything else disappeared.
Riding gave me somewhere to go mentally as much as physically. It gave me something positive to focus on while life outside the yard felt completely out of my control.
Then the following year, something extraordinary happened.
I was selected for Team GB again.
This time, however, there was another problem.
Veteran showjumping isn’t particularly well funded, and with Jason still recovering and unable to work as he normally would, I simply couldn’t justify the cost.
I said I couldn’t afford to go.
What happened next still means an enormous amount to me.
Jason started a crowdfunding page.
Within less than two weeks, friends, clients and even people I didn’t know personally had donated more than £4,000 to help get Heron and me there.
I was overwhelmed.
People had believed in us enough to help make something possible that I thought I was going to have to walk away from.
So we went.
And Heron was incredible.
He jumped clear every single day.
We finished fourth as a team and 12th individually.
I was absolutely delighted.
But afterwards, I remember thinking that I wanted to go back.
Heron had given me everything, and I felt he deserved a medal.
So I made the decision that over the following year I would save as much as I possibly could and, if we were lucky enough to be selected again, we would go back and have another go.
And we did.
This time, we came home with a Team Silver Medal.
Sometimes I think back to that eight-year-old girl delivering papers and selling her toys because she wanted a pony badly enough to work for it.
She could never have imagined standing there decades later representing Great Britain with a medal around her neck.
There were plenty of moments along the way when none of it looked possible.
There were setbacks, worry, financial pressures and one of the most frightening periods our family had ever experienced.
But horses have been part of my life through all of it.
They have given me ambition, purpose, friendships, escape and some of the happiest moments of my life.
And Heron gave me something particularly special.
During a time when I needed somewhere safe to go, he was there.
Then he carried me all the way to a Team GB silver medal.
Not bad for a little girl who once had to sell her toys to buy a pony. ❤️
