Rose Cornwell
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East Sussex, United Kingdom
Who Am I?​
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I am a 22 year old equestrian from a small village in rural Sussex, UK. I have experience riding in most English riding disciplines, Dressage, Show Jumping, Eventing, and Working Equitation, although riding young,
green, and 'broken' horses is my passion! I have successfully started three, three year olds by myself, and produced them to four/five year olds. I've been an equestrian for over 16 years now (that sounds crazy!) and have loved horses ever since I can remember! I share this love for horses and training them on various social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (@EquineInTheorem) and I've recently started a Podcast sharing my thoughts and feelings, as well as how to solve equine problems.
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I have been working as an animal career for over five years now! Day to day my job includes: house sitting, dog walking, working with scared or aggressive dogs, care of other household pets, mucking out, and exercising horses. This is truly my passion! I'm currently delving into Positive Reinforcement Training as apposed to Natural Horsemanship, which is proving very beneficial for both myself and the animals I work with. I also use Liberty and Traditional Training methods in my training, discovering what works best for each animal. I am very interested in behaviour modification and how it can benefit the individual and the partnership.
Equestrian Experience​
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I have loved horses ever since I can remember, I drew them at school, and pretended to be a horse constantly as a kid! I was always pretending to do show jumping or cross country in the garden or local woods. When I was six my parents decided that my sister and I could start having lessons at the riding school two minutes up the rode! Ii remember how excited I was and grabbing the reins as soon as I was plopped onto the pony!
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For the next eight years I had lessons once or twice a month, I was completely hooked, and my sister and I begged our parents for a horse everyday it felt like! Must have been hell for the haha... Finally when I was fourteen, and my sister sixteen, our parents bought us a horse! I do not come from a horsey background (we are country people, but not horsey people) so horse shopping was complicated and took longer than expected. We tried six or seven horses, falling off of each one, until we went to this yard, didn't get on with the horse we went to see, and they said that they had another horse that might suit us! Out came Foxy Lady, a 15.2 hand, just turned five year old, Irish mare, who had been in the country for two weeks! Ideal first horse I know....
So, Foxy Lady, where to even begin!
Foxy was not the best first horse, but she taught me everything and set me up on this path I'm not! When we bought her home (to the livery yard) and turned her out into the field, we didn't see her again for over 6 weeks! She was feral, and that's an understatement! She was terrified of men, and still partly is, she was ridiculously head shy, still is, and we couldn't get anywhere near her for the first four months without her trying to bite and kick us! After consulting a trainer and saddler, we discovered that she had a bad back and was
in a lot of pain. It was almost a year before we could safely tack her up by ourselves and ride in the school. Foxy was so green as well, and we weren't the best riders, we were used to school ponies who just plodded along and knew their job, so boy this was a learning curb!
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For three years we did light schooling, had the odd lesson, and hacked out, but I wanted to compete! But Foxy was and is, no dressage horse, nor is she a jumper. I was at the age where I was indestructible, but Fox lacked confidence. It was at this point that I joined the college Eventing Team, and had my first 'real' lessons! by this time we still didn't have our own trailer, so we relied on lifts or borrowing someone else's. After a month of lessons we began to compete in Inter-schools! I loved it! Foxy did too, but she still lacked confidence, we jumped 1m tracks, but she always stopped at the first, no matter how you rode into it!
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Once 'd left college I took on my first project horse, a 13.1 hand Welsh pony called Roanie. She was incredible, although she was your typical Welsh! She had her opinions and sure did let me know them! It was with Roans that I discovered Trick Training and riding Tackless, she was so good putting up with me, we could go for rides around the field with just a neck rope! And she never failed to make be laugh jumping, she was so brave, but cheeky..... She would dart out at fences every now and then, usually cross poles, and if I tried to jump bareback she would stop either before or directly after the jump dislodging me every time!
Roanie also taught me a lot about riding 'hot' horses, she jogged constantly and out galloped all of the thoroughbreds at the yard! Not bad for a sixteen year old pony, eh?
When Roans was sold I starting pursuing riding as more than a hobby, we moved yards and I started being paid to ride horse there.
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Riding these horses gained me tonnes of experience, a few hadn't been backed and others thoroughbreds.
It was around this time that I was given what I would say is one of my greatest opportunities! A friend offered her three year old Warmblood x Irish Sport Horse to me to back and produce. I had known the horse for two years at this point, as the friend had bought him at 11 months old. Tyler was about 15.2 hands at the time, and is now currently standing at 16 hands.
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Once I had built up the ground work, it was time to get on board! And honestly, he was the easiest breaker, he never put a foot wrong!
(Although he has bucked me off twice)
We took the first year very easy, then once he came back in after being turned away over Winter, we began to compete at Dressage and In-Hand Showing, Tyler always got good marks and comments from the judges, and usually won this classes! In 2017 we competed in Dressage at Hickstead during the Sunshine Tour, and despite having a huge meltdown at the judges' box, didn't do too badly, coming 17th out of 70 plus riders.
