Christmas and the New Year fell nicely this year to create two long weekends of bank holidays. Obviously the horses still need looking after every day. I offered to do one of the livery horses, Harry, to enable his owner to go away for Christmas, and I also did evening hay and feeds for the owner of the yard’s horses so her grooms could have the afternoons off. So all in all, I was going to have a busy time.
I enjoyed not having to worry about the time when being down at the yard. I did treat my three – Mabel, Diva and Julius – to a carrot or two on Christmas morning. I almost had a little disaster when happily sharing out the parsnips when I realised I hadn’t left any at home for my dinner!
Harry’s owner very kindly did my three for a couple of days after Christmas, so I had two days totally horse and pony free! Flora, my little rescue dog, certainly enjoyed having a lie in and being the centre of my days!
Over the New Year weekend, I once again was seeing to Harry. He is such an easy horse to handle and isn’t messy in his stable, so not difficult to muck out. I took Flora down to the yard with me, and whilst I mucked out, I put her in the stable where I store my hay so she could have a sniff around in case there were any rodents lurking. When I glanced in to check she was okay, I discovered her investigating the very top of the stack!
For competition purposes, all horses’ age is as of January 1st no matter when they were born. It is hard to believe that Mabel is now twenty-four years old as I have owned her since she was five, or that my little baby Diva is now five! Julius is maturing nicely at eight years old.
Diva, Mabel, Julius and I wish you all a very happy and successful New Year!
Equine insurance specialist now able to offer live prices and immediate cover. Equesure Insurance has launched a new insurance product for horse trailers valued up to £15,000.
The annual trip to Your Horse Live was completed and even my partner enjoyed a bit of it! Okay, he mainly enjoyed the cake stalls (and they were amazing – we took three bags of cake home with us), but also liked the rescue village and heavy horse yard. We got to go into the stable with two donkeys for pats and cuddles and we both loved it.
Five years ago, I had the absolute dream of having my own acreage, but this has honestly been the biggest learning curve, relearning so much about how to better look after our horses and what the land requires. Hopefully, I can give some insight into things I have learnt, mostly by trial and error and lots of mistakes.
After five or six years away from the British showjumping circuit, I’ve rejoined, and this time with my little Connemara standing just about 15HH – and he’s been amazing!