I was lucky enough to attend the Newark College Horse Management Course and was taught by Anna Louise Day-bell, Cherry Elvin, and the lovely, very respected late Sue Fairburn and Jean Rogerson.

 

Show jumping has always been my passion and I worked doing just that from the age of 18 to 29 in three different yards, Roger Ginley's at Ruffoth Park in Yorkshire who bought and sold horses and ran the best B.S.J.A.Shows ever, I learned so much about show jumping, breaking and schooling, course building and producing horses for sale. I then worked for Mrs M.A. Burridge over at Sutton on Sea doing similar and had some stunning horses to ride, I then went to ride for the late Frank Hardy who was a pleasure to work for show jumping. I then worked freelance show jumping for different owners, breaking, schooling and selling horses and ponies and freelance teaching.

 

It was during this time that I discovered horses were much more sensitive than I originally thought in different saddles, I started to buy secondhand saddles and started to sell them though word of mouth and advertising in local new papers, at this time there was not many people offering this service, I  was sourcing the saddles from local saddleries, the owner of one of the saddleries was wanting to sell the business and spent the last six months of her time at the shop teaching me to do saddle repairs and making up new saddlery items, the new owner of the shop asked me to run the shop for him, I started to do more saddle fitting and went full time into the shop .On his retirement 7 years later I carried on saddle fitting on my own.

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I was on the first ever Master Saddlers' Qualified Saddle Fitting Course in 1997 and was one of the seven that passed out of fourteen. I carried on with the saddlery training and the making of new saddlery items and attended open saddlery courses at The Saddlery Training Centre based down in Salisbury where I was taught by the very respected Mark Romain. About a year later a place became available on a three year training course (The New Entrants Training Scheme) which I was very lucky to be offered. Some of the work on this course I had already covered on the open courses but it was a pleasure to repeat as I always learned so much from each course. I completed the three year training course which was 6 weeks out of the year and at the end of the course I was informed that The Worshipful Company of Saddlers had asked if I would like to put on permanent display an in-hand bridle that I had made during the course in The Saddlers' Hall at London which was a great honour.

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I became a Qualified Saddler and then a Master Saddler after seven years and I have now been Saddle Fitting for thirty  years ..... How time flies !!!