How I came to breed horses and write a book.

a little bit more about you and what your credentials are as a horse breeder, as a, you know, doyen of the horse breeding area. Like, how did it all start for you? Because I believe it was very, very young.

Yes, um, I didn't have horsey parents, so I didn't grow up riding or knowing anything about horses. But my mum, at a very early age, said to me um, or she said to me that she couldn't get me to read, so she'd go down to the library and borrow horse books because it was the only thing I would read. And it worked, of course. I read profusely. Um, and all I used to do was draw horses. I'd do cutouts of horses. I'd do anything, um, in those early years that revolved around horses. So I had a fair bit of knowledge, but then a neighbor told my mom when I was about 13 that a man up the road— and when I say up the road, I suppose it was bike riding distance— um, had some horses he wanted exercised, which just happened to be polo ponies. But I didn't know that, we didn't know that. So Mom thought, oh, Jeanette would do that, not knowing anything more about horses. So anyway, I went and visited this man and I rode this horse, um, very basically. All I could think of in my mind was, oh, when you trot, you're meant to go up, down, up, down, up, down. So I did that. The horse fortunately stopped beside a dam, so I didn't have to work out how to stop her. And I turned her around and the man said, you'll do. And it was that simple as that. So I used to ride my bike up to this, this group of horses, and there was one mare there I just adored, and she was the one I rode mainly. And, um, it progressed from there. I knew nothing, but because he took me out to polo, um, I learned a lot from the grooms out there. They taught me how to bandage horses and tie up their tails and put their special gear on for polo and and, um, how to feed up and all the things that were important for an athletic horse. So I learned a lot very, very quickly.

It's a bit— it's a long road from that to horse breeding itself. What got you into that?

Well, I didn't know this mare wasn't owned by this man. I just assumed it was, but Later down the track, he informed me that it was actually owned by somebody else and he was just looking after it. But this was like 2 or 3 years on, and I said, ah, there was a problem that the horse might be taken away. He wouldn't sell her to me. He— and I thought, oh, maybe I could—

you were in love.

Yes, I was in love. I was terrified this mare would be taken away. It was so true. All I ever thought about at school was going back to this horse all day, all day at school, you know. And I could even see them from school on the top of a huge hill that they lived on. Um, so I had to climb this hill after school every day just to catch them, but that's another story. But anyway, so, um, Funnily enough, he agreed, but he said, oh, I'll have to ask Mr. So-and-so whether he'll allow it. And of course, that was when I first found out that he didn't own it, right? Um, so anyway, for some reason they agreed, and I found myself— I was very sure I had to go and look properly for a stallion, so I advertised and found one that was in riding distance and a very nice type. And so began my journey. And then when the foal was born, it was just such a beautiful, nice-natured foal. All the people who knew everything about horses said to me, oh, but you mustn't break it in yourself, you're too young, you don't know anything about horses to do it yourself, you need to get a professional. But I did it.

Um, so you had a natural talent.

Yes, but I, I had started training dogs when I was 8 years old because they were my horses. I trained a dog and I used to ride over its back and, you know, do all the things with our poor little Shetland sheepdog, um, take it to dog training and I put halters on it, you know, the things kids do. Fast forward to now, how many years have you been a horse breeder since that teenage, gangly teenage girl who That first foal was born when I was 16, so yes, more than 50 years, closer to 60 years, unfortunately to say that. Um, but yes, yes. Um, I bred about 8 or 10 foals by the time I was 19. They were always from borrowed mares. Um, and then I broke foals in. I also bought some Brumbies along the way. And of course they were unhandled, so I, I broke them in and sold them. So that was to pay for my hobby. Um, then I went to university, but I was still involved in horses through that time. Met my husband and we went— he was an equestrian photographer, so we went around Australia for a few years. I don't mean all that time was going around Australia, but Um, between our jobs, we'd go around Australia photographing events or going to clinics and learning ourselves. Um, and along the way, I started saying to myself, all these foals— no one knew the color of the foal that I was going to get, especially the first one. So I started writing to people, magazines, No one knew. So I started writing overseas, um, to specialists in genetics. And what astounded me was that people in the horse breeding game didn't know, yet I had also bred pigeons. Now pigeon breeders always knew what color birds they were going to get. They were so well studied in genetics. And I thought this was odd that horse people didn't even know what they were doing. So by the time I got answers back and, um, my husband had met and was quite heavily involved with the Hoofs and Horns, which was that old magazine that RM Williams used to produce, and he knew Keith Stephens, the editor, very well. So next thing, I'm being asked to write a genetics column in the Hoofs and Horns.

Nice.

And interestingly, that took off. They said it was the most watched, most read articles after the letters to the editor.

Wow.

So I really had to up my game, and before long, um, I was thinking, oh, this could make a book. And Keith Stevens was saying, you need to write a book. And at that time, suddenly I became asked to teach at TAFE because of my genetics column. Everything snowballed. So I did 19 years teaching at TAFE. That become not just a genetics course but an equine studies course, which I took the whole course. Um, that ceased when Roseworthy College became a university instead of a TAFE. Right, um, unfortunately. But by that time, all my students were saying, when you going to write a book? So I collected all my Hoofs and Horns articles, put them together into book format. Um, I don't know if you remember Don Burke, The Gardener?

Yes, of course.

I appeared on his show a couple of times, again as a result of the Hoofs and Horns. And he said, right, you can't find a publisher. This is before I'd even really pushed to find one. I'll find one for you. And I got a phone call the next one, next day, from Simon Schuster. And you've got a book, we want to publish it. That was that. Um, so it sold ultimately 10,000 copies. Oh my gosh, 3,000 is the average for Australia.

Yeah.

Um, so that was overseas as well, of course. Um, and it had a Dutch translation.

Interesting. Why Dutch, do you think?

Um, they went to a German, I suppose, expo for book people, book writers and authors and publishers.

Yep.

Um, and they were present at that. And they were looking around wanting to know what other authors were doing, and they decided that even though there were horse people in Germany, um, there were just as many in the Netherlands, and most Germans knew English. So they— well, most Europeans know English.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But anyway, as a result of going there, they decided for whatever reason that it would be a Dutch translation.

Perfect.