“ANYTHING but a cob,” Ellen Shaw would declare before her riding lessons. No suggestion of bone, nor yet feather and a moustache? No chance.
“I used to say to my riding instructor, ‘Don't put me on a cob, whatever you do,’” Ellen says. “I refused to get on anything remotely hairy; I was a massive snob.”
Ellen had had a thoroughbred/New Forest pony as a child, who wore duvets under his rugs and was hard to keep weight on.
“Everyone I rode with had sport horses, and I thought that's what I was going to buy, too,” she explains.
Ellen viewed plenty, but soon realised her job as a criminal barrister and a flashy blood horse might not be compatible.
“I thought that if I bought one of those, I'd be dead in three weeks, with the amount of riding I was able to do,” she says.
Ellen had
