Ballabrae Sports Horses

13/03/2022

💪🚀

04/03/2022

🐴🌞♥️🎉

09/02/2022

We are back 🎉🎉
After my unfortunate injury, and our resulting move back to Belfast, I am finally working with the horses again! (Not that any of the herd have complained about being turned away on a hill to go feral for the past few months 🤣)
From now on I will be working on one project at a time, at a yard with an indoor school 😳😍
First up is Wee Lady! Freshly clipped today and ready to crack on 🐴

20/10/2021

💖SOLD💖

Luna 💕🐎
Cracking little foal to make 13hh
Just weaned and eating hard feed.
Leads well and picks up feet.
A real character, really affectionate, who will go on to do any job
Will be a proper weight carrier as she is as wide as she is tall.
Dam has China Doll breeding and sire is a son of Lloyd, both dripping in feather
Booked with HSI and chipped but no breeding recorded
Homes will be vetted as she is much loved Offers considered
BASED IN IRELAND but transport can be arranged

01/10/2021

I'm back from my week off! 🐎
Finally got the photos from Cloncaw 80cm 2 phase sorted 😍
Absolutely thrilled with how Kova went!
I only realised when we arrived that the course was a final for the league so was a bit more technical than I expected 🤦‍♀️
I decided to miss a few jumps on the XC course that she had never done before like the coffin and jump down into water so we had an elimination on paper, but I didn't give a hoot as she flew over the rest of the course 🚀
It was a fab learning experience for her and I'm so sad to say that is her officially up for sale. She's ready to go on and give someone else a lot of fun.
We have a flatwork lesson in the morning to get some videos then she will be advertised 😭

17/09/2021

Kova schooling over 90cm this morning like it's nothing 🚀 such a talented little mare, so excited for her future 💕
Available for sale in a week or so! (After I've had some more fun XC this weekend 🤣)

17/09/2021

Red's great great grandsire 😍

The Story of First Secretary
No one knew for sure if Secretariat would produce offspring. Lab results found the Triple Crown winner and Throughbred legend had "immature s***m in differing amounts." So the Claiborne Farm staff decided to test breed the stallion. By chance, they chose a nurse mare named Leola, an Appaloosa. Secretariat was fertile, and the breeding took.

Several Appaloosa enthusiasts contacted Claiborne Farm to buy the mare and her unborn foal. John and Lynn Nankivil of Winona, Minnesota, prevailed with an undisclosed amount of money and purchased Leola and the chance that she carried a colored c**t. Even before the foal's birth, several breeders had purchased breeding rights to Secretariat's first foal, without knowing if Leola would produce a c**t.

On the cold Minnesota night of November 15, 1974, Leola produced Secretariat's first foal, a blanketed Appaloosa clone of the great Thoroughbred. First Secretary grew to a full 17 hands, an inch taller than his sire. And like his sire, First Secretary owned a rich red coat, three white socks and a blaze.

The foaling made national news, and even forced President Gerald Ford to apologize for a remark he'd recently made at a Republican fundraising event. He'd said that his critics, like Secretariat, were "fast on their feet but not producing much."

Secretariat had produced something for the Appaloosa world. First Secretary's November birthday made him ineligible to race, so instead his owners used him as a stud. He sired 247 foals including 39 race starters and 33 point earners. First Secretary lived into old age and died in 1993 after suffering from colic.

p.s. - Initially Claiborne refused to acknowledge the paternal parentage of the foal, offering to allow the person who bought it to register the foal with the Appaloosa Horse Club as sired by an "unknown Thoroughbred." The buyer of the c**t countered that they would only do that if they were allowed to register the c**t as sired by an "unknown Thoroughbred Triple Crown winner." (Secretariat was at that time the only American Triple Crown winner alive.) Claiborne finally relented and First Secretary was allowed to be registered as a son of Secretariat.

repost from fb page; Eddie Sweat and fb user; Bethany Shine

08/09/2021

Turns out Kova absolutely loves XC 🚀💕
She has a totally different jumping style from Red and took me by surprise a few times as you can see from my face 😱🙊
If in doubt, take one out!!
Think I might enter in the next horse trials in the area 😏
Big thanks to Stracomer Riding Club for organising the day out 🐎

06/09/2021

Appreciation post 💕
Huge thanks to my long suffering other half John from Longpaw Productions for his support this weekend. It's been a very long three days out in a row and I can't thank him enough for his endless patience.
Lady and Luna had their first day out to Greenacres yesterday for the pony mare and foal class, and due to the very small class size we came home with some ribbons. 🙊
They deserved it though considering we entered at the last minute and pulled them out the field to practice trotting twice this week and that's it 🤣 and it was John's first time ever participating in a class!
The girls behaved impeccably and I hope looked the part, despite being quite a bit heavier and hairier than your regular "show pony" 🐎

05/09/2021

Busy weekend for us at Greenacres Equestrian for their Gala weekend!
Kova had her first proper outing and was a total star coming home with second place in the SJ, we entered the smallest class just for the experience and she did great 🎉
I had entered Red in both SJ and Working Hunter, but after a bit of an accident in the warm up, he made it clear during the SJ he had had enough and wasn't feeling it anymore.
I decided to retire from both classes and took him home to try another day.
That's horses! 😅

28/08/2021

"Where's the rest?!?" You ate it all kiddos, sorry 🙄😂

21/08/2021

Turns out that natural fences make a lot more sense to Kova than those weird coloured poles 🤣
Absolute star for her first day in an open space even if she did come out a bit fresh 🐎🚀