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.

Tissy is pretty remarkable in many ways (I’m biased) but truly in the fact that you can leave her for weeks and then get on for a ride and she has absolutely no issue with this, she isn’t fresh or spooky, she is just the same old Tissy. This trait makes giving her time off super easy. She has always had 3 months ‘off’ a year without any training her whole life. Usually from October to December at the end of a season. In her older years she’s had more like 6 months off from October to March.

I still take her out for a little spin here and there but riding Tissy is meant to be fun for both of us. So in the winter, when it’s dark and wet and I don’t see them in daylight until the weekend, Tissy stays on holiday until we can go on light spring evening adventures, rather than slogging the winter in the school and getting muddy and sweaty. It means I don’t need to clip her, it means she’s not using extra calories training and because she’s out 17hours a day in a hilly field she actually stays very mobile and reasonably well muscled. We still go on a weekend wander every now and then but it’s usually a meandering hack around the block of about 5km.

Tissy is 26 this year and she’s still pretty keen so once the lighter nights come we can start doing our walk work and get her fit enough to enjoy some 16-32km rides through the summer.

Just wow! It is so exciting when you find someone who gets you, gets your horse and gets how to get the best out of you both. This is exactly the experience I had when I took Estrid for our first flatwork lesson at Ingestre stables with Rob Lovatt.

I really want to get Estrid working long and round, powering form behind in a nice even rhythm. Which we sometimes achieve at home but she’s so stressy that anywhere else she’s like a llama.

Rob instantly got us working better within about 30s, the way he explained things to me and simplified exactly what to do made me feel less like I was juggling plates and more like I was just using one simple lever. Now Estrid’s head was like a yo yo, up, down, throw in a bit of sass BUT there was more good relaxed low head with engaged core than there was llama. We were getting some really good supple work between the sass and even better she finished the session relaxed!!!!

I am so excited to work on what we learnt and I can’t wait to go back and keep progressing. I’m going to use dressage tests as a benchmark for our progress, even if I don’t get to competitions just running through them, recording them and comparing, or even doing some online dressage competitions so I get the judges feedback and score. With Estrid hopefully stepping up to 80km this year I don’t want her just to be fit, I need her to be strong and this is a big step in the right direction.

It still boggles my mind that money is such a taboo subject in our society, especially when it is integral to our survival, welfare and enjoyment. It’s not everything, and £100 doesn’t make you happier than £10 but we need to meet our basic needs and if possible have enough left over for fun.

I am naturally a stressy person and I struggle with mental health. In all aspects of life I can counteract this with good preparation and solid systems in place to help me out. My finances play a huge role in how secure and stable I feel so I have a system to make sure that all the horse ‘needs’ are met with minimal day to day brain power from me.

I break this down into fixed monthly bills, which is the easy part, so Livery costs and insurances for horses, trailer and tow vehicle are my only ‘fixed bills’. Then I have fluctuating needs. These are feed, forage, farrier, professionals and fuel. Followed by adventure money, entry fees, lessons and clinics.

I have kept detailed accounts of what I spend in what area for the last 5 years so I have a good idea on what I spend in each category. So at the start of the year I work out how many farrier visits I’ll need, how much feed and haylage, how many rides I plan to enter etc. for the whole year and then divide it by 12 to give me the amount I need to put into my ‘pony fund’ account each month to cover the costs.

I have a little review each month and every quarter to make sure what I’ve set aside is adequate. It just helps me know that what I have in that account is for the horses and what I have in my ‘spend’ account is free to be allocated rather than I need to keep it for a set of shoes or a trip to the feed store.