You know when you are looking for a new horse and you’ve got a picture in your mind of what he looks like? And then sometimes you find a horse that doesn’t look anything like that picture, but its a nice horse, so you buy him anyway? That is where I was at the beginning of this year.

I had found a horse coming off the track that I thought was nice looking and the trainer said he had a good temperament. If he didn’t run well in his next race, I was going to buy him.

Then a friend of mine from Cape Town mentioned that she knew of a horse coming off the track in PE. And she emailed me a picture. The picture of In Extreme was exactly what that horse in my head looked like. Exactly. I emailed her back immediately.”Thats my horse. The one in my head!”

What on earth do I do now? Buy the horse that I had seen in the flesh, checked the legs, taken my instructor to see? Or buy this guy off a photograph?

I bought him on the strength of that photograph. Because he looked like the horse in my head.

On the day of his arrival, I started to stress. I knew nothing about him. You can’t gauge intelligence off a photograph. You can’t read personality from an email. I like intelligent, sparky, clever horses. And I didn’t have a clue who this horse really was. What had I done????

But then the float came around the corner. And there was a litte horse with a blaze in one of the back booths, standing on his very tippy toes to see out of the window. And, in his eyes, I saw cleverness, anticipation, curiosity and just a hint of mischief.

And I fell in love.