Hacking and riding and more hacking and riding

"Good friends help you to find important things when you have lost them... Your smile, your hope and your courage"

Thank you all my lovely friends for helping me carry on and get my smile back in the last week. You are all wonderful and I am so grateful. To every single one of you that have given me encouraging words about Vallu and how he is looking, I can't thank you enough for helping me find my strength again.

Small (compared to Vallu) young mare, in a jumping saddle... What a weird feeling!

Got my smile back!

The last three months have not been easy. One of my friends said that I was going through a grief reaction - from feelings of anger, to despair to guilt, to near inconsolable worry. It has been emotional, but I have finally started getting over the guilt of caring for a horse that injured itself. It's been a lot of (mental) work changing this attitude from "I broke him and it's all my fault" to "the horse hurt itself under your care but you did everything you could to help him." But bad situations happen in life, and it is how you deal with it, dust yourself off and carry on again that makes you a stronger person. Am I right? 

Fat pony doing more of his walk work in the outdoor which is very exciting

Cross country training!

No I didn't go cross country training, Kirsty did with her horse (and we met up with a friend of hers) and I agreed to go along as groom/photographer. The last time either of us has been anywhere near a cross country course was this time last year, so this seems to be our yearly event when the first signs of spring appear! The ground was lovely, there were so many options of different jumps and the weather was absolutely perfect! Does anyone else feel like their spring has started!?

  

Gotta love this horse's absolute love for water!

Wonderful Wednesday

Isn't it nice to be noticing the first signs of spring!! On Wednesday I even rode in a long sleeve t shirt for the first time this year!

I had a great time this week with the horses :) I am very lucky to have kind friends who let me ride their horses, so this week I got to ride Zu again. He's so very different to Vallu in so many ways, but I feel very safe and at home on him - possibly because they are both very wide!! We did a lot of trot to walk and halt transitions and a lot of serpentines to try to help him be a bit more supple and responsive to the leg, and after ten minutes there was such a difference in both of us. I felt so much more comfortable again (my back really doesn't like not riding!) and Zu felt like he was just floating. 

Vallu is doing very well, he is very fat and very happy on his holiday :) Now that he is allowed to do 40-50 minutes of walking everyday, I've started doing long reining him to give us a bit of change of routine from just hand walking. We do hand walking up the drive and back (which is actually a mile) pole work, and then long reining. Some weeks when the weather has been good Vallu has gone out in the morning and then again in the afternoon because I know how boring he finds walking - when long reining he tries to trot off and I end up running after him for about 20-30 meters before he can be persuaded to slow down...

And excitingly, we only have around 3 weeks left until he is getting rescanned! How time has flown by, fingers crossed that his leg has healed!

Me now that we are long reining and I get to put matchy on once again!

Anky shocking peach!

This blog post is dedicated to my lovely friend Lili who in another act of random kindness decided to give me her Anky shocking peach set, knowing how much I have been drooling after it since I first saw it!  Thank you Lili, you are really a super friend to have ♥︎ And excitingly it is only four more weeks until Vallu gets rescanned. Fingers crossed!

Look how amazingly bright is it!?!

Beacon Hill!

On a cold but sunny early spring Saturday, four of us got our act together and went on a yard hack round Beacon Hill! Luckily Beacon Hill (the one in Leicestershire) is only a twenty minute drive from our yard, so off we went with two horses in a trailer and the other two in the horse box.

And what a lovely, undramatic and peaceful hack it was! It was so nice to be able to go for a long hack without having to do any road work, there were no cars to be seen. Because it is a very popular country park, you can never expect to not bump into others, there are multi purpose tracks which means that horses, cyclists and runners are all allowed to go there. Which is great, but there were several moments when I was so glad I was riding Zu and not Vallu - I don't think Vallu would have coped with the lady springing past us(!) nor the group of highland cattle that came wondering up to us!!

My reaction to someone going "ROOSA SMILE"...

What a lovely way to spend Saturday morning - many thanks to Lili for letting me ride Zubob and Kirsty and Gill for the lovely nattering session, it was worth the cold!