Club News

JIGSAW’S STORY

Sadly on the 14th August we lost Jigsaw. He’d been ill for some time, he’d been lame at trot for about a year but in the last month he was lame at walk. He’d been losing weight gradually, we’d had blood tests done & had his teeth checked, but at the age of 22 he’d just got old.

We’d bought him at Newark sales. It’s been said that other local people wanted to buy him but we outbid them. The truth was we never bid on him, we bought him after the sale for £450, we collected him on the 25th June 2000. He was bought for my husband Graham to ride, but proved too naughty. He napped so badly I couldn’t get him out of the lane. So I decided to sell him, something I had never done before, horses were for life, but having had a horse that napped before, I wasn’t going there again! I thought I had better get him fit before I put him up for sale, so I continued to ride him in the ménage & found he had a really good attitude & learnt very quickly. I decided I wanted to ask Kate Johnson to do a dressage test on him, but my husband said it proved nothing as Kate could win on a rocking horse and I should do it myself.

So began our life together in the dressage arena. Although he was always obedient and accurate, his breathing was so bad he could never progress from Prelim as he couldn’t manage the long canter work in Novice or work in a long arena, but he did qualify for the riding club dressage championships. He would jump anything cross country or show jumping. He jumped in the riding club team at Hickstead. He won 2 one day events, but his career was short lived in x-c when they brought in optimum time, as he had to walk & trot round the course!

He was always a popular horse wherever he went. At the Shire Show there were in excess of 200 shire horses on the show ground but it was Jigsaw that everyone knew & he got a standing ovation when he won Supreme Champion Ridden Heavy Horse.

I will always look back at our life together with rose coloured spectacles, remembering all the good times & conveniently forgetting how high maintenance he was. It took 2 hours to get him ready the day before a competition & 2 hours on the morning, factor 50 sun lotion on his nose throughout summer because he got really bad sunburn. Not to mention having to continually mend everything in the wake of a shire horse with sweet itch.

Our life together was very special, he was one in a million & will always be

 remembered that way. He has gone leaving a Shire sized hole in my life!

Fiona Robinson

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