THE cornerstone of Catriona Fallon’s business is retaining the art of producing a young horse correctly.

A highly regarded horsewomen from Co Galway, Catriona has amassed a huge amount of knowledge through years of experience riding all kinds of horses, which she now uses to produce her own stars of the future. Bonfires on the road home after a recent big win in Cavan showed what it means to the Galway girl.

“I began riding as a child, when we borrowed a neighbour’s donkey for some visiting Americans. That’s my first memory of riding; the Americans went home and the donkey never did. I did some hunting, but never did any show jumping until much later,” she told The Irish Field.

A 10-year stint at Vinnie Duffy’s Knockmore, Co Mayo yard set her up with a solid foundation and she rode some special horses, including the championship horse World Cruise. “I finished school and went to the University of Limerick and did their equine course. I went to Vinnie Duffy’s yard for work experience and ended up staying there for 10 years. I started off grooming and then began riding.

“We rode every kind of horse. Vinnie was doing a lot of dealing at that stage. In my later years, I’d have started World Cruise there. I started a lot of horses that have gone on to be very successful.

“I rode World Cruise when he was at the very start, as a three- and four-year-old. I remember he was very, very spooky. One day, one of the kids came flying round the corner on a pony opposite him and he zig-zagged and threw me into the rails. Vinnie ran in, and went off after the good horse. It was like a cartoon, he put me through the rails and I slithered down to the ground while Vinnie went sprinting after him!

“He was so careful. Until the day he died, he had to be started over a pole on the ground to get going. Some horses are just like that,” Catriona remembered of the horse that jumped double clear in the Aga Khan with Shane Breen, as well as making the WEG team in 2006.

Shane Breen and World Cruise jumping the Aga Khan at the Dublin Horse Show in 2006. Catriona Fallon rode the horse as a three-year-old while working for Vinnie Duffy \ Tony Parkes

“I pushed a lot of wheelbarrows in Vinnie’s and ended up competing with a lot of horses. Along with World Cruise, I also rode a good pony named Our Foreman. He went on to the Europeans and won in Dublin also. I rode him in horse classes, in Boomerang qualifiers, everything, although he was barely 148cm.

“He was a nightmare to buck and wasn’t happy until he had everyone out of the saddle. He was so sharp; the eyes would go round in his head and he’d give it to you. He was sold on and, when he was 24 years old, the guy that owned him, Hans Kuehnle, came up to us in Dublin and said: ‘he tried to get Jenny (Kuehnle) off this morning’. That’s how we knew he was in good form.

“They had some reservations about competing him in Dublin that year (2015) because of his age, but he went on to win the championship. He was unbelievable.”

An education

Catriona has been around for plenty of changing times in the industry, and ventured to the European circuit too.

“Vinnie’s kids were small at that time and Padraig Judge was there too,” she continued. “It was an education, that’s for sure. You’d learn by watching people. You’d see things you liked, and things you didn’t, and sometimes you’d learn more from seeing what you didn’t like.

“At that time (early 90s), everyone was doing that same thing. After the October show in Kill, you’d go breaking youngsters at home, and that’s what you’d do until the spring. There was no heading off training, or to shows in the sun. It was like a lockdown until the shows started up again.

“That has almost completely stopped now. That time taken, just to concentrate on bringing youngsters on slowly, with no pressure to jump or compete, has been lost.

“After Vinnie’s, I went to work for Max Hauri in Switzerland for a couple of years. Eddie Moloney and Shane Breen would have been there at that time. That was a seven day-a-week job. It was crazy work, but sure everyone was in it together, so it was grand.

“It was sales and show jumping. Max was a great horseman. Every horse that came off the lorry, regardless of its price, would be treated the same way. They would have to go into the woods, jump all the banks, go into the river…

“Max’s thinking was ‘if they say no now, they will say no at a later stage. A horse doesn’t know what it cost, so a horse is a horse, regardless of price’. That was a great education.

Catriona Fallon

Travel by road

“I remember being in Switzerland and not knowing how the telephone worked; I thought it was engaged for a month when I was trying to phone home. Eddie Moloney had to come out and show me. I’d never been anywhere before. I went out on the back of a lorry; I’d never been on a plane!

