Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2018 | Page 96

Equestrian
were pretty much put on ponies
because it was probably easier for
mum than walking us about!”.
Blackbridge WIld Poppy at
Dartmoor Pony Breed Show
Taming Exmoors
and Pip
(Left to right) Sally, Ann
Exmoor
on
s
nie
riding Exmoor po
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crack than others” she admits,
“but it’s a case of learning how
to get into their brain and
discover how to get the best
out of them - just like you
would with young children in
a nursery, really”.
Pip, a 35 year-old mum-of-
two, happily admits to being
horse-obsessed from an early
age. In fact, she says she
started riding almost before
she was able to walk.
She came to the Island
in the mid-1980s with her
farm-owning parents and
two sisters, when she was
just a toddler, and recalls:
“From a really young age we
Her mum Ann had always had
horses, and when the family
moved to the Island she’d decided
to buy some rare breed Exmoor
ponies.
Though notoriously difficult to
ride, the Smith girls nevertheless
saddled the feisty ponies up and
took on the challenge.
“The Exmoors would regularly
throw us off and trundle back to
the local riding school without us”
laughs Pip. “It could take hours to
catch them, but we discovered that
they were good at hunting.”
Of course it was also a test of
Pip’s mettle, and one that would
prove invaluable later in her
working life.
Eventually Pip and her sisters
Jenny and Sally went off to Pony
Club, where they threw themselves
into the more conventional and
fun side of riding. But by the age
of just six, Pip was already showing
more competitive tendencies and
started riding at shows for her
mum’s friend Jenny Hillyard, a
breeder of Dartmoor ponies.
Pip’s first significant success was
on Blackbridge Wild Poppy, with a
Reserve Supreme title in the Breed
Show at Dartmoor and a place at
the NPS Championships.
A ‘proper job’
As her life became more and
more taken up with riding, it was
no surprise to anyone that Pip
wanted to leave school and get
straight into the equestrian world
full time. Her careers teacher
gloomily told her there was no
future in it and advised finding
“a proper job” - but Pip set about
proving the teacher wrong when
she landed a job in Ireland, at an