The owner of a tiny pony who excelled at the top of showing – and in fancy dress classes – has paid tribute to her family’s “true legend” after his death aged 26.
Barkway Blackjack, or Stan as he was known, won at the Royal International Horse Show and just about every county show on offer, as a lead-rein and first-ridden contender, and was supreme lead-rein at Ponies UK three years running.
For the last 10 years of his life, the 12hh British riding pony lived with Lyndsay Russell and her daughters Jenny, Isabel and Emily Bowman, enjoying more showing success as part of his “varied and fun-filled life”.
“Stan was and will always be a true legend who was ‘often copied but never equalled’,” Lyndsay told H&H. “He has left a huge hole in our family.
“We were lucky to have him in his later years, and he had a good home and a good life.”
Lyndsay said Stan had gone back to Shirley Dennison, whose daughter Harriet had ridden him as a child, and a neighbour of Lyndsay’s had taken him as a companion for an elderly horse.
“We were chatting by the field, and I said ‘Look at him, he’s bored to death, and far too fit and healthy to be doing nothing’,” she said. “He was getting cheesed off. I said would she sell him, and she said yes, on the promise that we wouldn’t sell him on, he could go back to them.
“So we bought him, to show my middle girl Emily the ropes in first ridden, and he did – and then some! He was a superstar, and won everything with us on the lead.”
Lyndsay said that as Stan was in his later teens and had done so much in the show ring, they only did a bit in first-ridden classes.
“He was more a family pony,” she said. “So we didn’t go the [British Show Pony Society] BSPS route and do everything again, but he did some of the Senior Showing and Dressage Ltd series; we took him to Cumberland county in 2017, for the day out, and put him in the qualifier, and he qualified for London.”
Lyndsay said Stan “enjoyed himself a bit too much” at the London finals.
“He could be a monkey!” she said. “But it was brilliant; a first for us to go to something like that, at Olympia still, and we all had a great time.”
Stan qualified for Olympia again, in hand with Jenny, the following year.
“Since then, we’d just kept his foot in with the odd trip out,” Lyndsay said. “He did a couple of shows a year, because he enjoyed it. He’d charge on the box; he liked going for a day out, and he loved his beach rides and hacked out.
“He particularly seemed to like fancy dress, being put in some quite daring costumes! He always had his ears pricked and was marching on to his next adventure with his perfectly pointed toes flicking away.
“He was still as fit as a fiddle. He would have outlived us all, I think, but he’d had a keratoma for a few years; it had never bothered him but we’d always said if it did, we’d take it from there. And he’d had a touch of stress laminitis and the combination got to him; our farrier Richard said he’d had enough.”
Lyndsay paid tribute to the pony who had taught so many tiny jockeys over the years, and who could often be heard shouting to come in or go out – or seen pushing the bigger horses about in the field.
“He had absolutely no vices, he was just a saint,” she said. “Tiny tots could clamber around him and everything. Especially in first ridden, the kids had to learn very quickly to ride properly, because he did have his moments. If he wanted to go a bit faster, he would. We saw many laps of canter, unintentionally!
“He’s left a huge hole in our family. We will miss his little conversations and wonderfully funny nature. He has given us a lifetime of memories and funny stories to tell for years.”
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