I could not remember for the life of me whether I clipped Estrid last year or not. Turns out I did, this year I took a little more off and didn’t leave the girth area, she was immaculately behaved so I was super impressed with her.

Although we’re doing more traditional equestrian activities over winter I still went for an endurance clip although I went a bit higher than I meant to, leaving more of the hamstrings exposed than I wanted….but hey, it’ll grow back right!

How does everyone approach training for a specific dressage test? I’d love to hear some ideas, tips and tricks. I decided I’d go for a whole-part-whole approach. So I learnt the test on paper first then I thought I’d run Estrid through it without any schooling and film it to see where we’re at. Then I can break it down into skills/parts and focus my training on them before putting it all back together the week before our competition.

Ironically my competition is actually Intro C now but it won’t have done us any harm to have a go at Intro A and I’ve only spent one training session on it. Looking at them, I think that C might actually be easier as the 10m half circles in working trot in Intro A were actually quite tight and tricky! They share the same fundamentals with working trot, medium walk, free walk on a long rein. Intro A also has a serpentine and two 10m circles with a give of the inside rein.

I’m pretty sure that schooling the foundations are probably usually required before entering and training for dressage, but having a competition to go to gives me focus and having a test to focus on gives my training purpose and direction so actually I see it more of a training exercise in itself rather than getting competition ready.

At this point Estrid can slow down, go faster (but not canter to a leg command), go slower, stop, start and turn. As my dressage rider friend put it we’re completing the actions without quality and that’s 100% ok with me at the moment, I want to complete the movements, be able to do the tasks and then we can bring in the quality, starting with rhythm and then onto suppleness.

Having looked back through our first test run our main focus for now will be bringing the core up and lengthening through her back and to try and get a bigger difference between our medium walk and free walk head carriage.

I have very optimistically planned so much fun stuff for the off-season. I would really like to compete in the Endurance GB Winter league, where you get points for your extra-curricular activities, but the likelihood of me remembering my form to be signed by the instructor for jump clinics, or to take to a training ride, or for a secretary to sign at a dressage competition is nill. I wonder if anyone else is put off by the actual form and whether there could be a digitalised way of getting the signatures or proving that you have attended? Anyway, I’m going to try and remember but I just know that it’s unlikely.

Estrid’s back appears to still be ok after 3 weeks of training, there are a couple of bumps with dry skin, about the size of the ball on the end of a pin but there’s no soreness and they seem to be reducing so we shall continue to monitor and carry on with our training schedule for the time being.

She has come back into training full of enthusiasm which is very encouraging but we have regressed in our travel and venue calmness. She’s back to being sweaty and shaky on our first trip out in the trailer since August. Understandable, and less extreme than at the start of the year, so I’m confident we will soon conquer the venue anxiety ready for the 2024 season.

Most importantly we’re both enjoying being back in the saddle. I have even had an impromptu jumping lesson (which I didn’t film), because someone else at the yard dropped out of the clinic, and it was the most fun. Even though she had only been back in work 3 weeks, she’s never even been ridden over poles in an arena and certainly never been over a showjump, the instructor set it to her level and she tried her little heart out without a bead of sweat on her.

It’s that time of year when we have the annual great electric fence move. It’s always absolutely pouring down for this task, probably because one of the prerequisites of the move is that the summer fields are becoming wet and muddy.

I am not the most laid back person in the world, I’m a planner, I like to be efficient and effective…electric fence tape tests my personality traits and resolve on a bi-annual basis when we move field. WHY does it get so twisted when I wound it on and off the reel perfectly!!! Why do the posts look like they’re in a perfectly straight line, spaced equidistantly from one direction and like I put them in blindfolded from the other?

My frustration with getting the most aesthetically pleasing electric fence line aside, I do love the move to the winter field each year. I like hunkering down and prepping for winter. Ordering in my haylage, stocking up on bedding, checking fences and cleaning troughs. Call me crazy but I enjoy the winter.

The next month is definitely the autumn honeymoon phase, where the winter paddocks are lush with grass and the sunsets are all golden against the orange leaves. It’s getting cooler but you don’t look like the Michelin man in 10 layers yet and we’re not fishing ice out of water so it’s easy to have a rosy view of the season, let’s see what I think in February!

I must admit that after 10 weeks of not riding I was starting to feel like I didn’t actually want to, but as soon as I got on Estrid’s back, the grin on my face told me everything. A nice quiet hack around the block and I had a wonderful time. I marveled at the fact that the horse beneath me, who was being so good for her first time ridden in 10 weeks, I trained!

