01559 370301 info@dashdance.co.uk                                                   Home   About Us   Mares   Stallion   Youngstock   Gallery

Photo by Sue FeastMy horses get into every aspect of my life - as you can see, Dancer and Tess attended my wedding, along with, oh a few other folks, but they were definitely the shiniest there - just a shame they didn't stay for the dancing.

I always said that given half a chance I'd fill the house with horses - and so that didn't happen we moved to a place with enough acres so the horses could fill the fields and not the house. Always a bonus not to find Dancer eating your marmite on toast of a morning - well she never puts the plate in the dishwasher.

And so the obsession began - I mean the Stud. The endless talking about pedigrees, conformation, stallions, colours, genetics, health care, feeding... I am very thankful to have great friends and family to help out and discuss things with. Oh and pick up poo. You can never have enough people to help with that.

The learning curve is extremely steep, the hours very unsociable - especially at foaling time, when the mares pretend they're nearly ready for three weeks and I stay up watching the CCTV all night for those three weeks. Listening to the sound of contented mare chewing hay loses its magical rhythm by the third all nighter. Then they move round, lie down, grunt. Is this it? Of course not, they're having a lovely night's sleep while you watch the one hundred and twelfth episode of Knots Landing on UK Gold. However the moment the newborn takes its first breath and mum turns her head to whinny at her perfect child - all that tiredness is just a memory.

And so we go forward once more into another breeding season with the gorgeous Josh. His temperament is astoundingly good - he's gentle and sweet natured, obedient and easy to handle. He has what they call a "good mind" and that coupled with a great body is a fantastic package to pass on - add his guaranteed colour to that and you can see why we're so excited.

As for the future? Plans are bad - things change all the time and good luck runs the same as bad. Our aims? To love our horses, to have as much fun as we can with them and to breed beautiful, loving and talented babies so we can take over the world - one field at a time.





Virgins and Born Again Virgins

Photo by Mike FreemanDancer is the elderly matriarch of the Dashdance herd. She was my first horse, and taught me how to stick on, close my eyes, pray, and most importantly how to laugh in the face of doom.

She's never been used for breeding, but is an invaluable 'nanny' for the youngsters now that she's retired, spending her days teaching them good manners (and her large collection of rude jokes).

Tess is my precious girl. She and I have done pretty much everything together in the last 13 years - dressage, jumping, cross country, endurance, TREC...

She's the kind of horse you can never forget or replicate. Never sad or sorry, always a forward going ride and guaranteed to brighten up my day.
She's bred me two lovely foals - Dashdance Solo and Dashdance Little Brooke, but is now coming back to being a riding horse.

And now for the dogs!


Living with us are several sofa oppressing, shoe stealing, muddy paw wearing dogs.

A few of them came here with some life threatening condition, unwanted by owners or bereaved. Among the ancients, we have a labrador with cancer and a golden retriever who spends her time proclaiming things we're glad we can't understand, and trying to remember her name. They have it rather too good here - doting owners, sofas, bean bags, Sky TV, the internet - it's a surprise they haven't worked out how to use eBay yet.

The younger models spend their time playing or helping me around the farm - mainly by supervising. There are a lot of very experienced farm hands in doggy form who could easily manage to re-fence fields, muck out, trim hedges and stack hay - if they chose to. Instead they like to sit and watch - or unstack hay by leaping all over it.

Mostly though, they exercise only their rights to sleep, eat and cuddle up to warm humans. Wouldn't be without the little hooligans!