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Once Tyler turned five, I took we began jumping and he took to it like a duck to water, we then spent the summer competing most weekends, either in the Dressage ring or jumping. It was at this time that I took on another project... Super Ace...
Ilona 1020093, or Ace (Super Ace) was a ten year old, 14.3 hand Spanish mare, who had spent all her life in Belgium as a Working Equitation horse. She was truly the perfect all-rounder, she was completely trick trained (to a very high standard), had done English and Western, herded cattle, and done Dressage, plus had a foal! The only thing she hadn't done was jump!
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I found out very early on that Ace loved to jump! She's not the scopiest horse in the World, but we cleared 1.40m, who said Spanish horses can't jump?
Over the next year we competed regularly at Dressage up to Novice and Show Jumping up to 1m, and had done Cross Country schooling up to 2* level! But sadly we had taught each other everything we could, so it was time for us to part ways.
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After Ace was sold, I'd just about given up trying to find a new horse, until I got a message about an Event horse, he sounded ideal, so we went to see him, and the next weekend bought him home! This was Bilboa (Bilbo, Billy).
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Billy is my current personal steed and he is a 17 hand, rising eleven year old KWPN x Irish Sport Horse, by Jacomar out of a Cruising Mare. Both his Sire and Dam had been Grand Prix Show Jumpers and he had evented up to BE100 with ease as a five/six year old, but everything comes at a cost.
Billy is as quirky as he is talented.
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Before I got Billy he had been a jack of all trades, master of all of them. He had done Eventing, Dressage, Show Jumping, and had been a Huntsman's horse for two seasons! But when I got him home he was so tense, it was riding a giraffe! I couldn't tie him anywhere on the yard as he would just break away, I had to turn him out in a chifney because he would just rear constantly and run backwards! He was an absolute nightmare! And don't get me started on hacking......
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And to top it all of, Billy had been a man's horses his whole life, and they'd ridden him in strong bits. So when I (a lightweight lady rider) started with him, he was uncontrollable, but with proper training and a lot of schooling Billy can now be ridden in any environment by any person in a little rubber snaffle!
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I'm not a big believer in bitting up horses. I believe that with proper training AND riding and horse can be ridden in a snaffle! Billy is a perfect example of this, as was Ace. Ace had spent most of her life being ridden in a Kimblewick, and took a lot of hard work and schooling to be able to do anything productive in a snaffle, when jumping she would also stick her head in the air and charge at fences, which wasn't safe, so we went back to basics and did lots of exercises, and then she could be ridden in a snaffle happily with no issues. But I digress....
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I thought that I had just about everything sussed when it came with horses (no such thing by the way), but Billy has truly taught me more than I could have ever imagined he would! I'd ridden bigger, stronger horses, but none as difficult as him. With all animals they are left or right brained, introverts or extroverts..... Billy is all four.... Crazy I know, but he is! He is incredibly sensitive, he shows emotions on a human level, and I can almost hear him speaking to me, he is the smartest animal I have ever had the fortune of knowing, and he is not afraid of anything, but is SUPER sharp! Working with a horse of this caliper has been the best experience I could ever ask for, no matter how difficult he can be. And surprisingly I have only fallen off him three times! He does like a rodeo (not due to pain or discomfort of any kind!!), he squeals like a pig, and rears like he should have been in the Spanish Riding School! The first two times we parted ways were completely my fault. Ii actually fell off him when I tried him, he was so difficult, he wasn't at all of the leg, and if you touched the rein he stopped because he wasn't at all put together, so we went into a jump, I got a bit deep and didn't have enough canter or leg, and he said "No thank you", and I did exactly the same thing at a show six months later! The third fall, if you can call it that, was actually this morning as I'm writing this (17.12.19)
Today I went for a hack with Billy up the lane, we were 45 minutes out, and a dog in someone's garden ran into the hedge trying to get at us (Billy is not at all afraid of dogs trying to attack him, it was purely because it ran into the hedge) so he spooked and consequently slipped on the road and fell on me. I've had a couple of rotational falls, and they seemed to happen in slow motion, but this happen so quick! We were walking, all of a sudden he just disappeared from underneath me, and was on top of me! Luckily we were both ok (other than a couple of scrapes, some bruising, and swelling) but I couldn't grab Billy so he
disappeared off down the lane (and got lost at some point because a good Samaritan gave me a lift to find him) as I got back to the yard before him! This was truly my worst nightmare! Luckily we are both ok, as it could have been so much worse, before I got stopped by the good Samaritan I was running down the road having images of Billy going through someone's windscreen in my head!
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But we will recover from this, and work on rebuilding confidence whilst hacking!
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My experiences with many different horses over the years taught me many things. I share them on the internet so that the you may gain a better understanding of where I’m coming from, what I believed, and what I have learnt.
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So that’s my story!
