Dartmoor comes of age
A PROLIFIC winning Dartmoor celebrated his 21st birthday recently — and is now back in the show ring.
Ekens Fifer, who was bred in Sweden and originally travelled over with a consignment of car parts, began his career with Mandy Burchell-Small, who took him in part-payment for a show pony.
“At the time, I wasn’t best pleased to be paid with a Dartmoor,” she recalls. “But he turned out to be really good news.”
Fifer won the Lobster Pot final — his first big title — at Ponies (UK) as a four-year-old, and over the next 10 years safely carried connections and members of the Brar, Ward, Spencer, Harvey and finally Smalley family, who still have him now. Among his accolades are wins at the Royal International, supreme Heritage titles at the British Show Pony Society’s winter and summer championships, and also at the first-ever Heritage championship show. He claimed many other tricolours on the county circuit, crowning them all with the Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) mini native title in 2010.
“We retired him from ridden showing after that but he’s now back competing in senior classes, led by my daughter Eloise Pinnock, whom he first carried in the ring on the lead rein when she was four,” said Claire Smalley. “We are hoping to qualify him for Olympia — he’s through to the second round. He really seems to enjoy being shown again.”