I WAS late to get involved in horses, only taking up riding at 16 with no background in horses. Although my mother said that, as a toddler when we walked to the shops in Clontarf, I regularly made a beeline for the milkman’s horse.

My Dad, having decided that he was being pestered by his two daughters to buy ponies, said he would buy 30 acres and a thatched cottage in Finea, Co Westmeath, where the ponies could live and we could spend weekends and holidays.