My wife, Emma, and I have been deeply involved with horses and ponies all our lives. As children living in Cheshire, England, we were active member of the Pony Club and spent every available opportunity during the winter months hunting.
On leaving school Emma spent a year in Eire. Her first experience of their horse world was taking twelve, four-year-old horses to Dublin Horse Show, to compete in their respective classes and then be sold. She came back with an empty lorry and her belief that ‘ a horse well placed is a horse well sold ’ was manifested after this experience.
The rest of her stay in Ireland was spent in a yard that bought and sold, produced top class show hunters and ponies and liveried high class hunters in the winter for their American owners. Her employees daughter represented Eire in Showjumping and her Grade A’s were our pride and joy.
On returning to England the racing world became her life for the next 14 years. Firstly as a trainers secretary and then as a trainers wife. She rode out every morning, went racing at least 4 days per week and attended yearling sales in England, Ireland and America. She studied all the T.B pedigrees listed in the sales catalogue and acquired a sound knowledge of the way thoroughbreds were prepared for sale and how the professional sales companies operated.
Emma trained for owner breeders and so she often visited their thoroughbred studs. It was always fascinating seeing the mares and their latest offspring and comparing them to the older brother or sister that was already in training. The genetic faults that so often came through and the future breeding plans that just might produce a Classic winner.
My children all have a keen interest in the equine world my eldest has competed in BHS Events and as a teenager was long-listed for the FEI Pony Team. Apart from the Flat and National Hunt winners, I have personally produced winners of many types of competitions including Teamchases, Showing, Working Hunter /Pony. ODE’s, Hunter Trials, Dressage, Showjumping, Prince Philip Games, but I only managed second place in a Point-to-Point!
Emma's late father bred Welsh Section B ponies and his ponies are still competing successfully both at local and top class level. He always put temperament as his absolute priority when trying to breed the perfect child’s pony and he succeeded time and time again.
We have been putting friends and acquaintances in touch with each other for both buying and selling horses and ponies for many years. We have always believed that the ‘grapevine’ was the safest method of finding a horse or pony and I am now putting this grapevine onto the Internet.
On our sister website www.TheHorseExchange.com, we have never charged for our efforts – but the wonderful letters and telephone calls have given us the incentive to help people that we do not necessarily know, to benefit from this system.
Integrity is of enormous importance and the success of NagNet.co.uk and TheHorseExchange.com is entirely dependent on satisfied customers who have bought horses and ponies suited to their needs and with NagNet.co.uk we have hopefully provided the forum where you can discuss your stories and problems on an informal social level.
Our mission is to provide you with a platform where you can link up with like minded equestrians. We believe that good, in depth, information is a very important part of any hobby or sport, including equestrianism. Getting the right information can save hours of time later on, not to mention the money, anxiety etc...
I hope you enjoy the site. We have tried to make it as user friendly as possible, but if you feel that there are areas that I could improve on, please let us know. Any type of feedback is tremendously useful, so don't be shy...
Thank You ...
Nick & Emma Higgin
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