Alerted, a number of horses look up at the sound of Anne Marie O'Gorman's footfall. They canter over towards the fence to greet her as she comes into the lane. There's a whinny of recognition. She's around them every day. "If I did try to do something else, I'd still end up coming back to horses," she says. "It's what I love. It's in the blood."

The setting is beautiful. All around Lissava House, at the foot of the Galtee Mountains outside Cahir, Co Tipperary, the trees are tall and the grass is lush - knee high in the damp corners of the fields. The horses canter around, clearly delighted to be in this idyllic place.

It's great to be out in the fresh air in the heart of the Golden Vale but, O'Gorman points out, "it's seven days a week. They have to be fed every day and the stables have to be mucked out and they have to be exercised." She watches them the way a mother watches her children. As a riding instructor and a horse breeder, O'Gorman's days are long and busy. She takes the horses to shows, she gives riding lessons, she looks after the mares when they foal. She mucks out the stables.

Each day is full of variety, she says. "Horses can let you down quite often - they're like ourselves. They can go lame. They can get sick. They mightn't perform as well on the day - it's all part of it. You have to take it in your stride. You need to know a lot about them, about the veterinary side."

Anne Marie O'Gorman started riding when she was about six. In class at primary school in Scoil Mhuire na Trocaire, the ponies stayed in her mind all day long. "I didn't really talk about them in school," she says. "I probably just dreamed about them.

"I knew I was always going to work with horses. I've been with them all my life. I started competing at the age of 12. I was in show jumping in the 148 centimetres pony class. I did that every weekend. I jumped in Millstreet and in the RDS qualifiers. All I wanted to do was horses." She got her love of horses from her father, John O'Gorman, who died in 1993.

After completing the Junior Cert at Scoil Chriost Ri Secondary School in Cahir, she left to spend six months at Giesla Holstein's stables, an international dressage and show jumping stable, in Carberry, Co Kildare. "I went there for six months for the experience."

She gained practical experience in the yard with the horses, riding with them and being taught. "I was learning from them the whole time. I went to Italy with her daughter who was riding in the Young Riders' Dressage Championship. It was tough work but a brilliant experience.

"Then I came home and worked for one year . . . that's all I wanted to do. It was my overall priority." While working at home, she also studied for the British Horse Society exams. She did the oral and practical exams and passed the stage 1 and stage 2 exams in stable management and riding.

At this stage, she went back to school, to Rockwell College, sitting the Leaving Cert in 1994. "It was tough going back - I was older than the others."

O'Gorman then spent a year in Cork doing business studies. "I found the business side of things beneficial, but I wanted to go back to the horses." And, so, she signed up with Teagasc for a one-year certificate course in horse breeding and training at Kildalton College in Pilltown, Co Kilkenny in 1996. There were about 20 on the course, four of them girls. Most of the people were from a horse background.

The course covered stable management and young horse training and breeding, from covering the mare up to the point of foaling and then looking after the foal. It also covered general farming, grassland management, sheep farming and tillage. "We also did farm accounting and some computers."

After qualifying here, she went to England to complete her BHS level 3 exams and her preliminary teaching exams at Wellington in Hampshire. She passed everything. "I found it quite enjoyable. Because of Kildalton College, I knew a lot of it and that made passing my BHS exams easier."

When she came home she opened her riding and trekking school. She also breeds horses. Today, at 23, she looks after up to 30 horses.

"It's tough to make a living," she says. "You're with the animals all the time. You go to shows with young horses and then you sell them." Tough it may be, but the only life for someone who loves horses.