“We’d go down to the pub to make the call home from a coin phone box and I was a full month saying ‘it’s engaged, it’s engaged’, and Eddie takes the phone from me, listens and says ‘that’s ringing, that’s the international dial tone’. I said ‘oh Jesus, my mother must think I’m dead!’ It was a different world than now. It really was.

“We did a lot of jumping there, it was a great place to learn. I remember I won a six-bar class on a five-year-old French-bred horse. I have no idea why they had a six-bar for five and six-year-old horses, but I know I won because I have the three lovely gold coins at home. It was a weird one. I cleared 1.80m to win, it was flippin’ huge,” she remembers of her Swiss adventures.

“Then I came home and went to Marion’s (Hughes) for two years. That was great. More of the same really, production of young horses.

“She has a great system there, with bringing them in and leaving them out when they are young. That would have been the first place where they were breeding the stock. She was great at being critical of the mother; the mare’s side.

“There are not many places where they’ve ridden all the stock and been so good at riding that they can be critical; like ‘that mare was a bit downhill’ or ‘she was a bit open in front’, whatever it may be, and then they can try to improve the next generation with what they felt was missing in the mare.

“The system they have now there is phenomenal. I don’t think there is any place that does that. She knows the mares inside out and can reflect back. They know the positives and negatives of every mare and try to breed to correct it.

“Mikey (Pender) and Brendan (Doyle) are great with the stallions. They are all the time looking out for young stallions. Marion always takes her time with youngsters, which is so important. There is no panic on them, you have to let them grow up.

“These days there is a lot of forcing going on in jumping youngsters. I think there is too much asked of them. The seven-year-old horse of mine (Freddy Bear) grew an inch from August to January. The Luidam’s definitely grow at a slower rate. They have to learn to balance themselves.”

Catriona Fallon after winning with Freddy Bear in Cavan \ Epic Management

Breeding

Catriona was on the move again to Co Kildare, before eventually returning home to Galway after a stint at Knightfield Equestrian.

“After Marion’s, I went to work at Knightfield Equestrian for Tom Rowland and his daughter Sarah Rowland. They did a massive amount of breeding; we would have had 30 horses in each age group.

“We tried to sell the ones that weren’t going to suit us as four-year-olds, so we would have time to concentrate on the ones we liked. I had a nice mare there named Clane K, who was placed in the Cavan six and seven-year-olds. She went on to win a load of European medals for an English girl.

“I also had another Luidam horse named Nivitas Charge K, who jumped the National Grand Prix circuit and went on to do well when he was sold.

“When I left, Tom gave me a mare named Ladylay. She bred the horse Pimmes Party (Celtic Hero B Z x Cavalier Royale) that was second for Sven Hadley in the five-year-olds in the Cavan Crystal class a couple of months ago. I’d only sold her to Sven a few days earlier.

“I also bought the mare Deeply Dippy K (by Luidam) from Tom, they both became my foundation mares when I went out on my own. Deeply Dippy K is the dam of my home-bred Freddy Bear, who won the six and seven-year-olds in Cavan recently.”

Home is Turlough, not far from Galway city. “We have 12 boxes here, and then the open pens for the youngsters. I don’t want to go too big, it’s just me and my brother Conor at home. Another lad, Conor Teeling, comes in the evening after work and helps me. He’s a lovely lad, he’s nice and kind with them.

“When they are three and I have them backed and walking, I give some of them down to Clarus Maylon in Co Clare.

“We have five broodmares in total - Deeply Dippy, Ladylay, a couple of daughters of Ladylay and Conor has one, Monard Pandora (by Radolin).

“I use stallions from Andrea Etter, she has been very good to me. I appreciate her opinion a lot. We hopefully end up with three or four of each age group every year. I have them all cross-country schooled.”

Industrialised

Catriona prides herself on being straight up with customers and anyone who comes into the yard. “People know what they get with me. I am very straight up with everyone. There is no messing about,” she said, adding: “Richard Sheane is a good customer; he’ll always ring to see what we have.

