How did I get into horses? It’s a long story but I will give you a snapshot. Life was different growing up in the 1950s. My mother and uncle hunted with the Galway Blazers and I was eight years of age when, after delivering milk with a pony and dray in my hometown of Loughrea, I decided I was going hunting. I hopped up bareback, cantered out five miles to Dartfield, and never looked back. Michael Dempsey, who never saw me short of a hunter, found me an old saddle.

My school pal Pat O’Neill and I lived for hunting. It was freedom from school following the Blazer’s hounds, jumping walls that went on forever. Lady Hemphill was a great field master and Paddy Pickersgill and Michael Dempsey would hunt hounds until dark. We hacked hirelings for Willie Leahy to meets, often 30 mile round trips, and would hunt any horse or pony that we were offered.

I hunted ponies for Commandant Dinny Lundon and horses for Michael Dempsey and remember hunting an unbroken Connemara pony who ran away with me at a meet in Athenry. I ended up miles away in Castle Ellen and lost my good flat cap in the process. I even hunted film director John Huston’s hunter when he would retire early.

Boarding school

To get me away from horses I was sent to boarding school in Garbally Park in Ballinasloe, but I knew the Irish teacher Fr Keys hunted with the Blazers and kept his hunters on the college farm. My father got a shock when I rode out along the main avenue to greet him on Fr Key’s Irish Draught hunter.

I attended my first Dublin Horse Show at 12 years old. Aidan O’Connell told me later that when he saw men in bowler hats getting in free, he found a second-hand shop and bought a bowler for five shillings and walked in free every day!

I was later invited to join the library and archives committee and did research for my five books in the RDS library. I gave a talk and an exhibition of photos to the RDS members and was part of a syndicate that showed show cobs at the show. One of my favourite photos is PJ and Sonya Casey kissing after winning the supreme and reserve hunter championships this year.

The Irish Field

I wrote my first article for The Irish Field in 1981, which gave me an outlet to record my travels, hunting around Ireland and the world.

I have always loved the Traditional Irish Horse. Why? They have brains, enormous ability, a long working life, and are easy to look after. I dedicated my book The Origins of Irish Horse Fairs & Horse Sales to my favourite hunter, named Walter. I rode him in the film Lassie where I played the huntsman alongside Peter O’Toole.

Although I show jumped and evented, hunting with the Galway Blazers was always more exciting and later I whipped in to the Fingal Harriers for 20 seasons.

In Ireland I have photographed thousands of hunters jumping every conceivable object from walls, banks, wire, bedsteads to church pews, enough to include in my book titled The Irish Hunter.

I discovered 18 Irish hunters following the I Due Laghi hunt in Italy and met one of my idols, Olympic showjumper Colonel Raimondo D’Inzeo.

In the Czech Republic our hunting host Prince Johannes Lobkowicz had four Irish hunters and in France, I hunted a 17hh Irish showjumper with the Rallye Fontainebleau Staghounds, and with Antoinette de la Bouillerie of the Rallye des Grands Loups whose hunters are Irish.

Across the Atlantic

Farnan Collins, master of the Millbrook Hunt, hunted an Irish Draught. Cheshire Hounds field master Bruce Miller hunted an Irish-bred, as did Kathleen Crompton, while Joy Slater had a few hunters from the Breen family in Limerick.

More American owners include Sharon D’Amico, who has two Irish Draught hunters and my nephew Ivan Dowling, huntsman of the Cheshire Hounds.

In the Green Spring Valley hunt George Mahoney has a thoroughbred that he bought in Tattersalls.

I hunted an Irish hunter with the Stone Valley Hunt in New York that came from Oliver Walsh in Galway and another I hunted was a mare, owned by Ann Morss with the Genessee Valley Hunt and by Jack Lambert’s Grange Bouncer, on a famous run of two hours, 55 minutes on a coyote.

Further south, Willie Dunne, master of the Middleton Place Hounds, has Irish hunters in his South Carolina barn. Reve Walsh, who hunts with the West Palm Beach, has two Irish hunters.

Katie Scarlet was so proud of the Irish horse she hunted with the Orange County Hunt that there was an imprint of a shamrock on the horse’s rump!

Irish exports

In New Zealand the Christchurch Harriers had an Irish hunter by Thady Ryan’s Irish Draught, Kingsway Diamond.

In the UK, all the Pytchley hunt staff and master’s hunters were Irish-breds, sold by Paul Kinane.

With the Puckeridge Hunt, huntsman Josh Tierney’s hunter was sourced from Kevin Donohoe, huntsman of the Ballymacad, joint master Georgia Dollar was on another that came from Linzi Sullivan and fellow joint-master Karen Fiske had two Huntingfield Rebel horses out. Five members of the Pearson family were all on Irish hunters.

The list just goes on and my travels are far from finished, I hope!