“Wow where do I start with my journey and Murray, the Red Wiggle!

Well at 16 years old my parents threw me on a plane to Melbourne to look at a horse (not Wiggles) down at the Friends of Werribee event. However, when we found out Wiggles was also competing there we thought we had better have a look. All it took for me was to watch his XC round and I was hooked! I had my first ride on him there and I knew instantly that this horse was the one. So I came home with a 17.1hh chestnut OTTB!

 

I can’t say Mum and Dad were too thrilled on the fact that he needs two partitions in the gooseneck, but he got brownie points from Dad for being a fellow Kiwi! Lou was amazing with the process, especially since this was a big step for her to say goodbye to the Red Wiggle and send him to sunny QLD, but he has given this family some epic rides. I remember my first ride on Wiggles at home being down at our local Toowoomba XC course with a coach. Now I hadn’t done much more than 95 eventing and by the end of the clinic we were going around 2 star jumps! Now this is how you can tell you’ve bought a good horse, one that can teach you the ropes of XC and loves it just as much as you do. From here on our eventing journey continued.

 

One of our greatest successes was a new event down in Waterford with a brand new XC course so all the jumps were maxed out and man were some of those brushes big! We ended up placing 3rd overall (out of about 50) and 1st placed junior rider! We smashed it out XC going clear and perfect on time, same with the SJ! So we did a season of 95 eventing and then last year we moved up to 1 star! I graduated school last year and was meant to head overseas so I passed him on to my little sister Georgia (14), but don’t worry he’s only on loan to her!

 

Georgia and Wiggles are also both competing one star now and he really is the ultimate eventing schoolmaster for a young kid learning the ropes of eventing. Georgia is planning to get up to 2 star in the near future and potentially 3 star with Adelaide set in her sights!”