About Us

My name is Carole York. I was born in Tanzania in 1951 to British parents. My father could never settle in one place for long and so, over the next 14 years he schlepped us back and forth between Tanzania, England and Nigeria before he finally took us all off to South Africa, by which time I was in a very bad mood.

Today my family would be politely called dysfunctional. I prefer batshit crazy. My father’s job took him all over East Africa and he often took us with him. I think we visited every single Game Park. It’s actually a miracle I survived childhood, considering the number of close encounters I had with lions, leopards, rhinos and poisonous snakes.

On leaving school I went to Stellenbosch University to study a science degree, where the teaching medium was Afrikaans. The fact that I spoke not one word of the language did not deter me one bit. I dropped out at the end of my first year, having learned very little about physics, chemistry and biology but I was fluent in Afrikaans.

I then had a series of number crunching jobs in insurance companies, banks and market research houses until I reinvented myself as an Equine Massage Therapist. This was not a decision as such, more forced upon me when somebody gave me an ex racehorse with a leg problem. I had at that stage, not sat on a horse since leaving England as a 14 year old. I was now 40.

So I taught myself massage and eventually progressed to energetic healing, which back then was known as woo woo, but is now a semi respectable profession.

I moved to Ireland in 2001 and continued repairing horses until, in 2006, my physio told me that if I didn’t rest my severely inflamed elbow for 6 months I’d end up never being able to massage a horse again.

I had to find another means of earning a living so I decided to start baking Irish Soda Bread. There being no market in the town I lived in I simply made one myself, setting up a ricketty wallpapering table in the Church carpark and before long I had a thriving business going and others came to join me. I went back to horse fixing 6 months later but the baking was going so well that for the next 5 years I did both jobs. When I packed in the baking my records showed that I’d baked 20,000 loaves of bread. I’ve never baked another loaf since.

In 2014 I reinvented myself again when I found a tiny shetland foal abandoned by the roadside on my way to work. More abused pones soon found me and the story of Putting in the Magic began. In 2017 I retired from Equine Massage to devote my life to the care of abandoned and abused ponies. 

I do not claim to be a charitable organization. I’m just a 72 year old pensioner with a great love of animals and a passionate desire to relieve their suffering. This is what I do. I call it Magic. And I will do it, with the aid of good friends, for the rest of my life.

In August of 2019 my landlord gave me 6 months notice to quit as he wanted to sell the property. After a 3 day meltdown, I decided this would not do and I’ve been fighting him successfully ever since.

This property has been home to myself and these ponies for the past 10 years. 
Many of them arrive here terrified out of their wits from years of abuse and neglect, damaged both physically and mentally. 

Read their stories in the Our Ponies section.