As you may know I lost the GoPro on my hack around Sutton Park, I had contacted the Rangers but really had no hope of it being handed in. Four days later and it turns out I’m on of the luckiest humans alive……someone had found it and handed it in to the Rangers, the same Ranger I’d already spoken to, so he knew who it belonged to straight away!

So off we went back to Sutton this time with walking boots rather than Tissy, very very happily picked up the camera and explored the park on foot. Of course we had to go hunt down the Exmoor Pony herd and say ‘Hi’, anyone else with horses still get really excited about seeing horses? No? Just me?

Then it was time to prep the winter field, the brambles and hedges had got a bit out of hand, encroaching about 2m into the field in places. So Dan got to work cutting everything back, I cleared the water trough of nettles and scooped out the stagnant water. We knocked some wooden fence posts in to support the corners and gaits of the temporary electric fencing and popped all the electric fence up, which if I do say so myself, looks very professional, it’s all in the equal striding between poles and not letting the tape twist!

The whole livery usually moves onto winter fields when the clocks go back, so not long and the arabs can come off their now very muddy summer field and enjoy some autumn grass, and then not long after that I’m sure we’ll be putting out hay feeders and the winter fields will be very muddy too. Roll on the British winter!

When you lose £300 worth of camera and spend 30km looking for it you might think you’re having a really bad day. However when you’re exploring a lovely new training ground on your favourite pony, the sun is shining and your lorry is all sparkly clean, it’s pretty hard to be really upset about anything as trivial as losing something that can be replaced.

I set off to explore Sutton Park, which is a 50minute drive from the yard after hearing really good things about it from a Photographer at my last pleasure ride. I’ve also seen the maps from previous Sport Endurance rides and thought I’d give it a go.

The parking is excellent, I went on a week day and although still busy out on the trail there was plenty of room for the lorry and for the ramp (The amount of times someone has parked under or right next to my ramp is mind boggling, maybe I should get a sign?). I downloaded a map of the Park bridleways onto my phone and off I went.

The bridleways aren’t marked so it was actually quite fun to crack out my map reading skills, Tissy as usual had her ears pricked and was a keen little pocket rocket, she genuinely loves new places. The trails were a mix of grass, gravel, packed dirt and tarmac. The only thing I would say to watch out for underfoot is there are a few sections of boggy areas, probably only 5metres long with board walk…..don’t walk on them, take the bog, they are pretty rotten. I stupidly assumed as they were on the bridleway they would be safe for horses but they weren’t. Luckily Tissy is as sure footed as a mountain goat and we weren’t injured.

Everyone I met was super polite and Tissy made many a friend who wanted to know her name and give her a pat. About 12km’s in I noticed the GoPro attached to my saddle had vanished….doh! I still had one attached to my helmet, I looked through the footage to see if I could hear when it fell off but no such luck. Cue riding up and down a 6km stretch several times……I didn’t find it.

I sighed, thought well there’s nothing I can do, contacted the Groundskeepers, who actually got back to me in under 5mins, to ask if they could keep an eye out/let me know if anything was handed in and off I went back to exploring.

I passed beautiful lakes, there were a few stretches of short hill but it was mostly undulating/flat. I came across a heard of wild Exmoor ponies……in the middle of Birmingham!!! Which was a nice surprise, one was even chilling out in the pond like a hippo.

All in all a beautiful new training ground for me to explore and get a bit of variation for the longer rides and in a very unsuspecting urban area!

I am one of those people who likes to run through everything in my head so that I find the most efficient way to do something. When it comes to doing the horses I’ve done it so many times that I have a prep the lorry autopilot, a feed the horses autopilot etc. I bet those of you who have had horses for a long time don’t have to think about putting a rug on and which order to do the straps, we just do it.

So I thought I’d share my prep the lorry and go for a ride, get back, unpack and put the horse back out autopilot flight sheet. Catchy title huh!

The Prep:

• Open lorry, add haynet
• Remove lidded buckets (that live in there) fill them up with water, put by side of ramp with the pooper scoop
• Open up tack locker, grab tack from the tackroom. Saddle, bridle, hi-viz, helmet (in that order) into the locker.
• Grab headcollar and on the way pop in the ‘in lorry pre-ride’ feed to the feed bucket that lives in the lorry.
• Walk down to the field with the wheelbarrow, leave wheelbarrow by the gate for poo picking later.
• Catch pony, groom, tail guard, boots and travel rug on.
• Load pony and depart

The Ride:

• I put the bridle on in the lorry
• Remove all travel gear
• Unload and put the saddle on and any of my gear
• Have fun riding

Return:

• Un-Tack, offer a drink and wash down
• Put travel gear back on
• Pop post-ride lorry feed in the bucket
• Load up and get back to the yard
• Unload, pop pony in stable and administer any post-ride therapies (depends what we’ve been up to, sometimes it’s just to dry off before putting a rug back on and turning out)
• Remove tack from the lorry
• Brush out horse area, wash down with a bucket of water
• Close lorry up, put the keys away
• Turn horse out

Now if you wanted to assassinate me, you could literally decide where I’d be in the exact sequence every time I go out for a ride. I don’t think about it, I just do it and it’s the same every time. We have to do this otherwise our brains would be flooded with information to process all the time but sometimes it’s interesting to step back and see if we could tweak the autopilot, if anything could be improved, added or changed.

