For three years, a teenaged Michelle Woodley was learning about her first horse the hard way. Stonesian, an off-the-track Thoroughbred bought for Woodley by her mother, was just a 4-year-old who was discovering the show ring at the same time as his young rider.
“One of my first schooling shows I entered, I fell off him during the warm-up,” said Woodley, a successful owner and trainer in Quarter Horse racing. “I broke my ring finger and dislocated my baby finger but I got back on him and rode in the show.”
It took some time for Woodley and ‘Joker’ (his show name was Court Jester) to play well together; the gelding had a habit of stopping when his rider least expected it.
“For the first three years together he tried to kill me every day,” said Woodley. “He was very green.”
Following some coaching and experience for both the big gelded son of Ontario sire Stonewalk and his new owner, they became a solid team.
They attended schooling shows and hunter jumper classes and larger events at the Trillium hunter level. Through college and early in her career with racehorses, Woodley rode Joker whenever she could.
At the age of 25, in 2009, Joker was still taking Woodley for trail rides before a severe case of colic led to his death.
Woodley, now a mother of two young daughters, credits Stonesian for for most of what she knoews about horses and living with them.
“The lessons I learned from him were perseverance and the love for your horse no matter is happening between the two of you.”
Woodley, who owns and trains last year’s exciting filly Embrace Extravagence and also has a 2-year-old Thoroughbred at Woodbine, had another special thought about the horse who changed her life.
“The best part is that I was lucky enough to have my first daughter got to know him before he died. She met him and sat on him.”
In the paddocks at the Nobleton, ON farm that Woodley shares with partner and former jockey John McInerney, Woodley not only can envision her old friend from the past but now is re-training another special friend.
“Shaikh Down is the Quarter Horse who changed my life, he was my first stakes winner,” said Woodley about the 2011 Ontario Derby winner she co-owned by Gary and Marlene McNichol. “He is being re-trained now to be a stable pony.”
Lucky for Shaikh Down, he is guaranteed a wonderful and long life with Woodley and her family.