Diva and I were very sorry to see Jackson return home to my sister, though it has been an easy time for me with only Diva and Mabel to look after.
However, this all changed last weekend when Michelle delivered Julius Caesar, a skewbald traditional pony, to take advantage of the super facilities I have access to at STX Equine. Already a winner and champion in the show ring, and like many other horses and ponies, his campaign was affected by the lockdowns due to the pandemic. We have great ambitions for him next season so he is with me to get muscled up by using the walker, being lunged and – once his fitness is sufficient – being schooled to the highest level.
I will start him off gently as it is his first time away from home. He’s a very sensible pony and has settled well. He has been on the walker with no problems and had a little loose lunge in the school. I think the part he has enjoyed the most is the turnout pen, where he had a little buck and kick before getting down to the serious business of eating the grass.
The plan is to have him turned out with Mabel during the day once I am sure he will respect the electric fencing as he hasn’t been in a field with it before. So I am buying new batteries for my energiser and hope he gets a little snap on his nose to teach him to respect it. Diva is going out with Mabel overnight.
Julius is not only in an unfamiliar yard, but he is also with an unfamiliar person – me! It is important to get a relationship started with him and the easiest way to do this is to simply spend time with him and give him a bit of a pamper.
His mane was tending to fall to both sides of his neck, so I brushed it over and put it in long plaits to train it to lay on the right side. It is important when you plait a mane over to keep the plaits loose at the top so that they won’t pull when the horse or pony puts its head down to eat.
Julius has his own Facebook and Instagram accounts – Julius Caesar the Mini Budweiser Horse – so why not take a look and see what he’s been up to previously.
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…