I have so many hopes for the winter and I’m looking forward to new experiences and challenges. I would like to attend a pole clinic, have a flatwork lesson, have a jumping lesson, do a dressage competition and do a clear round showjumping competition. Who knows if we’ll tick those off the list but it’s exciting to try and aim for them and do something entirely different before focusing on our 2024 endurance season and getting that first 80km under our belt.

I’m hoping Estrid is back on full form from her skin issue on her back, but only time will tell as we don’t know how it will react to being under the saddle. She has no signs of anything anymore so it’s time to get back to it. I feel like I’m on a never-ending return horses to work treadmill. I would ordinarily give them 2-3months off at the end of the season but I don’t remember the last time I actually chose their time off rather than it being enforced by some calamity.

I am however very grateful that this year I’m not spending the autumn and winter rehabing from injury….I mean there’s still time for one of them to throw a spanner in the works but I’m keeping everything crossed that rehab will not be part of my 2023.

Instead, I’m hoping to get to a dressage competition! Dressage itself I actually quite enjoy, I like the process of training for a test and I like connecting all the movements together and working towards something. The process of going to a dressage competition is my absolute worst nightmare. I hate people watching me ride. I hate that I am actually paying for someone to judge and make comments on a 4-minute window into my horses life. I hate that if an umbrella or flower pot has spooked your horse that you don’t have much time to re-deem yourself. But getting out of my comfort zone will be good for me and it’s an excellent opportunity to do more venue training with Estrid and I’m looking forward to dressing up smart and trying to put our best glossy hoof forward.

So week 1 of our road to dressage has begun with an in-hand week and we will hopefully be back on board by week 2!

With Estrid being off I have had quite a lot of ‘spare’ time that would ordinarily be filled with training Estrid. I have filled this time with tidying, cleaning and now decluttering all my horsey gear. I had got to a point in my ‘normal’ and horsey life that I felt like I had too much stuff. I knew where everything was but it was hard to get to, I could find the right box but then the box was rammed so full I’d have to unpack it all to find the thing I was looking for.

So I embarked on a decluttering mission and essentially a stocktake of my belongings. I am a sucker for holding onto stuff ‘just in case’ or ‘maybe the next horse will need that’. I had synthetic stirrup leathers from 23 years ago……and for approximately 5 seconds contemplated keeping them or selling them as I didn’t want them to go to waste, before my sensible brain said ‘these will probably snap the moment you put weight on them, throw them away’.

So I tried to ask myself:

1. Do you use it regularly? (If I answered yes and it was in storage, I had to have words with myself that actually if I did use it regularly it wouldn’t be in storage!)
2. Does it do a task that can’t be done otherwise? (Useful for stuff that’s not in regular use but I do need, like clippers)
3. Is it safe to use? (Goodbye 23 year old stirrup leathers)
4. Is it irreplaceable? (I’ve been hanging onto red water bottle holders, as you couldn’t get hold of new ones. But I prefer navy, white or black, so the likelihood of me using them is slim. Now they are replaceable if my current ones break so I don’t need to hold onto the red ones)

It wasn’t a groundbreaking declutter as I had 19 items to sell and threw away 8 items. But it made me feel accomplished and filled a few hours. Thankfully it looks like Estrid is ready to be ridden again so I won’t have to subject you all to the various dull ways I’ve kept myself entertained anymore.

Well, the number one thing I’ve learnt is that you WILL get it wrong and there will be EVIDENCE. Filming snippets of my life with horses means I have watched back hundreds of hours of footage of my interactions with them and that in itself is a great learning tool. I have noticed things that I do that I’d like to change and things that I didn’t realise I did that are actually quite good. People notice both, and my online community predominantly comment on the good but it’s the minority that point out what you get wrong that stick in your brain. Putting a part of my life out in the public domain has really taught me how to cope with feedback, to give as much time in my brain to the good as the bad and not take anything too personally. After all failure is the key to progression.

I have learnt to remind myself daily that social media is only part of the story, it’s never the whole truth. We put out a 20-ish minute vlog a week, as a percentage of my life that is tiny. I try to let people see the ‘reality’ by not editing out the dodgy filming, the downs or the boring, but ultimately no one would watch a video of me poo-picking 30minutes a day and not getting to ride because I left work late and I have too much life-admin-adulting to do.

