Next up is Dylan

With Shorty out of action and me more interested in dressage and showing, I was very lucky and got another horse for my 16th birthday. As a non-horsey family, we were still very naive about horse ownership and horse owners and have found out along the way that buying (and selling) horses is not for the faint hearted.

Dylan arrived from NSW with huge excitement. He was my first purpose bred horse and to look at, he was the picture perfect show galloway. While unloading Dylan (a fire breathing dragon) off the truck, we started to realise he might not be the personality we were expecting. And that perhaps some of the things the seller said might not have been true.

Dylan was cute on the ground and a big child with a big personality. Looking back on this time I wish we did thins differently, but hindsight is always great after you have learnt more.

Dylan was sometimes interested in being ridden and sometimes not. When it was the latter it was not fun at all. His repertoire included launching upwards into the air and spinning, sometimes 360 degrees while airborne. He also had the athletic ability to rear and then before his front feet landed from a rear, he would buck and then coming down from that would drop his shoulder and lean down to one side. Surprisingly I never fell off, but he left my confidence in little torn up pieces.

He usually liked jumping… until the times he didn’t and I remember one time he didn’t want to jump, so instead just did a sliding stop right before the jump, and sat on his bum like a dog. Amused at himself, he lay down and ate grass, all the while I was yelling at him to get off my leg.

We got a trainer round to ride him for one week and she helped give me some confidence back. Even though Dylans spinning antics made all the judges eyes land on him in the ring (haha) I decided not to show him and to focus on dressage while we built our partnership. Dylan started to mature and we finally started to have a little bit of fun. The year saw us qualify to represent NT in dressage at the Australian PC Championships.

Dylan never coped with the Darwin climate and had itch we could never get under control. We always felt so bad seeing him so itchy, constantly. I can only imagine it would be a torturous feeling. So we decided to sell him 'down south' after we competed at the Australian Championships.

Two weeks before my Year 12 exams, I travelled down with a couple of other Territorians and their horses to Adelaide to represent NT. Dylan surprised me and was so well behaved. It left me wondering if part of his behaviour was due to being uncomfortable in the Darwin climate. During my last ride on him, I came down the centre line to halt at the end of our dressage test and burst into tears.

I left Dylan with professionals to be sold and travelled back up to Darwin to finish Year 12.

Dylan was sold and ended up with a young girl who loved him and competed him in eventing. Dylan was always one to do what he wanted and when he was with us in Darwin, he would just jump out of his paddock if he wanted to be somewhere else and this never changed.

Unfortunately, he continued this with his new owners and he jumped out of his paddock and into a nature reserve. His owners searched and searched for him for weeks with no luck. Unfortunately they eventually found his corpse beside a railway track, presumably passed away from dehydration.

As tragic as his story is, I am glad he found a girl who doted on him and laughed at his antics.