AT the Dublin Horse Show last year, one pony won two classes with two different riders. That pony was Rookery Haribo, and he began by winning the first ridden class with then eight-year-old Penny Toomey in the saddle, before being pulled in at the top of the line with Penny’s younger sister Millie in the show hunter pony lead rein that evening.

“He’s a real little dinger,” says the girls’ mother, Marianne Power. “We’ll have Haribo three years in August. Millie was three and a half, and she was actually riding off the lead rein on a very old pony, when Mum (Geraldine Power) decided we needed something a little bit more forward for her because she was very keen. Mum had sold a three-year-old to a very nice girl in Scotland, and saw an advert on her Facebook page for a lovely little pony so she messaged her. Ellis [the vendor] is very trustworthy, so Mum literally bought the pony over Facebook, and rang me to say ‘I have a pony arriving from Scotland next week’.