A deaf pupil who spent her Bradford school days dreaming about Horses because she could not hear her teachers has grown up to be a world-wide equine expert.

Jane Myers, 48, has battled against her hearing impairment to become a top author on the subject of horse management and welfare and to be an international conference speaker.

Mrs Myers, who now lives in Queensland, Australia, grew up in Bolton Junction and went to the former Hanson School where she used to sit unnoticed at the back.

She says her deafness was not picked up on because she never got into trouble. She just daydreamed about horses and being at Throstle Nest riding school in Fagley.

She left school as soon as she could with only basic literacy skills, just writing her name on exam papers and nothing else.

After working for as a stable-hand at various places she got a job on the mill floor at Robin Wools in Greengates, Bradford, but keen for a better life started evening classes at Shipley College which led her to taking a degree in Organisational Studies at Bradford and Ilkley Community College.

Then she went to the University of Wales to study for a Masters Degree in Equine Studies where to hear what the lecturers were saying, she had to record all the lectures on a dictaphone placed on the lecturers desk before transcribing every word into her notebook each evening.

Following university she became a researcher at Edinburgh Veterinary College before marrying and moving to Australia with her husband Stuart.

In Australia she began work as a lecturer for Melbourne University on their horse course and after seven years moved to Queensland where Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation asked her to play a major role in re-writing the industry standard book Horse Sense. The organisation was so impressed with her work it commissioned her to write two solo books Managing Horses on Small Properties and Horse Safe.

The first book, Managing Horses on Small Properties, a best seller, is the only book of its type in the world on the subject of sustainable horse keeping. The second book called Horse Safe is one of only a couple of books worldwide on the subject of safety and horses.

“Did you know horse riding is statistically more dangerous than motorbike riding,” she said.

She has just returned to Australia from a seven week study tour of the USA and Canada looking at Sustainable Horsekeeping Practices and this summer will be in the UK attending an international conference in Edinburgh on Equitation Science, speaking at other seminars around the country and working with the Donkey Sanctuary in Dorset - as well as visiting family in the Bradford and Bingley area.