Horse_amp_amp_Hound__06_February_2018

stride — “I rode two to three horses a day right
up to Otis being born” — and she was back
competing in a month. Yet the Prices have been
upfront about the fact that Otis’ arrival was a
welcome surprise.
“Never in a million years did I think we
would have a baby in 2017,” laughs Jonelle.
“But if it didn’t happen then, possibly it would
not have happened. The time when we should
have been thinking about a family, our careers
had just started to gather momentum. I’d
definitely been dragging my feet about it.”
While Jonelle found pregnancy easy —
“Badminton came round and I really felt like
I could have been there riding” — mentally it
was tougher.
“It was the first time in my life that I had no
focus and drive,” she says. “Plus I’m a control
freak so handing over the horses was hard.”
Having “begun to drive Tim bonkers”, she
started working twice a week with a personal
trainer to maintain fitness while Tim took on
five of her rides.
“We were lucky,” she acknowledges. “So
many women have to outsource during
pregnancy which is hard on business — and
dangerous [in case horses don’t come back].”
Jonelle’s mini-season culminated with
Faerie Dianimo at Pau, where they came 10th,
a result she found disappointing but still gave
her “a lot of positives to take away”.
Key to Jonelle’s 2018 ambitions — and no
doubt her best Christmas present — is Harriet,
Otis’ new nanny. She will now accompany the
family for a month on the Spanish Sunshine
Tour. This trip to the five-week international
showjumping event is something Jonelle first
did on her own before Rio.
“It was the phase I thought I could improve
the most,” she explains, “and I want my horses
to feel a bit ‘overqualified’ when it comes to the
last day of Badminton or Burghley.”
It’s all part of the Prices’ constant quest for
improvement, as is some proper downtime
over the winter rather than zooming round the
world giving clinics, so they’re both raring to go
for the new season.
AMONTH overseas might not suit every
nanny, but Harriet, happily, is horsey,
and the plan is for her and Otis to come
Jonelle and Tim admit
that five-month-old Otis
was a welcome surprise:
‘If it hadn’t happened
then, it might never have
happened at all’
‘The time when we
should have been
thinking about a
family, our careers
had just started to
gather momentum.
I’d definitely been
dragging my feet
about it’
to many events “or we’d never see him”.
“When we advertise any job we say: ‘There
are no set hours. We are your life and we want
you to be part of ours’,” explains Jonelle. “When
there’s work to do, we work, and when there’s
not, we rest. We work on a give-and-take basis
Jonelle riding Faerie Dianimo at
Pau CCI4* in 2014. ‘Small feisty
mares’ are right up her street
and like to think we help them in return.”
If this might make an HR department
flinch it certainly works for the Prices, who
enjoy very low staff turnover.
But then few couples are as much fun to
be around as Tim and Jonelle. Tim long ago
marked himself as a reporter’s favourite with
his comic quotes and he doesn’t let me down
this time: “I don’t know who he looks like,” I
muse, admiring Otis. “The farrier…?” he teases.
Even juggling the baby with calls to delivery
men who’ve just dropped off the wrong sofa,
there is humour in the air and they seem
a truly happy team. Tim and Jonelle have
been together for 17 years, married for five
and built a business from nothing after
arriving here 13 years ago, albeit at a slightly
slower rate than expected.
“Being foreign, it’s definitely harder,”
Jonelle says. “We don’t have young riders
and juniors in New Zealand, or a network of
parents’ friends and so on. At one stage we had
about 12 horses and owned them all. Now we
probably have 25 and own two.”
Almost all of them are out every night in
small groups in large paddocks.
“We encourage horses to be horses,” says
Jonelle. “We hack them a lot and give them
a good seven-week holiday with their shoes off.
There are definitely elements of New Zealand
in us, for sure.”
Their Wiltshire base fits their style of
horsecare so well that they have no immediate
plans to look for their own yard.
“We love Mere Farm,” stresses Jonelle. “Tim
and Melissa Brown [its owners] have been
instrumental to our survival in this country,
and having 120 acres is very important to us.”
Instead they have bought themselves
a postcard-pretty thatched cottage in
Marlborough, “so we felt we had something”.
Fate has decreed that most of Jonelle’s rides
are mares, which is not without irony.
“Before Faerie Dianimo, I didn’t ride or buy
mares; the perception back then was that they
were harder to manage. By chance I ended up
with a couple that have become very good —
and discovered that I love them. Now I have
only three geldings. Small, feisty mares are
right up my street,” she laughs. “They challenge
me — they are so bloody determined. We’re
a good match.” H&H
NEXT
WEEK
Zetland huntsman
David Jukes
8 February 2018 Horse & Hound 27