( Racehorse to riding horse ) Anyone Can Whistle by Kirsty Jenkins I
n 2012 , my husband Martin and I decided to start looking for our new family member
and came across Anyone Can Whistle (aka Zippy) on a sale website. At the time he was 16.1hh (although he was advertised as 17hh), 9 year old, chestnut gelding who, in his previous career, had been a Flat Racehorse. He had been in training with George Margarson in Newmarket and had only raced 10 times but never made the grade so was sold to a private home. The first few months were
pretty rough as Zippy wasn’t quite as described in his advert. We had a lot of vices appear including napping, rearing and bolting. We very nearly gave in but he was such a nice person that we decided to investigate further. We found that he had quite a few issues needing attention and once these were resolved he was like a different person. Zippy is such a kind boy, but he is quirky and a bit of a stress head too. He’s always struggled with separation anxiety, but this may be due to the number of homes he passed through between leaving racing and joining us. We started from scratch again to lay some
correct foundations and did a lot of groundwork and long reining to build up our bond and trust together. We started doing some basic schooling to give us something to focus, aiming for our first dressage competition 5 months aſter Zippy arrived. It was just a basic Walk and Trot test as neither Zippy nor I had ever done any dressage before. To my complete shock we only went out and won the class! We then spent the rest of 2013 having fun, going to local showing shows and doing a few prelim dressage tests, always bringing home some ribbons. Zippy is built fairly correctly, moves incredibly
well and seems to really enjoy showing and dressage. We have toured around the local shows picking up lots of ribbons, sashes, trophies, prizes and qualifications in a variety of classes from Ex Racehorse, Riding Horse, Sports Horse, Concours d’ Elegance and Working Hunter. We were even lucky enough to qualify for the Sunshine Tour Showing Championships at Hickstead and Zippy was crowned the Champion In hand Thoroughbred and Reserve Champion Ridden Thoroughbred too! We also joined the charity, Retraining of Race-
horses (RoR) and have competed around the county show circuit and have taken part in the amazing clinics and camps that RoR run exclusively for Ex Racehorses. We have qualified for the RoR National Championships at Aintree Racecourse in showing and dressage every year and have been lucky enough to come home in the ribbons. We were also lucky enough to be invited to take part
76 MAY/JUNE 2019
in an RoR Parade of Ex Racehorses at Chepstow Racecourse at one of their race meetings. It was an incredible experience to be able to take Zippy back to a racecourse and although he was a bit cheeky to start with, once the parade started he strutted around the parade ring as though he owned it. To add some variety to Zippy’s life, we also
took part in some other events including some jumping. Over the years we have come 5th in our first ever hunter trial, have done a small amount of show jumping and quite a bit of cross country schooling. We have also done some fun events such as a trip to the beach, fancy dress classes, a long distance charity ride between two race- courses, bitless, bareback and also bridless riding, and some horse agility competitions. It has not all been plain sailing as we have had some fairly major health scares along the way! In 2016 Zippy kept getting recurrent sinus
infections that were not resolving aſter a variety of different antibiotics. Aſter lots of inconclusive tests Zippy was referred to the University of Bristol for further tests. He had swabs and blood taken, an endoscope, x-rays, orthoscope & finally a CT scan. All the testing showed that he had two sections of necrotic tissue/cartilage that needed removing from his nasal and sinus cavities. He underwent surgery the next day and had a complex sinus operation where they drilled two holes through his skull, dug out the necrotic areas and performed a sinus flush. Zippy was instantly better following the surgery and was back out competing 6 weeks later. In 2017 Zippy had a freak accident in the field and put a 10” hole through the front of his chest wall. It was an extremely messy and deep wound, and although the vets initially stitched it, Zippy managed to remove the stitches himself! The wound healed well and 6 weeks later he was back in proper ridden work again. At our first competition back something was not right. We
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