The heartbroken connections of a small horse with a huge character who won legions of fans as he overachieved – with a mouth full of flowers – at Bramham have paid tribute to all he was after his death aged 11.
Night Prowler, owned by Yvette Wheeler and ridden by Jack Mantel, was a talented eventer who had stepped up to CCI4*-L this season and was showing huge promise. But he developed severe colic last week and his team had to let him go.
“He was unbelievable,” Yvette told H&H. “I’m an average person and never thought I’d have a horse competing at that level. He made my dreams come true.”
H&H reported on “Weasel” after Bramham, when the Irish-bred gelding made headlines for pictures of him enjoying some of the flowers dressing a cross-country fence, mid-round. He did jump every fence clear on the track, his first CCI4*-L, but as at one obstacle he jumped the bigger middle element of the fence rather than the smaller bit between the flags, he was eliminated.
“He was such a big personality; everyone knew him,” Yvette said. “We took him to an intermediate after Bramham, for a sweetener, and people were saying ‘It’s the flowers horse, it’s Weasel!’”
Jack and Weasel went from BE100 to four-star together.
“He had so much ability,” Yvette said. “They got pulled up at Belsay [because of a hold on course] before a full-up 1.30m gate and Jack said he wouldn’t have wanted to be stood there on any other horse as he knew Weasel would just pop it. He’d regularly, over a plain fence and even at four-star, take out a stride just for the hell of it, and you can see in the photos, it looks like he wasn’t even having to make an effort.”
Yvette said Weasel was always a cheeky chap to handle, as well as to ride.
“You just had to laugh with him,” she said. “If he could grab something off you or get into something; if he could be in trouble, he was. He was like the boy at school who was always up before the headmaster, a cheeky lad.
“He was so cute, with his big eyes and little pony ears, and he used to just bounce round the cross-country like a rubber ball; like a pony in a horse’s body. Jack and Weasel are both cheeky little chaps – they were something special together. He loved the bones of the horse.”
Yvette said Weasel had shown some mild colic signs on the Wednesday.
“He went to hospital and spent five days fighting to live,” she said. “On Saturday he seemed a bit better but that sometimes happens, doesn’t it, and on Sunday the decision had to be made.”
Yvette said she and Jack have been inundated with kind messages.
“None of us can believe it at the moment,” she said. “He was just very special.”
Jack Mantel paid tribute to his “incredible journey” with his beloved, “gorgeous” Night Prowler, and his partner Jack Thomas-Watson agreed that the pair had a very special bond.
“He just tried so hard,” he told H&H. “He was a proper little fighter and we never thought he’d lose this battle.
“He was a brilliant horse, who far exceeded anyone’s expectations, and a huge character. I tried riding him once as I thought there were no issues with him and he flicked me off!
“It’s so, so hard when it’s a special one like this but Alnorthumbria Equine vets were so good to him, he wanted for nothing.”
To stay up to date with the latest equestrian news, subscribe to the Horse & Hound website