What a 3 months it’s been. I’ve applied my Physio rehab knowledge and we’ve had a nice steady return to the level of work we were at before our roly poly. So here’s hoping we can now progress her fitness work, increase our strength and have a few nice outings in the 2024 season.

My core principles for rehab start with something a little controversial, but something I’m seeing more and more equine Physio’s and vets adopting, and that is active recovery. We stopped box resting humans a long time ago and although you can’t tell a horse that it’s allowed out in the field only if it stays in walk and straight lines there are things I have applied to Estrid’s box rest to ensure she’s not just resting and staying still.

So while she was in her stable 24/7 I used electro muscle activation for 20mins a day to help maintain her muscle tone and activation. We did daily carrot stretches, pelvic tilts and tummy lifts. We used wobble cushions to shift weight and activate joint stability and we hand walked on a hard surface in straight lines.

I then break my rehab down into 3 week blocks (normal training I use 6 week blocks) and focus on one pillar of fitness at a time. For example 3 weeks of walk increasing the time by 50% a week. Then 3 weeks of strength, adding in hills and poles to the walk work. Then 3 weeks of adding change of direction such as circles and lateral work. I then increase the intensity by raising the poles to make it more challenging and bringing in trot work but not increasing the overall time of the sessions and never introducing more than one new element a week.

Our rehab has been fairly linear in it’s progression so I’m hoping we’re out the other side but this is horses so anything could happen. I’m confident that I have done everything I could do to get her back to where we were. Now we start ‘training’ instead of rehabing and see what happens.

We’ve put out 225 vlogs over the last 4 years, the idea was to document my journey of getting a horse from Novice to FEI in Endurance. It hasn’t quite panned out that way, with 4 novice seasons later but I’ve really enjoyed having the footage to look back on and I know that in decades time I’ll enjoy watching it all over again. We wanted to put more positive information about endurance out there and hopefully, maybe, encourage people to give it a go as there wasn’t really anyone in the YouTube space who did Endurance.

In those 4 years we’ve never missed an upload, most the time you just film what you’re up to organically but sometimes you have to prep videos in advance if you’re away or busy etc. They take a little bit of extra effort to film and then about 1-2 hours to edit every week but I really enjoy it as a creative outlet.

With Estrid injured and Tissy living a much more relaxed life these days I thought it would be a good opportunity to have some time off making videos. I’m not sure how long for or whether it will be a permanent decision but for the first time in 4 years I just don’t feel like filming and the idea of a tech/social media detox seems to be what I need right now. Hopefully we’ll be back soon but for now thank you to everyone who has followed along, encouraged us, asked questions, sent me pictures of their first endurance ride and created a lovely little community in our corner of the internet.

As anyone who knows her would predict, Tissy had a fabulous time doing 16km at the Maplewell Endurance ride. Thank you to Sport Endurance for managing to pull the ride off in very very very wet conditions, we really appreciated exploring part of the countryside we’d never been to before.

It started off pretty well with some millimetre perfect trailer reversing under pressure from me (anyone else a pro trailer reverser and then one day it’s like you’ve never done it in your life, the fear that it will happen is always there). We then proceeded to have lovely weather over some great tracks. We took it a little slower than usual as Tissy isn’t long back in work but as per usual she was up for it and pretty cross about the slower speed.

I grinned the whole way around and we then finished off with a Burger and cake. So all in all everything went perfectly. The journey, the parking, the ride, the food. I really appreciated a drama free fun day.

I was pretty down in the dumps about Estrid missing the Cannock chase ride due to injury but actually it didn’t slap me like it used to. In the many pony injuries over the last 10 years, a kind of silver lining, is that I appreciate just getting to the start line of a goal, I genuinely feel happiness and relief when I just make it to a venue, never mind expecting to actually complete it.

Estrid fell over the Tuesday before the ride, when we both took a tumble in the school, and then she came in from the field 3 days later with heat in her leg and looking really stiff. She may have tweaked something in the fall and aggravated it in the field or they may be completely unrelated but one thing was certain we would not be competing until I was 100% happy with her.

For major injuries I would always call a vet, but for stiffness and heat I tend to wait 1-2 weeks (if it’s safe to do so and not at the detriment of the horse) before getting veterinary intervention. Same for minor grazes, I would treat them myself, whereas a puncture wound near a joint or something that needs stitches, I would get the vet straight away.

So for now when there’s heat but no swelling, she’s happy to weight bear and she isn’t reactive to touch or joint movement we’ll wait it out and if she doesn’t improve go see our vets. It’s times like these where I wish I had my own yard, so that I had more control over the lifestyle of my horses. I’d love her to be on a hard standing area to eat her hay and have access to roam around the field. She spins around if left in the stable too long and the field is supper boggy so neither are great options, but for now she’s staying out as I think that’s the better of the two. Fingers crossed its just a tweak and she makes a speedy recovery.

It was great to be back on my trusty steed for our first after work hack of 2024. Although Tissy is less than enthusiastic about hacks from home and even less so about, what she considers a pointless gait, having to walk the majority of it. She’s always been this way, this pony loves adventure, spontaneity and speed. She is not one to enjoy a casual plod around the block.

Unfortunately for Tissy, a casual plod around the block is a requirement for being able to go on adventures. So were building her work back up slowly so that we can head to some nice pleasure rides.

She’s not maintained as much weight as I would have hoped over winter and is a little skinnier that she should be. But with the grass starting to grow I’m hopeful that she’ll maintain and improve her condition. Improving her muscle bulk and fitness will only help with her overall health too.

I too often have a schedule to stick to, training to complete, jobs that need doing. So when I have a day that I have decided will be a no adulting, no timetable, no pressure day it is absolute bliss.

