Te Akau Owners of the Month

This month's very special owners have been busy travelling the world in recent weeks - living, eating and breathing racing .....

Pat was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and came to New Zealand in 1963 with his family, settling in Hamilton, New Zealand, where he grew up. He went to Massey University to complete his BVSc degree, and moved to Waitara in 1978 working as a Veterinarian for North Taranaki Vet Services. In 2004 he moved to Inglewood Vet Services, (now known as Energy Vets, Taranaki) where he still works as a large animal vet.

Marilyn was born and grew up in Inglewood, Taranaki. She went to Auckland Secondary Teachers College for three years training as a Commercial Teacher and started her career at Waitara High School, teaching Shorthand and Typing, Economics and Bookkeeping. She took four years off to have two sons, and is still teaching at Waitara High. These days it is Digital Technologies, (website design, animation, game-making, computer programming, and print design).

We have two sons: Andrew and Pater. Andrew is married to Marcia, and they have twins - Jacob and Luke - who turn 1 year old in August and we love being grandparents.

Pat played soccer while at school and university, and Marilyn played netball while at school. She rode ponies from a young age; her family were active in both pony club and hunting, and horses played a large part in family life when she was growing up.

Family holidays with our boys at Whangamata and Omokoroa Beach were favourite places.

You can take the girl out of the Naki but you can't take the Naki out of the girl. Taranaki is a great place to live.

Jessie, our beautiful golden Labrador who we had for 12 years has been our favourite pet.

Over the years we have travelled to most parts of Australia with the boys on family holidays, and travelled to Singapore, Canada and had a 24 day tour of Europe, but our most memorable overseas holiday has to be the one we have just returned from - which included a 20 day Thoroughbred tour of UK and Ireland. We were privileged to be able to visit so many amazing studs, including  the Darley Dalham Hall (UK) and Kildangan (Ireland),  Coolmore, (where we saw Galileo),  Sandringham, Banstead Manor, Juddemonte Stud (where we saw Frankel), the National Irish Stud, among many others. We also went to the training stables of Mark Johnston, Luca Cumani and Ed Dunlop (leading trainers in the UK), had photos taken with Red Cadeaux, and learnt about their training methods, saw the gallops at Newmarket, and visited the Rossdale's Equine Vet Clinic - which has its own MRI, CT and Digital imaging suites for horses.

We went to Royal Ascot on opening day and also for the Diamond Jubilee Stakes closing day and we also went to the Irish Derby meeting at the Curragh. We loved Ireland, which reminded us of home in many ways, and we also saw some wonderful places in the Peak and Lake Districts of England.

Pat did the veterinary work for Wynthorpe Stud and Malcolm Smith when he started working at Waitara, so took an interest in racing with La Mer, Courier Bay and Copenhagen II being prominent at the time.

Marilyn's father had been involved with both thoroughbred and standard-bred horses and the family attended races and point-to-point meetings when they could. They all had ponies on the farm and rode regularly.

Pat saw an advertisement for a half-brother to Wall Street which was being syndicated by Te Akau, phoned David Ellis about it, and we joined the Te Akau family. We enjoyed watching Charging Bull as he grew and started his racing career, which was unfortunately cut short due to injury before he had a chance to show us what he was capable of.

We have had shares in Charging Bull, Hardcore Rock, Auriol, Affinee and the O'Reilly colt from Sydney. Our favourite at this stage has to be Hardcore Rock, as he has had two wins in Singapore along with several places. We have high hopes for Affinee and ‘Sydney' when they start their racing careers.

Te Akau is a great way to get involved with racing a horse or horses because of the syndicate scheme, where you can take whatever percentage you wish. Meeting other owners at open days, race-meetings and on the Singapore trips has been a bonus.

The communication from Karyn and David and the team is very good and we are kept up to date with what is going on with our horses and others in the stable.

We are always made to feel welcome when we visit the stables in Matamata, or the farm at Te Akau.

Our local racecourse, Pukekura Raceway, has very good facilities for members and we enjoy going there to watch racing.  We like the excitement of racing, and following the other Te Akau horses as they race at different meetings each weekend.

Maybe improved stakes money in New Zealand would help to keep more horses here.