Full time turn out is ideal to keep our older equine friends mobile. Sadly, in winter this is not always possible. Pasture may lack shelter, clay soils get very wet, the horse may be too sensitive to bear winter weather or it may be yard policy to rest the pasture. Read more

An embarrassing but hilarious mistake and a lot of fun!

Hi everybody, Spirit and I are doing really well in terms of making lots of friends on our new yard. Unfortunately though, I have come down with a lurgy of some kind! A couple of days ago I tried to order Spirit’s feed as usual from Simple System only to accidentally order the wrong feed - due to my difficulties I often get things mixed up. Luckily, Simple System sent me the right feed for Spirit really quickly. Read more

How can it be that I finished my last blog by saying summer is almost here and now winter is almost here! The truth is that, for a number of reasons, Rhapsody and I have had a very quiet summer on the training and competition front. After our respective holidays the plan was to get back to fitness, back to training and back to competing. We had a few setbacks… Rhapsody’s shoulders and back were very sore and needed a couple of visits from Gill Maybury Chiropractor to get him right. Then Raps picked up a screw in his frog… luckily no damage and not really any lameness after it was removed but a few days of poulticing just to be on the safe side – and of course a bit more time off! The school took longer than anticipated to be finished but we carried on with the hacking up the hills of the National Trust behind us and boxing up to a friend’s school a short drive away when we could. Read more

Don’t get caught out by this spell of cold and wet weather! When the temperature drops horses need more calories to keep warm and when it is wet as well, even more so. Add in a brisk wind and needs really go up. Read more

There’s no getting away from it – autumn has struck with cooler nights, shorter days and more rain. This is a good time to get some weight off horses that have become a little bit, er, chubby shall we say, over summer. For many however, it means additional feeding is needed. Older horses may be having trouble chewing enough forage to hold their weight. If your older horse did not gain as much weight as usual over the summer on grass, take this as a warning he may drop weight when you need to feed hay. Old teeth have shallow roots and are just not as strong as younger teeth. They may all be there and your dentist will make sure there are no sharp bits, but the hands of time keep on turning and if your horse is less inclined to chew for as many hours as before, or is not chewing his feed sufficiently to digest it well, he will drop weight. Read more