After Estrid’s first 40km I noticed that the neoprene gaiters had rubbed her skin. The day of the ride there were no marks and she had no tenderness but the day after she had dry flaky skin. Her feet were completely fine but I did notice that she was much happier on the soft ground than on the road. So I made the decision that I would do the same as Tissy and shoe her to compete and boot her the rest of the year. We went for shoeing her with the Ibex frog support pads to try and maximise the hoofs performance by loading through the frog and she was a very good girl for her first shoeing.
Transport: I have made so many lists over these past few weeks! Pros and cons, costs, reliability, efficiency, usefulness. I am definitely suffering from choice fatigue (Although choice is a lovely thing to have). I have visited horsebox manufacturers, I have looked at 4×4’s, pickup trucks and vans.
Hunter horseboxes based near Lymm, came out on top for a new build horsebox, the quality, honesty, straight forwardness, emergency exits, communication and the beautifully tidy workshop had me salivating over my next lorry. But to get what I really wanted on a young-ish chassis was 6k out of budget. So I decided I’d rather wait, save more money and get what I really wanted than compromise on design or an older chassis.
Que the tow vehicle option research. Ideally I would want to just have one vehicle, so my tow vehicle would also be my day to day car. I wanted a minimum 2.5t tow capacity, 30mpg and under 100,000miles on the clock.
After a lot of thought it came down to this – what would be the smallest financial burden with the most versatility that would allow the storage of a horsebox.
Beth Endurance 