I decided to go for a slow 5km chilled out hack on Estrid in the sunshine. I cleaned a saddle I’d been meaning to sell since June last year. I gave Tissy a bath ready for her to start being ridden and I did all of it just because, not because I’d written a list that needed completing or had a deadline to stick to or a goal to aim for, and that feeling was actually really nice.

My brain would not cope with this strategy long term. I need structure and lists and schedules to keep all the plates spinning and reduce the feeling on trying to keep everything in my head at once, but every now and again on a rare day with nothing planned, it’s really nice to just do whatever I want to do, just because.

It was so nice to start the 2024 endurance season with a little outing to the Derbyshire groups social ride at Crich Tramway. Thank you as always to everyone who helped put on the ride and it always amazes me how many smiley helpers the Derbyshire group manage to muster out on course so that we didn’t have to do a single gait!

Estrid has come on leaps and bounds in the last year but she still struggles when we ride out with Fluffy…I have no idea why as she doesn’t do this with any other horse, but it’s like she’s moving with the handbrake on and she stops at the strangest things. By herself she’s super forward and never stops, with other horses she doesn’t like them along side and is tentative to overtake, but with Fluffy it’s super hard to get her to overtake other horses on course and she just doesn’t feel like she wants to go. So our 17km together was a little frustrating but it was still an excellent training ride with some good hills and everything is good venue practice.

I was hoping that as she’s got so much more confident by herself and has so much more experience that she wouldn’t be like that with Fluffy this season but it’s like she reverts back, so we may have to avoid adventures with Izzy and Fluffy as I don’t want her to learn to go in that way. Though I’m sure Tissy will be thrilled to hear that as it means she gets to go on all the adventures that we’re taking Izzy and Fluffy on instead of having to share with Estrid.

I took Estrid to her first training session around Cannock chase and I was thrilled with her! There was a tree across our path which meant I couldn’t go along the usual track and so I got entirely lost in the woods trying to find a way around, she went over all sorts of terrain, cambers, steep slopes, boggy bits, rocky sections, the lot and she didn’t put a hoof wrong, not once did she question me and I really enjoyed spending time exploring with her.

For me a short training session is 5-10km, medium 10-20km and long would be 20km+. So really we did a medium training ride as we covered 17km and spent just over 2 hours in the saddle, but this is double what we have been doing so a great place to start the ‘proper’ endurance training, it was also much more technical terrain and steeper than we have been focusing on so more than hard enough work for Estrid who actually completed the session with ease!

I’m slowly building her up with lots more hill work this season compared to last year as we’re hoping to do our first 80km. We don’t really have much access to decent hills (this is where I miss living in Wales) but I’m hoping to trailer out at least twice a month to get some good ascents in. We will probably use the gallops about once a month, for a bit of slow continuous work, especially with the variable weather making ground conditions tricky. I still want to do a bit of cross training with our schooling and some jumping, just to keep things fun and take a bit of (self induced) pressure off our endurance goals and mix it up with fun experiences.

We have never done anything together as a livery yard with our horses. We have quite a variety of horses and activities, from mainly hacking, to mainly schooling, dressage, hunting, and of course, endurance. So it’s rare for us all to be doing something together. I organised Ross Cooper from ROSCA Horsemanship to come to our yard and do a 2hr clinic. Some of the horses on our livery don’t have transport and some don’t feel confident riding in an arena with other people so we decided upon a groundwork clinic to give us more ideas for training activities over winter that wasn’t just lunging over poles.

Although we were still missing two people it was so nice to spend time with our horses together and have a joint experience. Ross spent time with us all individually and gave us some good ideas for proprioception, balance and suppleness training.

It was great practice for Estrid to be in vet gates, with lots of horses she wanted to be friends with milling around and trying to keep her focus on me. Interestingly all of the horses were quite tired after the 2hr session, even the fit hunting and endurance ones, they had all had to use their brains and bodies in a different way and you could tell immediately how beneficial it had been.

I was so relieved that everyone enjoyed, so much so that we’re going to organise another one but groundwork obstacles next time.

Estrid is aimed at a maximum 80-100km this year so she doesn’t need to do specific long canter training or traditional gallops work until next year. But I do like to introduce canter work when we up the distance to 80km. One because 80km of trot is pretty boring and two because I like to up it slowly and I don’t want to start doing gallops work for 120km from no experience whatsoever.

If I had good training grounds, so long hill climbs, good going and a decent network of routes then I wouldn’t need to introduce canter work specifically at a gallops as I would just integrate it into our normal routes. However, the majority of my training is flat, super stony and we don’t have many options so the gallops make for an excellent venue for a consistent, continuous pace.

Estrid will go to the gallops no more than once a month this season and we won’t be doing any sessions that are just canter work focused. What I want to use them for is keeping a nice even rhythm, getting used to what each speed feels like on her so I can instinctively tell the difference between a 13kph trot and a 17kph trot. So we can practice a nice steady controlled canter and importantly learn to use herself properly without being distracted by changes in terrain.

Her first session to the gallops she mainly went round pulling faces with her nose in the air being pretty hollow but we will work on it. We were a little faster than I wanted in the canter but it felt pretty easy for her. So we did 10km in total, 1.5km of walk, 5km of trot (trying to stay between 14-16kph, this will get more specific as she gets better at it and we’ll do one lap at 12kph, one at 16kph, one at 14kph etc.) and keeping the effort even on the flat and the slopes, then 3.5km of canter.

I was really pleased with her, she was keen and needed no encouragement to just keep going. I’m looking forward to introducing canter into our training as she just eats up the ground and it’s so flowy. She was pretty stressed at the end tied to the trailer but this is just something we’ll have to keep working on.