My name is Gemma Owens and I have been a qualified Instructor for over 30 years, producing and successfuly competing my own horses at affilliated showjumping, eventing, dressage and driving trials. My love and passion is dressage and I have produced horses from breaking, through to Medium Level. My second love is carriage driving and I have produced my ponies and horses, again from breaking up to National Advanced Pony Pairs, Open Horse classes. I've competed a pony team, this is my new addiction. A team takes lots of time, both to train the ponies and then to put together the ones that work happily together. There’s no better feeling than driving a happy team.

We started the riding school in 2004, our aim being to bridge the gap from learning to ride to horse ownership. All our horses are experienced schoolmasters and can teach from beginners to advanced clients. We pride ourselves in maintaining our horses education and schooling. Our philosophy has been to have competition horses that work in the riding school, ensuring that our customers ride and drive ,very well educated horses and ponies.

Being born with Spina Biffida and Ehlers Danilos Syndrome, I’ve suffered from Invisible Disabilities all my life, I didn’t receive a diagnosis until my late 30s. As a consequence , I had chronic pain all my life that doctors, family and friends just didn’t understand.

The only time that I am anywhere near pain free, is when I’m either riding or Carriage Driving. My brain is occupied with focusing on an activity that I truly love. Interacting with horses is rewarding on so many ways, they don’t judge your disabilities, or react to you feeling down due to Chronic Pain.

In around 2018 I started using a mobility scooter to teach from as well as to turn out and get around the yard. During this time I was networking to promote the business and had a terrible experience.

The day began when I was on the carriage with the horses, everything was going great. Lots of Interest and people networking with me. However, when I went into the room on my scooter to network, absolutely NO ONE made eye contact. The assumption was that I wasn’t representing a business because of being on my scooter. Words can not express how damaging this was to my mental health, it was devastating, I lost all confidence in myself as a businesswoman. Then other areas of my own industry started to question the safety and my abilities to both run a business and safely teach from my scooter. It was horrendous and still very challenging. Costs to the business almost tripled as the insurance premiums increased and a prerequisite of the insurance company is that I have an able bodied person with me at all times, for health and safety. Even though all staff have walkie talkies and no one is more than 5 minutes away.

There was an upside to all of this, it gave me the confidence to ask for help from the people around me that I trust. This gave me the idea for our non profit, GO Equestrian Club CIC, to support those with invisible disabilities, to provide a non judgemental place of support, sanctuary , to enjoy equine interaction and equine sports. My desire was, to enable those with conditions that effect their physical and mental states of mind , to be part of a club. Our club views invisible health conditions as special abilities, making an environment where we can confidently discuss our needs, to feel the support of others in similar circumstances. For those people that have had their own horses , but through their circumstances can no longer commit to the 24/7 care that horses need, the opportunity to still engage with horses, through either tuition or competing.

Our Activity Days are an opportunity for our members to experience either competing or hacking or just coming together to share our love of horses.

We love sharing our passion of horses and encouraging people to experience all aspects of the amazing relationships that horses allow us to develop with them.

Our mission statement being ' Take your passion and make it happen '. along with simply ……….”Be kind “ you never fully know what another human being is going through.

For any other information please email: goequestrianclub9@gmail.com

GO Equestrian Club CIC

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