Living With a Passion

By Jeanette A Garrett B.H.S.I., Ad.Dip.Ed.

Living With a Passion is filled with the author's life-changing experiences and the fun she's had in the presence of horses. We are taken on a  journey from post war London where her passion for horses began at a young age. Growing up surrounded by bombsites she recalls the beauty of the milkman's horse and of the fascination she felt as it moved with energetic strides and shining coat. This was to be the beginning of her life long passion that would span over the decades and take her from one side of the globe to the other. 

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeanette Garrett
• Release date: Dec 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201868949

Jeanette A Garrett B.H.S.I., Ad.Dip.Ed.

Jeanette A Garrett  is an internationally qualified coach and assessor, with vast competitive riding and training experience in Europe and the UK. Her accolades include qualifying a horse for Badminton Horse Trials and competing at Goodwood. She was appointed chief examiner for the British Horse Society and operated several competition yards and riding schools in the UK. Jeanette emigrated to New Zealand in 1994 when asked to take up the role of a national coach for NZ Pony Club Association.   When not teaching or writing, she enjoys ball room dancing, swimming, and  walking at the nearby beach where she lives in New Zealand. 

Book preview

By Jeanette A Garrett B.H.S.I., Ad.Dip.Ed.

Introduction

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN a way for me to note down some of my experiences, laughter and fun that I have had.

Life is good and a lot has been achieved in my world and my passion for horses. The wonderful horses that I have been lucky enough to work with are my biggest ‘teachers’. What I learned witnessed and wondered about with each one of them. My thanks to them all.

They say

that people come into and out of your lives for a reason. People that have encouraged me, supported me, and seen my passion will be remembered with thanks and gratitude. They have all helped in some way to enable me to reach the goals I have set.

I have to say I have not always found the journey to reach these goals to be the easiest and shortest route. I think you learn far more that way!

My journey took me from a baby born in post war London UK through my teenage years to adulthood and marriage at 23 years old. It outlines the fun laughter and sheer determination to be with horses.

I now speak from New Zealand where I emigrated to become a national coach for the NZ Pony Club Association. I live at the top of the South Island, a beautiful place close to the mountains and near the sea.

Enjoy the stories of someone living with a passion.

Chapter 1

WHERE DID THAT PASSION come from? I’ve always had it and I have never been able to answer that question. I was a child born soon after the end of World War Two in London’s east end with bomb sites all around, and food was still rationed. The passion was there, I had no relations with any connections to horses, but my first recollections were of sitting in a pram outside a shop watching the milkman’s horse pass by, the excitement I felt as it moved with energetic strides and shining coat, the fascination was there for me even then.

My father’s passion was for the sea and boats, and he could not understand my passion for horses, particularly when my brother followed our father’s passion and achieved many things on his worldwide sailing travels. Both father and my devoted caring mother would shake their heads and often laugh at my attraction to horses.

PRE SCHOOL DAYS WERE focused around two chairs pushed together to make a horse which was covered with an old velvet tablecloth and a few of my mothers’ belts to make reins. I rode for miles and miles on that horse. I groomed the coat with a clothes brush until the fabric was bare.

My wonderful mother tried to bring me up as a ‘normal’ girl. Dolls, dolls prams and cots appeared but they never got touched and sat in the corner of the bedroom. I was too busy sitting on the gate post waiting for the next horse to pass by. There was Jane the milk cart horse, Nigger (no way could you call anyone or anything that in these times) the coal cart horse and Tommy the green grocer’s horse – all pulled carts around the London streets. It took me great courage to ask the tradesmen that drove them what the horse’s names were. Names I would repeat as I drifted into sleep only to dream of them there.

Tommy often stood outside the green grocer’s shop, and I would watch him for ages. He lifted and shook the nosebag he ate from and if I dared to approach, he flattened his ears, and the grocer would shout at me to go away. But I watched every move, studied his shining coat and clean harness, making a memory of it all and the smell was wonderful – the leather, the horse, horse sweat and horse muck too!

The backdrop to my life was post war London – the bomb sites were forbidden areas for play. There was always the possibility of unexploded items that could still be in the rubble, but like most children rules were made to be dare you activities.

Standing ‘on watch’ for mother while my brother played with friends on a bomb site was often my role. I would look up at the houses next to those that had been bombed, the sides of them showed walls with wallpaper, fireplaces, gaps where the flooring had been and then the wallpaper of the room below – I would imagine people living there and what the rest of the room must have looked like, my imagination was so strong.

My father ran an excavation and machinery hire company that worked clearing these bomb sites using bull dozers to pile up the rubble and Lorries to cart it away. London was a hive of rebuilding, and a new energy arose from those that had profited from the war. Fortunately, it was a war I knew nothing about.

Out of this backdrop came horses!! They were wonderful creatures that fascinated me even before I could barely walk and talk.

All of this was before I was 5 years old but once school started the trip to school in the morning, home and back at lunch time and coming home at the end of each school day was all ridden at ‘trot and canter’. Skipping ropes were rarely used for skipping but they made good reins to play horses with my friend Pauline, taking it in turns to be the horse, a common game for children but for me it was real and I never grew out of it.

School holidays were spent making show jumps in our hard concreted back yard – painting mums’ broom and mop handle with red and white stripes to make the jump poles look real did not go down too well –but I was never bored or ever complained of having nothing to do. I had my imagination and horses to fill every moment.

It was my fathers contacts within the heart of London, the true ‘cockney’ people – those born and bred within the sound of ‘Bow Bell’ ( a church district of London) that helped me pursue my life with horses.

Stratford and Covent Garden markets were places where wholesale green grocers bought and sold their fresh wares in the incredibly early hours of the morning. My father would meet them at workingmen’s cafes and while talking to them he discovered that several of them were horse dealers – these were the men that would open up the