Shirley Hirsch has two passions – horses and art. So it's not difficult to guess what she loves to paint.     In her home in Herzliya Pituah the walls are full of her own marvelous paintings – of horses grazing, horses jumping and horses in flight.

Hearing her story is like listening to the story of horse-riding in Israel. Since the fifties when she came to live here, her life has reflected the Israeli horse saga, its humble beginnings and its ups and downs to what it has become today; a popular sport, with riding stables in many of the towns here and competitions in all branches of the sport.

Shirley was actually born here since her parents, both passionate Zionists, had immigrated to Palestine in 1932 and she was born two years later. Her father, who had come as a youth to England from Riga, was a businessman and keen sportsman and he brought the first Maccabiah to this country in 1932 and decided to stay.

In 1936 the family returned to England.

"I won a beauty competition when I was two," says Shirley. "It's been downhill ever since," she adds with a laugh.

She started riding at the age of six and during the war in England she had her own pony in the village to which her family had come to escape the bombing. She spent many happy years in boarding school after the war and wasn't interested in anything remotely Jewish.

"My parents were traditional but I rebelled. My mother even sent me to Eder Farm (the Habonim training for Israel farm) - she was desperately trying to get me into Jewish things."

In the early fifties the man who was to become her husband, Ze'ev Hirsch, came to England to visit one of his sisters. He had moved to Palestine in 1934 from Germany. One sister suggested that Shirley show him around London but at first she refused.

"I didn't want anything to do with an Israeli," she says.

However, she seems to have overcome those initial rebellious feelings as in 1954 she came here to look around and in 1956 she and Ze'ev were married.

"We lived in half a hut with just enough room for the bed, and used a communal toilet and shower," she recalls. They soon decided kibbutz life was not for them and moved to Jerusalem where Ze'ev was studying at the Hebrew University and Shirley worked as a graphic artist. She had studied the subject at the Central School of Art before leaving London.

After a stint in Boston in the early 60s where Ze'ev completed his doctorate at Harvard Business School and their two childen were born, the family returned to Israel and Shirley got back to her beloved horses.

"Surprisingly, quite a few people had horses and rode in those early days," she says. "People think it's an elite sport but it just wasn't known about. Quite a few acquaintances of mine had local horses and eventually, after riding friends' horses for a few years I got my own. I went to a dealer in Ramle and got my first horse here, a Bedouin mare, which I kept in stables in Kfar Shmariyahu."

Eventually riding became the very popular sport it is today and Shirley has been a judge for jumping locally for many years. She was also an international judge in dressage for disabled riders. During a sabbatical spent with her husband in England she had taken a course to be a dressage judge and this is something she still does here for disabled and able-bodied riders. She prefers dressage as she finds it more interesting than jumping.

Today she retains her passion for horses and every so often feels the need to cuddle a horse.

"I go with a bag of sugar to one of the stables around here," she says. "There's nothing like sugar to get to a horse's heart."