Jason McKeown

I had enjoyed some brilliant days riding some very talented horses for a number of great people. There was a Grade 2 winner on Back To Bid, a Land Rover Bumper on Texas Jack who turned out to be such a great servant for connections and even a winner at Cheltenham at the Paddy Power meeting. I was overall Fegentri champion in 2007.

But by the summer of 2015, at the age of 32, I had reached a crossroads and had no intention of hanging around there.

I had been attached to Noel Meade for 12 years and he provided me with the likes of Back To Bid early in my career in 2005, Texas Jack six years later and many others including Leading Run. He gave me my first winner. He had the faith in me to put me up on horses and to be there 12 years tells you how much I enjoyed it. There were loads of good riders there — Niall Madden, Nina, Paul Carberry, Denis O’Reagan — and he was champion trainer a couple of times early in my time there. Tu Va was a great yard to be involved with.

I had also picked up a nice winner called Hoopy in an amateur riders’ handicap chase at Cheltenham’s November meeting in 2008 for a young and ambitious Gordon Elliott, there was the Fegentri the year before that I was delighted with and plenty point-to-point winners too.

I decided to go freelance and that went well for a time. I rode for a lot of small trainers but then the recession kicked in and affected them badly. Not being attached to a big yard left me vulnerable so I knew, rather than sitting on the fence, I had to take action. I was young and ambitious, I was married to Linda and building a house. It wasn’t that hard a decision at all to move in a different direction.

A good friend of mine, Norman Geraghty - Barry’s brother - had actually said it to me about the dentistry a good few years ago and I’d put it somewhere at the back of my mind because I was riding winners at the time and sure you think that’ll never stop but it does.

Norman had planted the seed and when there just weren’t as many horses around, I acted on it. Staying in the industry was vital to me. It’s a great game.

Rather than be negative about the situation, I chose to act positively — it’s the way I’d be anyway - and so I went to the American School of Equine Dentistry in Virginia to learn my intended new trade. I did a course for a month and then stayed on for a couple of months with an instructor there, a brilliant vet that specialised in dentistry and doing extractions, Dr Raymond Hyde. He was unreal and I really enjoyed that.

When I came back, trainers that I had worked with gave me the chance. Noel Meade and Ger Lyons were important clients because they are big operations but I am forever thankful to all the point-to-point trainers as well that gave me a go. Colin Bowe was one of those and he is now very successful of course as a producer of young horses.

People are really getting their heads around equine dentistry now and the reaction has been so positive. You need the big yards and you need the numbers but I have found that as every month and year has gone by I have gotten busier and busier. If you do a yard, they’ll tell their friends and you can get two or three customers out of one yard.

I was very lucky that I had so many contacts from race riding and that they had the faith in me. Lads give you a chance but then you have to come up with the goods. You need to do good work because the horses don’t lie. If you don’t do good work, they will still ride bad.

Since I’ve started, I’ve put up a lot of photos and videos on Facebook and Twitter and you can see people are really getting switched on. I’d do a lot of yearlings before they go to the flat sales and I’d also do a lot of three-year-olds before they’d go to the Land Rover and Derby Sales, so that tells you how lads have begun to realise how necessary it is. It’s like a set of shoes on a horse.

Riding winners was great but I have never been as happy in my life as I am now, doing what I do. There are so many people that want to be jockeys or move in a certain direction within racing but it’s so competitive and it cannot work out for everyone. But there are so many other things you can do to stay in the industry. There are so many courses, things like the Irish National Stud course, go work at studs or at sales, there are various education programmes. There are opportunities out there.

When you’re a jockey riding winners and suddenly things aren’t happening, you come to a point where you’re thinking, ‘What the hell am I gonna do with my life?’ I knew what I wanted to do and made the decision very quickly. You’d hear loads of lads going around giving out but I’m not that way. I’m a very positive person and I’m wasn't going to sit around crying. You have to make your own decisions and go your own way. The last six months I was riding, the horses I was riding weren’t good enough. I was getting a couple of falls so I knew I couldn’t keep doing that, the calibre of horse wasn’t there for me to stay going.

I am still based at home in Newry but ride out for Ger Lyons three or four mornings a week. He has a nice bunch of two-year-olds but sure at this time of year, you don’t really know.

We have store horses and hunters at home that Linda looks after in the mornings and I ride them out in the evenings. It’s nice to have them. Sure you have to be at something!

To be in different yards every day, meeting different people and then have lads texting you after a few days that they can’t believe the difference in their horse, that gives you so much satisfaction. And when I see those horses performing well or selling well or going to the Cheltenham Sales after doing them, it puts a smile on my face.

I wouldn’t be doing anything else.