I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at, although we do many things easily, efficiently and well it doesn’t mean it can’t be better. For me stepping back, analysing and tweaking even the small things like the lists above make a difference to overall performance. It’s the small things we do everyday that add up after all.

First of all why has no one ever told me about the magic of natural bristle brushes…..I have used synthetic brushes, probably in a pink childs set from the age of 2 until now with my grown up KBF99 blue set. Now don’t get me wrong, they last years and years and well they haven’t died yet so maybe decades and they brush really well, clean up nicely and basically get mud off my horses. But the revelation of using natural bristle swooshy brushes is next level amazing!

I got this set for my birthday and put them straight in the lorry to be my competition grooming kit….Azid went lame, COVID happened, they’ve never been used 16months later. Qantas has some skin issues and I don’t want to use the same brushes on him and the others, I don’t actually know if it’s a thing to have separate grooming kits for your horses?, maybe I should have had more sets all along. But anyway rather than buy new brushes just for him I thought why not just use my fancy pants set.

I’m a firm believer in most areas of life that you shouldn’t save stuff for best but use the stuff that makes you feel good, does a great job and makes everything feel like ‘best’. So why I tucked my brushes away in the lorry I’m not sure. Anyway here’s a link to the new brushes. I’d love to know any hints or tips from people who have used them before.

And onto the rain! So what was going to be Q’s first ever competitive ride got cancelled. I love the Red Dragon Ride, going back to my home country, riding through the hills, it’s breathtaking, it’s unpredictable, it’s an adventure and it steals your soul. But it just wasn’t meant to be. Myself and my family had all taken time off work for the competition so instead decided to go mountain biking together.

Red Dragon is renowned for it’s unpredictable and stereotypically welsh weather (rain) and the forecast didn’t disappoint, it poured down and it blew a gail. So instead of getting wet and cold crewing and riding we got wet and cold biking instead and actually I enjoyed every second!

My horses are pretty low maintenance…..or am I low maintenance and my horses are unlucky to have me? Whichever way around it is when I’m not riding after work I do very little in the way of horsey care. Granted that makes my autumn yard routine pretty boring but I wanted to put it out there that actually not everyone has complex lengthy uber fancy yard routines and it’s ok to be basic.

So obviously I have 3 horses and 1 stable, all my life my horses have lived out 24/7 and are rugged up for the worsening weather. They have all had stints of stabling due to injuries and Tissy was stabled in the run up to big races to get her used to it. This winter will be the first time I will actually have a horse in overnight.

Tissy is missing some teeth and has some TMJ arthritis which means she finds chewing hay and haylage pretty hard work over winter. The winter gone was the first time we noticed her tilting her head and really struggling with chewing, it meant she dropped quite a bit of weight and at the time I didn’t have a stable at the yard I’m at.

So I snapped a stable up when the opportunity came and thank goodness I did because I’ve had two of my horses on lengthy box rests this year but most importantly it means that Tissy will be able to come in overnight in winter to have a big bucket of speedibeet as a haylage replacement. Which we hope will be easy for her to eat and thus maintain better condition.

Anyway, seeing as the grass is still good enough not to need to supplement with haylage right now they’re all still living out in their summer fields, and will probably moving to the winter fields sometime soon. Which means all I do on a non-riding evening is grab their feeds, check them over, top up their water, poo pick and go home. What does everyone else do when they’re not riding? Am I missing out on horsey care?

I thought I’d give Westgate Labs worm count service a go. For many years I’ve followed the old school routine of Equest in the spring, Equest Pramox in the Autumn and never thought much about it other than to make sure I popped in my diary what I’d used and the date so I knew for next time.

But with worms becoming ever more resistant to the drugs available and a genuine interest in what’s lurking in my horses guts I thought I’d up my worming routine game. Now I didn’t do the Saliva Tapeworm tests, mainly because I was keeping costs down but I think I’ll do that one next time. What I did get was the pinworm and the red worm test kits from Westgate Labs.

The kit arrived really quickly, was super straight forward and easy to package up and post back. Now if they come back and don’t need worming I’ve saved myself £20 in total, as the wormers usually cost around £60, if they do need worming then I guess I’ve spent £44 more than I needed to. But money aside it will be interesting to see what the results are!

