Florence, Mabel’s daughter, is currently furthering her education whilst Michelle is busy with training her point-to-pointers. I would say Florence has gone to boot camp, but the photos and videos we receive show her clearly enjoying herself and being pampered.
I decided to buy her a nice new cosy rug to take with her. Unfortunately for Florence, I checked out the January sales and found the exact make and size of the rug I wanted, reduced by 65 per cent. What a bargain! The catch? It has a Christmas design with trees and elves and snowflakes. Sorry Florence let’s hope it soon gets dirty on the outside.
The lockdowns prevented Florence from going out and about as much as we would have liked, so going to Miles-Taylor Eventing is doing her the world of good. Florence has only ever lived with me or Michelle so going to a new yard could have been a challenge, but she settled in straight away. The freezing conditions meant that she was taken to an indoor school on a couple of occasions for her schooling sessions. Although when she was being shown in hand as a youngster, Florence had competed indoors, this was the first time she had been ridden in one. She didn’t put a foot wrong and did some lovely pole work under saddle. The yard has lovely, safe hacking and so she has been out round the lanes in the days between school work.
Florence also enjoyed a ‘spa day’. After being worked she enjoyed a hot bath and being dried off under the solarium. At this rate she won’t want to come home!
One trip she certainly had fun on was a visit to the beach on a lovely sunny, although very cold day. The light was fantastic and the photos of her cantering along alone and in company are beautiful. I think she will have slept well that night and her ears must have ached as they were so tightly pricked forward the whole time.
We look forward to the daily updates and hope we will have her out competing later in the year.
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…