“I think horses get confidence out of being driven. You get to know how they will react. I drive my youngsters everywhere; over the neighbour’s farms, they get to see everything. I go everywhere; if there’s a gate open, I’m in there. The neighbours are used to it; luckily, they don’t seem to mind!

“Driving is phenomenal. It’s so important. If you miss that you can never get it back. Everyone is so industrialised now. They don’t bother with the driving, they try to bypass it. Back in the day, you’d be out driving and you’d meet another neighbour doing the same, who would stop for a chat. You would think he was doing nothing, but in fact, he was teaching the horse to have manners, to stop and wait for the five minutes that he was chatting. That’s gone now, no one has the time and it’s leaving a huge hole in the job.

“If you talk to any of the older people they’ll tell you; everyone used to be thin as laths because you’d spend the whole winter just drive, drive, drive all day long. You can’t fast track it, but there is no respect for it any more. The start is everything for a horse, people forget that.

“You can get a horse so tuned into you, your voice, even what you are saying, how you say it. You can interrogate them on the ground and know their reaction to it. No one seems interested in learning that. All the young ones just want to be in white jodhpurs, but they have no idea how the horse got there. It’s a big problem.”

Catriona Fallon after winning with Freddy Bear in Cavan \ Epic Management

Slogging away

Catriona continued: “When you are producing, you are slogging away to give a horse a good education, so it will end up somewhere where it will have a good life. But there’s no glory in it, so people aren’t interested in learning.

“We’re farmers down here. There are cows and sheep, hens and ducks all around the yard facing the horses every day, so they get used to it. When I get a new horse in, they will be fainting when they arrive.

“Most of the lads that I do horses for will just be laughing and saying ‘let us know after a week how much fainting it did’. But it makes them bombproof. I rarely have problems when I go to shows. They are just knocking around with tractors, and they’ll go out and jump a few walls and go cross-country. Everything gets days out.

“Unfortunately, you can’t really hunt any more because of the vetting; if you have any sort of a mark when selling them, you’re gone. It’s a shame, because the hunting used to be great. You’d be hanging on for dear life for the first couple of fields and then you’d be away with it.

“People don’t appreciate that they have to go into the ring and have their fence or two down in order to learn. With all the scores being published, they are looking and saying; ‘what happened to him that day? He had two down five years ago’, they don’t seem to appreciate that that is all part of the process.

“They are not going to learn it at home, they are not going to learn it in the pocket, they have to learn it in the ring. Everyone is trying to protect their results printout. It’s a real shame. They have to be allowed to have bad days, that’s how they learn.”

Catriona Fallon

Happy home

What is clear is Catriona has huge love for her horses. “I’m always looking for a few more nice ones to take on, produce them and then hopefully they go on to a successful career and a happy home.

“I’m lucky that I’m a good weight to be able to still ride and produce ponies. It’s so important that ponies are bombproof, so I take them on and produce them to be safe for kids. It’s vital that parents can be confident when their children are learning.

“I remember being in Knightfield one day and Barry O’Connor coming down and saying ‘what’s all this mess in the sand arena?’ because I had a Christmas tree, still with tinsel on it waving in the wind, in the middle. I said ‘that’s my safety pen. Everything goes over the Christmas tree, and sometimes I even plug in the fairy lights’… Barry thought this was fantastic.

“It’s all about time and, unfortunately, time is money. You have to be able to move them up a class, and then move them back down, and then up again. It all takes time to build confidence and it is so important. Sometimes they are immature in their heads. People forget that. You have to keep their heads sweet and not overwhelm them.

“I have a thing I do with the young ones; it’s the length of a set of shoes. I put shoes on them and work and teach them for the six weeks or so until the shoes need to be replaced.

“Then I take them off and put them out in the field for a rest for about a month or six weeks. They need that time to process everything they have learned. I find it a great way of making you put them out. If you don’t let them process, then they get mixed up and go backwards, and get confused.

“You can’t just hit them with more and more information. They will just get to a point where they say ‘I can’t take it’ and that’s when the fights start, which can be avoided if you give them time to process.

“Marion and Vinnie were always great at that. Turning a blind eye to a horse and giving them time to learn and take it all in. Never rushing, and that is what I try to do with all mine.”