Alabama Rose with Saskia and her mum Jen
At the recent Sydney one day event we watched a small pony and her rider scooting around the show jumping phase of the EvA95 class. The pair went clear and the pony looked to love her job so much that we went to find them later that day at the SIEC stables.
The rider in question was Saskia Brown, from Terry Hills and her pony was Alabama Rose, who stands at a very cute 14.1hh
“I actually started riding Alabama Rose (Aly) before we bought her because her previous owners were friends of ours. They had outgrown her and needed someone to exercise her so I volunteered. I probably rode her for about four months and then she was put up for sale. Around that same sort of time we were thinking about selling my pony because although I wanted to event, my pony didn’t like getting her feet wet (she was an Arab) and we were always eliminated at the water. So the timing was quite good in the fact that my Arab pony was sold and we bought Aly. Up to that point Aly had spent most of her life doing sporting and mounted games as well as lots of show jumping … she had jumped 1.20m courses in her younger days.”
Having lost some confidence over fences with her Arab that confidence soon returned as Saskia and Aly gradually did more together. “We just wanted Saskia to be able to go out on a cross country course and have a fair chance of getting round,” said Jen, (Saskia’s mum). “It’s been lovely to watch then grow and learn together – although as Aly hadn’t done dressage before it’s been a big learning curve. For a long time she associated a bell ringing with the start of a speedy show jumping round when in actual fact it was the bell to tell them to start a dressage test, so keeping her calm hasn’t always been easy. The other problem was that ‘trot’ didn’t really exist in her vocabulary, it was walk or canter, so that has taken some time too.”
Aly, seen here in her EvA95 class at SIEC on her way to a clear round just loves to jump
Aly was 15 when the Browns bought her and now at age 18 they are fully aware of the horse management issues that can go hand in hand with competing an older equine friend.
“She’s really good for her age,” said 16 year old Saskia “and sometimes if she comes out a little bit stiff when you first get on she is soon keen to get on with whatever we are doing that day. We give her a maintenance dose of Pentosan and some supplements to help with her joints and we are careful to give her some good stretching work before we ask her to do too much. Hopefully she will be able to keep going for quite a few years because I just love riding her.”
So what makes Aly such a good pony to ride? “She is just a super and she gets me out of spots when I think I know better than her and you can almost hear her saying ‘you really have no idea of what you are doing so just leave it to me’. She is super brave and has never stopped at anything. Although we have jumped over some 1* fences in clinics I have only competed her up to preliminary level but the plan is to try and move up to pre novice very soon. When we do that we’ll just see how she handles it and be guided by her as to how many pre novices we do.”
Thinking ahead the Brown family have already bought another horse for Saskia – a 16hh thoroughbred called Hanigan. “Lachie Dawes has had Hanigan for the past three years and took him up to 1* so at least when I (hopefully) get to that level I’ll know Hanigan has already got that experience under his belt. In the meantime it would be great to do a few pre novices on a horse (well pony) that I really know and trust and that’s Aly.”
