Magazine page 20Why Liv and I chose a Cleveland Bay   by Helen Sutcliffe

Last summer (2009) Olivia my 16 yr old daughter was taking her GCSE's and really didn't have time to devote to her beloved pony Majic (and yes that's the correct spelling). He's an 8yr old, 14.1 PB Arab gelding that I bought as an unbroken 4yr old. Olivia competed in many different disciplines on him and whilst his real love was cross country, they also excelled at show jumping, finally competing at BSJA level in the early part of 2009. Once she reached 17 she wouldn't be able to compete at this level on her pony. Maj was VERY firey and really needed weekly competing to keep him busy and sane so we made the very tough decision to sell him on.

With the cash burning a hole in our pockets the task of finding his replacement was begun. I sat and drank buckets of good strong tea whilst listening to Liv tell me what she was looking for and what sort of events she wanted to compete in. We looked in H&H, Your Horse etc as well as on-line at hundreds of possibles. We both had a 'list of essential qualities' that went something like this:

1. Must be a Gelding (or at least a Colt)
2. Prefer youngster as we'll have him a long time and he won't come with 'problems' learned
  elsewhere
3. Must be Bay
4. Must have Black Mane & Tail
5. Absolutely NO WHITE AT ALL, ANYWHERE, EVER! (Life's too short for all that washing)
6. Over 15.2hh
7. BIG bottom for getting over fences and walls
8. Wide chest with good shoulder depth
9. Solid square stance
10. Lots of natural topline
11. Black feet
12. Pretty Eyes
13. Kind, honest face
14. Presence that makes you stop in your tracks when trotting up
15. Temperament that you could leave a baby asleep alone with (not that we'd do that but
  you know what we mean)
16. Patience for standing in Line Ups
17. Lots and Lots of Character

A lot of the horses Liv was going gooey at were lightweights and wouldn't do well in the kind of classes she wanted to go in for. As I said, I listened and she was telling me that whilst she loves show jumping, she likes all the primping and preening of showing too. She really enjoys Working Hunter classes as she gets the best of both worlds. Even though Maj was all wrong for WH, she kept entering and then ended up disappointed at being at the end of the line up. She was also lucky enough to be invited to hunt with the Holcombe and loved every minute of it.

'You want a Cleveland Bay!' I told her. The cleaned up version of her response was something like 'I'm not having one of them, they're flippin' cart-horses!!!!'

Now, I have to agree with her based only on the pics in some of the 'Horse Encyclopaedias' that she has. They aren't the nicest examples you ever laid eyes on. I showed her lots of nice examples and whilst she wasn't totally convinced, she was at least willing to look. I worked a bit more on her, showing her some on-line footage, then finally decided that we should take a look at Karen Wylie's latest foal. If you remember Animal Majic and Johnny Morris 'talking' for the animals on screen you'll have an idea of what went on when I showed her the pics. She thought he looked OK and we set up a viewing.

Karen was a lovely friendly lady who took lots of time with us so we could have a really good look at him and ask her lots of questions. We met both of his parents (sounds like we were vetting him as a prospective son-in-law) and their temperaments and looks were fabulous. Archie demonstrated what a slut he is to the rake being scraped across his rear for a deep scratching session. His son is just as bad I can report although I have discovered that my bi-weekly manicure and acrylic nails hit the spot for him. Liv was in love with Georgie then and there. She'd brought the current boyfriend with her but he was abandoned at the edge of the field holding bags and spare apples. He quickly learned he will always come second to Horses in her life. As with Maj, I knew he was 'the one' and put a deposit on him straight away.

He came about his name because we'd seen him advertised as Wyevale George although I had seen him as Wyevale Archimedes on the SCBC Foaling Announcements page. Liv decided that it had to stay as George since she would never be able to spell the other one on the entry forms (She's a musician and not academic). As we were driving back home and she was chattering away about him she then decided it had to be Georgie Boy as he was going to be a real ladies man. As he hadn't been registered I sent a text straight away to Karen (we were stuck in a traffic jam) and she said that would be OK. It was an agonising wait with us both boring the world to death about how lovely he was before we could finally collect him.

At the time of writing there is a question on the Front Page asking why there are so few CBs competing in Working Hunter classes. Helen ended her email with a pithy comment: "Give us a few years and we're taking every trophy we can get our sticky mits on!" She has promised to keep us updated with Liv and Georgie's progress so watch for more news and pictures. In the meantime you can find pictures by photographers Equinational on Photopage 20.