"My Brumby got me through my cancer treatment"

In 2018 I was invited to enter in a brumby training completion organised by the Hunter Valley Brumby Association.

We had 250 days to train our brumbies from completely unhandled and were judged at the end by doing a working equitation competition, competing in the brumby classes at an Ag show and doing a 5-minute freestyle to music.

The aim of the competition was to raise awareness of the brumbies and to showcase them as the versatile and easygoing breed of horses that they are.

I hadn’t had much to do with brumbies before this and certainly did not consider them for my own personal use, but I thought this would be a fun challenge for me to train one.

Myself and the other trainers headed up to sanctuary to spend three days with our new brumbies, with the aim to get them halter trained and able to float them home.

All of the brumbies were mares who had been captured from Mt Kosciuszko. They were all around four-years-old.

Each brumby had been allocated to each trainer by the organisers and Hope was allocated to me.

She would not have been my first choice

Hope was a fairly plain looking mare. Little did I know at the time but she was exactly the right brumby for me.

Six weeks after I first met Hope I found a lump in one of my breasts.

Many appointments and scans and dreaded mammograms later found me with a diagnosis of Breast Cancer.

I was determined to continue with training Hope and complete the competition

I had three surgeries, including a double mastectomy. After each surgery I had to recover so Hope was left in the paddock with my other horses.

Chemotherapy was part of the treatment and began just 5 weeks before the end of the competition.

Everyone who goes through a cancer journey says how much it changes your perspective on things.

Whilst I was devastated with the news, I also needed to stay positive and well throughout the treatment.

Having Hope just made it all a little easier.

Whenever I went into the paddock to do any sort of job, Hope would see me and leave the herd of horses and come and hang out with me.

She would be right with me, curious about what I was up to, playing with my tools or knocking the hat off my head.

It really made me so happy to know Hope genuinely wanted to be with me.

It didn’t take long before Hope happily let me approach her when she was lying down snoozing in the paddock.

It was such a special time to be able to just sit with her in the paddock. No rush to do anything. It was exactly what I needed.

Hope was definitely there for me.

The days when all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry, I got myself up to spend time with Hope and continue her training.

We spent many hours just hanging together when I didn’t have the energy to do anything more.

It was like she knew.

Despite being bald and feeling pretty crappy we managed to finish the competition and even bring home the big WIN.

The judges and the people watching commented about the connection Hope and I had.

That meant more to me than winning first place.

Nothing was ever too hard for Hope, nothing was ever a drama – she would try anything I asked of her. Our trust in each other was very clear.

Each week before chemo I would have a blood test to check I was well enough for the next round.

Each week my red and white blood counts would go down.

But after WINNING the Brumby final those numbers bounced right back up to within ‘normal’ range and stayed up throughout the rest of my chemo.

The love and support I received from everyone watching that day and the trust my beautiful Hope had in me kept me on that high.

I am a huge advocate of the brumbies now. I continue to train brumbies to set them up well for their domestic life.

Building trust with these magnificent horses is my main goal. I hope I can continue to do this for more brumbies.

We are now 4 years on and I am well and Hope and I continue to have the most amazing time together. I am super proud of the brumby Hope is now.

We have dabbled in many different equine disciplines from eventing, showjumping, working equitation, dressage and team penning.

Our most favourite thing to do together is to get out and explore the Australian countryside.

I feel like I'm allowing Hope some freedom to be in the bush she grew up in. She is certainly in her element out there. She will lead the group through new territory and the other horses will follow her confidence.

I still marvel at the universe putting Hope and I together at the time in my life I when I really needed hope.