After the worst winter I can remember and first winter with the horses at home, with no facilities, i had to give up, keep the horses in most of the time and abandon riding for 6 weeks.
With the recent loss of my thoroughbred and a jumping clinic booked, I had a what the hell moment, jumped on him Wednesday - pretty hair raising ride, jumped on him Saturday - slightly less hair raising and off we went jumping on the Sunday.
Just to refer back to an earlier blog, Travis does not jump and I had completely abandoned the idea in about August to focus on his dressage.
Turns out my what the hell moment paid off and the boy was amazing.
We kept the jumps small, and gradually built the jump numbers up and within 45 minutes we were jumping a 70cm course with fillers!
Maybe he could be that all rounder after all, but time to get back to those 20m circles!
I find this one of the toughest topics in the horse world, as everyone does something different. There are thousands of products on the market – all claiming they can cure everything – and nutritionists are often affiliated with a feed company, making any advice potentially biased.
I can say I’ve been able to tick something off my bucket list now: I managed to mount and ride a camel – a brilliant experience. I had great fun grooming my one, named Baxter, and I think the people running it were happy they had people that were used to dealing with big animals and weren’t afraid to get stuck in.
I thought in this first blog post I ought to tell you a little bit about my horses and me, and give you an insight into what you might see from us going forwards. Firstly, my name is Emma. I’m 29 years old and I’ve been riding for as long as I can even remember.
I am currently lightly backing my three-year-old American Quarter Horse before turning him away for the winter. In my previous post, I explained the setbacks this year, and frustratingly I had to start the process much later in the year than I’d anticipated. But things were going well, too well…