‘The stars aligned’: cob dumped unwanted, alone and feral becomes winning dressage diva

A cob who was dumped as an unwanted “completely feral” colt who had to be darted to be rescued has become a dressage diva – and his owner’s “horse of a lifetime”.

Hillrow Harvey and Alice Griffiths won the prelim freestyle at Suffolk Rural on 8 February; they have also been placed at the British Dressage (BD) associated championships and contested Area Festivals, something Alice said she would never have thought possible.

Alice told H&H she saw repeated posts on social media about two abandoned horses near where she lives in Cambridgeshire, six years ago, so went to have a look, and found Harvey there on his own.

“I spoke to a local farmer, who said the other horse had got stuck upside-down in a ditch and died,” she said. “So just Harvey was there, and he was completely feral. He was really curious, because he was only a baby, but if you got too close, he’d just canter off.

“I felt really bad for him because no one wanted him, so I got my old veteran horse and herded him home, because he’d follow anything.”

Alice approached the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare, who guided her through the process of serving abandonment notices and legally taking ownership of the colt.

“I won’t lie, when we got him home, I thought ‘What have I done?’” she said. “We couldn’t keep him in a stable, we couldn’t keep him in a field unless he was with someone, and he was a colt. I had mares, and I thought ‘We’re going to end up with 50,000 foals next year’, because he was so wild, I couldn’t touch him. I got the vets out, and they said ‘You’re going to need somebody with a dart gun, because there’s no way we can get close enough to even jab him, to get him gelded.’”

Alice managed to find someone who could dart Harvey, and once he was sedated, she drove her small horsebox into the field and the colt was half-carried on board.

Once he had woken up enough to travel, he was taken in for gelding.

“Then everything changed and he was much easier to handle,” Alice said. “I won’t say it was all straightforward! But he was definitely more manageable. It took him time to get used to certain things like having a rug on, and he’s never taken to being tied up so I’ve adapted round him, but he’s quite a sensitive soul and I couldn’t think of sending him on his way anywhere.”

When Harvey was older, Alice started riding him a bit, and they did some showing.

“I didn’t have a horse at the time to ride, so it just kind of stuck!” she said. “The thought did come, do I maybe sell him, but he’s quite a quirky little boy, and because he found me, I felt quite, you know, obliged to be attached to him, and didn’t want to send him on – and he’s still here.

“I’d done a bit of BD with my old horse and had just stepped up to novice but he got a bit unsound so I retired him. I did have a couple of other horses in between but one was a bit too spicy for me, the other one did a suspensory. Then Harvey came along, and I thought ‘Maybe we’ll give BD a go’. He’s got quite nice paces, he can move quite nicely, and that’s just stuck. Hopefully next year, we’ll be looking to do a bit of elementary – he’s really done everything for me that I would have wanted in a horse.”

Harvey still has his quirks, Alice said, adding that a friend of hers described him as a “mini racehorse”, but when it all comes together, as it did last Sunday, it is worth everything.

“I cried!” Alice said. “He can be fussy, and earlier this year we came out with a score of about 61, which I was so disheartened by. So to get +72%; when it all comes together like that, he was calm and relaxed and everything was just right – I thought ‘This is what this was all about’. All the work, the worry; all the stars aligned and it was perfect. He’s done everything for me; don’t get me wrong, he can be a spanner at times! But he’s really my horse of a lifetime.”

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