About our journey

     Performance Pony Central came about when its principal, Donna Davis, became interested in performance ponies. Donna found that after riding various breeds of horses; from the thoroughbreds her father raced, to the quarter horses her husband raced and the warmbloods that she bred, it was time to look for something that would hopefully, and ideally, be a little bit easier for her to ride. One of her friends, Michelle Drayton, has Bonsai Sports Ponies and has been breeding German Riding Ponies. She invited Donna to have a ride on "Lacey" one of her G.R.P. cross ponies that she had. After that one ride Donna was hooked and it was the beginning of her fascination with the European and German Riding Pony breeds.

     Donna decided to buy herself a pony with the intention of doing the young pony qualifiers. She saw Chico de Luxe advertised and within half an hour of him being advertised, she had purchased him. Chico was bred by Kate Barton from Narbethong Equestrian Park in WA. His sire is Cheval de Luxe (Imp) and his dam is Wildwood Royal Silk, a riding pony that Kate had borrowed from a friend.

     After a recuperative break after his arrival in Victoria, Chico was booked to be broken in by Rhianon Pettigrove of Liberty Sport Horses. Rhianon has done a super job with him and Donna was very happy when Rhianon agreed to help her with her journey to compete with Chico in the young pony classes, with the view of hopefully qualifying him for the four year old young performance pony class at Dressage with the Stars in 2016. This part of the journey, as well as competition dressage, is still a work in progress but after two recent outings Chico has been going from strength to strength, so much so that Donna is very delighted with his progress to date. She finds pony dressage to be great fun and the diminutive size of the animal so much easier for her to ride.

     Donna's aim now is to purchase another young German Riding Pony mare with the view of campaigning her also in the young pony classes and then breeding with her at a later date.