Hunter of a lifetime

“The Cow Pony” is a side-saddle legend, in the show ring and also on the hunting field

Bertie, the skewbald side-saddle legend

IWANT him to go on forever; I need to find the philosopher’s stone that grants eternal life,” said Chloe Marsh, who is now 28 and has had Bertie – officially Oaklawn Gypsy – since she was 14.

“He was my first horse, and I had only had one pony before that,” she says. “We wanted something about 10, been-there-done-that for a petite 14-year-old girl, and we had tried 14 others before him. He was rising six, over from Ireland and very green, but as soon as I sat on him, I knew he was coming home.”

Chloe lived in Leicestershire and was a member of the Quorn Hunt branch of the Pony Club.

“Bertie had an incredible jump but wasn’t brave, so someone suggested I took him out with the Quorn. It was the making of him,” she says.

She hunted with the

Quorn and the Readyfield Bloodhounds, and it was through field masters of the bloodhounds, Emma and Andy Brown, that she first put a side-saddle on him.

“Bertie and I instantly loved it. He’s only 15hh, but grows a hand or more when he has a side-saddle on,” she says. “Emma encouraged me to go to the closing meet of the bloodhounds side-saddle; I’d only jumped a tiny cross-pole in the school like that, but we ended up jumping a five-bar gate that day. I have never hunted astride since.”

Bertie accompanied Chloe to university in Cirencester, and the pair did some days with the VWH. And when she married Dorset dairy farmer Thomas Marsh in June 2018 – Bertie naturally played a part in the day – he moved with her to the West Country. Now they hunt with the South Dorset and the Cattistock.

“He’s a phenomenal hunter,” says Chloe. “But he’s so careful that he can jump me off astride, which is why I prefer riding him side-saddle.”

As a child, Chloe’s dream was to ride at Leicester

County Show. She never imagined winning there, as she did with Bertie, and he was side-saddle horse of the year at the national championships in 2018.

“He adores a crowd – any opportunity to show off.”

In 2015, the pair had the chance to ride at German show venue Aachen, as part of the British side-saddle team which performed at the opening ceremony of the 2015 European Championships.

“Riding in front of 40,000 people was the biggest buzz I have ever experienced,” says Chloe. “The atmosphere hits you like a wall as you ride in, but ‘the Cow Pony’ [as Bertie

“He’s only 15hh, but grows a hand in his side-saddle”

is often known] strode in, pointed his toes and you could hear him announce, ‘I have arrived!’ He loved it.

“I just can’t believe where a little coloured horse who came from a market in Ireland has taken me. When I first had him, someone said, ‘He’s a nice stamp but he has too much of a common face to do very well.’ Well, hasn’t he proved them wrong?”

His only minor failing is that while “anyone can do anything with him – he’s such a gent”, that doesn’t include Chloe’s husband, Thomas.

“They have a love-hate relationship,” she says. “Bertie knows that he was in my life first and he wants to keep that pecking order!” H&H