For the first time in a long time I had a weekend where all 3 of my horses came out the field to do something. Granted Azid was just a trot up for the vet, but still it’s something!

It was a pretty busy weekend, meeting new training buddies (Thanks Lucy), getting far too excited about a DIY rug rack (Thanks Will), grooming and trotting Azid up and generally bumbling around doing jobs.

Tissy had an awesome time at Prestwold. Qantas did 20mins of Pessosa and then we learnt a new lunging technique to help him with weight shift, balance and bend, we’re going to spend the winter really working on evening him up. And Azid…..well as you can see got quite exuberant about trotting up!

He’s not sound yet but he’s sound-er and actually looking pretty good generally. Things are on the up for him and as soon as he’s been field sound for 4 weeks he can start training/rehab….again. I’m hoping to send him back for a few weeks on the hydro treadmill….again. Maybe this time I’ll finally get to ride him after weeks of rehab.

The day to day equestrian life is pretty much 80% looking after your horse 20% doing whichever activity you bought your horse to do in the first place. So horse care is a daily thing, picking out and oiling hooves, feeding, watering, choosing the appropriate rug (the never ending checking of your BBC weather app to check whether your rug choice was the right one today), picking up their poo, grooming, patching up wounds and fixing whichever rug you chose to put on.

But then there are the extras, that aren’t a daily occurrence but are still an essential part of your horsey life. Now you can go bare minimum or every discipline, therapist, clinician and appointment you can think of.

For me my ‘extras’ are the farrier, who comes every 5-6 weeks. The equine dentist who comes every 6 months to a year. The vet, who comes pretty much monthly if you own a horse like Azid but definitely once a year for flu vaccinations. The Osteo/Physio/Chiro, who I get out every 3 months as standard or more regularly if we’re competing at FEI or there’s an issue and that’s about it.

What does everyone else have? What would you classify as extras?

How do people like to structure their canter training? I use it in four different ways. I start with interval training then progress to hill canter reps and when they start to do races and FEI I add in continuous and speed work.

• Interval: Ratios of walk, trot and canter that adapt based on fitness levels with a change in canter lead every 30s.
• Hill: Canter repetitions on a steep hill changing lead every rep
• Continuous: Picking a certain speed to train at based on the past speed pass rate for my next ride, I like to figure out the stats for each loop of my next race and then train at the speed they are most likely to complete at and also the max speed to win the last loop. I then change canter lead every 2minutes.
• Speed: I go to an all weather gallop for this one and change lead every set, with 1km steady canter and then a full blast 1km.

Canter training doesn’t even appear in my training programme until 3 months in and then towards the end of the season it probably accounts for 60% of my training. This is just because training is much more effective if you do it in blocks focusing on one element at a time, changing the stimulus and way the muscles are worked is better for fitness and strength rather than sticking to the same routine for months.

First of all just look at Tissy’s little ears in the video, there is no denying how much she loves being on the trail and I love her for it. Always keen, always forward and seems to have a never ending supply of energy, which I would very much appreciate if she spent less of it spooking at ridiculous things such as purple flowers……but still it’s great to have a pony who is speedy, sure footed and loves to run!

We’re starting to explore Cannock a bit more, mountain biking around the chase has given me more confidence in where to go and where I am, so I feel much better taking my horses around by myself. In all honesty I don’t know why I’m so chicken about going to new unknown places to train, with Tissy I feel like I can go anywhere, but with the boys I just don’t feel confident enough in them to safely navigate around somewhere I don’t know, and I don’t want to end up miles away from the lorry with a grumpy tired gelding.

But I’m starting to venture further afield from the yard for training now, looking for quality and variation. Mainly for a bit more fun and enjoyment. I tend to scout out a potential training venue with trusty Tissy and then take Qantas (Azid maybe one day if he’s ever not injured) later, once I know the layout a bit better.

Talking of one day Azid not being injured. He’s now back in the field with the other two and healing really well, we still have a way to go but seeing as the vet wasn’t sure he’d make it a few days past the injury, we are so glad to have his silly little face bouncing around the field. I’ve stocked up the first aid bags in preparation for his next exploits.

My firm favourite items in a first aid bag are:

• Cotton wool
• Softban
• Conforming bandage
• Vet wrap
• Saline or some sort of sterile wash
• Gauze
• A woundcream
• A topical spray like iodine
• A barrier spray like aluspray
• Hydrocolloid dressings
• Foam dressings
• EAB wrap

I’ve got a few other bits and bobs like scissors, clamps, syringes, suture kits, pressure gel pads, bite cream etc but I feel you can sort out just about anything with that list, at least tide you over until a vet arrives anyway. What would you say are first aid must haves?