It’s harder than you think. We spend approximately 3-5 hours a week just to get one 20minute vlog up on YouTube. We get paid from adverts on YouTube around £8-10 per video so that’s at best £3.33 an hour. I don’t do it for the money, obviously….I do it because I love documenting my life with horses for me to look back on in the future and because I want to promote Endurance.

Some of the videos I’ve loved have been total ‘flops’ and some I personally consider incredibly boring do great, so you never know what will do well and something that is so ingrained in you that you don’t even notice it can be a revolutionary tip to someone else. I try not to do things just to film them so sometimes the video is a bit boring because that’s genuinely what I’m doing, but for me it makes it more real and sometimes it’s those videos that bring about the best interactions with our online community.

Weirdly I feel more self-assured. I care less about what people think about me, 8,000 people watch our videos a month but ultimately it doesn’t matter if they don’t like my hair or they think I should do something differently. This is me, being an imperfect human, trying my best, failing some of the time, getting it right some of the time and just taking other people along on the journey. I don’t know if this would have happened anyway with age but I feel like putting myself out there in video format has definitely thickened my skin.

Lastly, reflection should be more widely used in all aspects of our life. Watching videos back in the editing process enforces some reflection but I have also learnt that actively reflecting, considering and adjusting my thought processes has improved my life in all areas. I feel less awkward about getting things wrong as they offer me an opportunity to improve and check in with myself on a regular basis, which makes sure my goals and current actions are in alignment.

Anyway enough of my reflection, here’s a video of me taking my favourite pony for spin!

Perhaps even more satisfying than a spring clean? I love the end of a competitive season and heading into Autumn, I know an unpopular opinion! But stay with me on this. Spring is full of hope, ambition, planning and preparing for the year ahead, which is lovely but I find it quite stressful, not in a bad way but because I want my goals so much and pour so much time and effort into them it’s tense as you never know whether it will pan out how you wanted. You can do the best prep in the world, have the fittest horse, strongest rider and perfect race conditions but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. That’s just life and definitely just horses.

Whereas Autumn is more reflective for me. I’m looking forward to what could be knowing there’s plenty of time for preparation over winter. But mainly a spring clean usually entails scraping mud off everything, washing hundreds of layers and trying to get everything dry, yet an autumn clean is much more organising, putting away and pottering around. This is purely in my head. I could change my mindset and switch it all up but I like the buzz and tension of a new competitive season and I also like the relaxed reflection at the end.

Anyway with the Swallows gone for another year it was time to give everything a clean, they poo an astonishing amount and get it over absolutely everything possible for such little birds!

Now I am fully aware that current research says that nothing beats continuous pouring of cold water for optimum cooling, but there are times when pouring water is either not practical or not an option. Equidaw of London reached out to me to product test their luxury cooling rug, no strings attached, just try it out. They also just won the new product award for Horsewear, Horsecare and Equipment at BETA.

I have seen a fair few cooling rugs hit the market over the years, one of which required a special liquid you had to buy and soak it in. So when this was just a straightforward dip in water I was pleased as it’s just not practical to have to use anything else.

The rug definitely is luxury in terms of the hardware, fabric choice and manufacturing. It is also luxury on price point, however, as a small British brand, the pricing is fair for the research and development and the work involved in making it.

I can definitely see how it would be useful for times when you can’t pour water. Such as travelling in the heat, after you’ve finished washing down but want to continue cooling, when stood for the farrier, dentist, vet etc in hot conditions (it doesn’t drip so at least your farrier won’t get wet too!). This is also a great feature for Estrid who hates the sensation of dripping water, so if we use a rug after washing her down and cooling her off with water we might be able to reduce her heart rate and keep her cool by using the rug as she won’t be annoyed by the running water.

As an Endurance rider I see me using this in vet gate holds or at the end of a ride. In holds where I want my horse to relax, eat and drink but stay cool it’s a great tool and at the end once you’ve finished crewing and want to walk your horse around but keep them cool, some people have crews that would follow pouring water over the horse for this but a lot of people don’t so this would be a good solution.

In the UK we may not have many opportunities to need a lot of cooling but when we do it’s usually dramatically different to what our horses are used to so they really feel the heat. I’m interested to see how much I reach for this rug next year and how it’s going to fit into my Endurance rider toolbox, especially as they intend to do further research into its effects vs water and how it can be best used for horse welfare.