Glasson father and daughter make final Olympic preparations

When it comes to landing that dream job after college, 25-year old Glasson vet Dr Lucia Dawson-Stanley could certainly be said to have well and truly hit the jackpot!

Not only is she the resident vet at one of the biggest competition and training stables in Europe, but she is now busy preparing to travel to the Tokyo Olympics in July as assistant vet to the Japanese Showjumping team.

Lucia will be accompanied on the trip to Tokyo by her father, Jeremy, who will be Head Farrier to the Japanese team, and the Westmeath father and daughter duo are over the moon at the prospect of landing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work at the Olympic Games.

“Sometimes I nearly have to pinch myself to make sure all this is real,” said a delighted Lucia this week in an interview with the Westmeath Independent from her home in the northern German town of Muhlen where she is based as the resident vet at Deckstation Schockemöhle, a competition and training stables owned and operated by legendary international showjumping rider and two-time Olympian, Paul Schockemöhle.

Dr Lucia graduated from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences with a Degree in Veterinary Medicine late last year and had planned to take up a job in the UK after Christmas, but by doing a favour for her Dad she ended up going to Germany instead.

“My father was already working with Paul Schockemöhle and they were having an auction in the yard and he asked me to help out as they were very short-staffed so I came to Muhlen for what I thought was going to be two weeks and I am here ever since,” she says.

Lucia admits that she “absolutely loved” working in the Deckstation Schockemöhle from the first day she set foot in the stables, and when she returned to Germany after spending Christmas at her family home in Portlick, just outside Glasson, she was offered the job of resident vet and accepted it straight away.

“I had spent five and a half years studying to be a vet, and it was tough, but all the hard work was worth it when I landed this job,” she admits, adding that it is “very demanding as you are basically on call 24/7 and there are 400 horses here.”

She says a specialist vet comes to the Schockemöhle stables every week from Italy and works closely alongside her in a tutoring role, but she is solely responsible for any emergency situations that arise with the horses.

Lucia is following closely in the footsteps of her father, Jeremy, who has been working at Deckstation Schockemöhle for the past three years in the role of Head Farrier.

“My Dad got the job here when a family in Ireland whose horses he used to look after sold all of them to Paul Schockemöhle and he was so impressed with the shoeing of the horses that he rang the family to see who the farrier was, and then he offered the job of Head Farrier to my Dad,” says Lucia.

Although father and daughter work in the same stables, Lucia says they rarely meet each other on a day-to-day basis, as they work at opposite ends of the yard.

“My Dad has his own forge and he spends a lot of time teaching farriers, so the job is much more relaxing that when he was working at home as he used to spend a lot of his time travelling around Ireland,” she says.

The chance for the Dawson Stanleys to work at the Olympic Games came about through Paul Schockemöhle ’s involvement with the Japanese Showjumping team, with whom he works as Chef d-Equipe (Team Manager).

Prior to our interview, Lucia Dawson Stanley had just returned from Prague where the Japanese team had participated in the C.E.T. Prague Cup, which is a pre-Olympic Grand Prix event, and in two weeks time she will accompany the Japanese team horses to Rome for the Nations Cup.

“The trip to Rome takes 21 hours by land, and I will have to make sure the horses are well looked after right throughout the trip and arrive in Rome well hydrated and not fatigued,” she says, adding that “we have to think of the horses as athletes and look after their every need.”

After Rome there is another international competition in Rotterdam and then the Japanese team returns to Germany to make final preparations in advance of the trip to the Tokyo Olympics in July.

Having spent a number of years living and working in the United States at the stables of three-time Olympic showjumping legend, McLain Ward, Lucia Dawson-Stanley says she built up “a lot of experience of flying by air with horses, and you have to be super careful.”

“I helped McLain Ward with his preparations for the 2016 Rio Olympics, but I didn’t get the chance to go to the Olympics, so when Paul Schockemöhle heard I had been involved in the advance preparations for Rio, when I wasn’t even a vet, he decided to put me on the team to travel to the Tokyo Olympics along with my father, and we are over the moon,” says the young Glasson vet.

Dr Lucia is one of a team of around 60 people working in Deckstation Schockemöhle at the moment, many of whom are Irish and English, and she says they are a very close-knit group and there is a “real family feel” to her day to day working environment.

She is planning to spend the next five years in Germany, and harbours the dream of opening her own veterinary practice as an equine lameness specialist. “Basically, that is orthopaedics for horses,” she explains, adding that she may not return to work in Ireland, and is considering a move to the United States.

While she loves returning to her family home in Portlick, to spend time with her mother, Arlene and sister, Tilly, Lucia says she definitely won’t get the chance to return home over the coming months, which are going to be hectic.

“Right now the full focus is on the Tokyo Olympics, and we will see what happens after that,” she says.