Azid is now in his second block of training. Which means we’re starting to work more on fitness. His first block focused on schooling, building up his strength with poles and hill walking but now we’re switching it up a gear. He still get’s schooled and lunged but these are now less of a priority as longer hacks and canter sessions become the main focus.

I have my horses on a two week cycle broken down into training blocks of 6 weeks with a 12 week peak. So Azid is currently on day on day off on the same schedule every two weeks, this will then be changed in 6 weeks time. All of which is focusing on a 12 week training programme to get him to peak fitness for one of our main goals of the season.

I usually fit 2-3 training programmes into a season, aiming to peak a little higher each time with rest built in between each one. This works out fairly naturally as we’ll peak for a certain competition and then he’ll have 2-4 weeks off depending on the distance.

This week we had a good mix of schooling, lunging, hacking and his first canter session in two years. Next week he’ll do two hacks and one canter session. So far he’s coping well with the work and the injuries from the previous years appear to be under control, so fingers crossed that continues.

A big thank you to Poplars Farm Cross Country for allowing us to film the drone footage in this vlog!

Qantas had a little trip out to the vets this week. He’s had a sarcoid under the girth area since I bought him and over the last year I’ve taken pictures and monitored the size, it hasn’t changed or caused him any issues but I decided I wanted it removed.

I didn’t want to do it in the summer because of all the flies and autumn winter the fields are super muddy and wet, which I didn’t want him to be splattering mud into wounds all the times, so we decided on now. The fields are dry(ish) the flies are at a minimum and although it does distrupt training for an early season, in the current climate of rides never quite being assured I don’t really mind a later start to his competitions.

This also gave me a concrete excuse to not start Qantas and Azid’s pre-season training at the same time which allows me a bit of a breather as they’ll be at different levels at different stages now. Azid will be 8 weeks ahead of Qantas, Q will be doing the slower work with plenty of schooling, whilst Azid will be doing the longer stuff. Which gives me more variation and a bit more time as opposed to them doing the same thing.

Qantas had his sarcoid lasered off at Pool House Equine Clinic under standing sedation and he also had a melanoma lasered off near his bum, which is odd for his age and colour. The reason we know exactly what each lump was is because we sent the tissue off to be sampled, one to confirm the diagnosis and two so that they know if they’ve removed the whole tissue and not left anything behind.

Q was in and out in about an hour and a half, and this is a shocker, was absolutely beautifully behaved!!!!! The aftercare is minimal as they want him turned out for maximal movement to reduce swelling and ensure any scar tissue is as mobile as possible, and they also didn’t want me to clean the wound (unless it got something disgusting in it obviously). We were sent home with oral antibiotics and bute and off we went.

Even though the vets said I could put a fluffy girth over the hole to ride, Qantas is so sensitive I’m just going to wait until it’s healed to start riding and then we shall see if I can get him to a Novice ride this year!

So Azid has had his shoes on, his feed adjusted, the saddle fitted and completed his walk and trot phase of training, I kind of think of it as pre-training, so now he can start the good stuff. Getting into the nitty gritty of actually training for improvement rather than creating a foundation.

But before we start working him hard he needs a new clip! He’s getting pretty sweaty and as a sensitive skinned itchy pony all that fluff and scurff isn’t helping. Cue endurance clipping : Spring edition!

I donned my obligatory non-hair sticking outfit and goggles, charged up my new cordless clippers. A side note on the cordless ones, they are indeed quieter, lighter and easier to manoeuvre around the horse but I think I’ll still be using the corded ones for that first winter clip, as the cordless ones definitely felt a little resistant through the really fluffy stuff compared to my corded ones, though they still made it through without tugging the skin, they were just a little bit slower, and off we go for a spring clip.

I leave the legs, head, saddle pad and girth area, the only difference from my winter clip (You can find that video here : Winter Endurance Clip) is that I take off the bum and the whole neck.

I am so happy to have my two boys back. I love Tissy immeasurably but she is not the most affectionate pony, so it’s nice to have geldings that love attention, kisses and cuddles. Plus they are so super fluffy from a winter in the Welsh hills that they’re even cuter than usual.

They weren’t given any hard feed during their Welsh Mountain stay so it’s time now to re-introduce feed in proportion to the change in grazing and starting work. I don’t have any equine nutritional qualifications and have always relied on Baileys Horse Feeds to plan my horses diets. But this year I wanted to learn more and look a bit closer at what I was feeding my horses, knowledge is power after all and I felt I needed a better understanding of how to balance their diet.

Cue FeedXL, it’s an independent website that you input your feed and it shows your the micro and macronutrients, you can input forage quality and analysis, play around with quantities and save feed programmes. I personally have made one feed programme for each season, as this is where my forage changes, then for each season I have an out of work, easy work and hard work feed programme.

It’s really cool to be able to see how you can change feed and the balance of vitamins and minerals by playing around on the site. I used a mix of grass, haylage, Baileys Ease and Excel cubes and Performance Balancer with British Horse feeds Speedi and Fibre beet with Science Supplements Well Horse Performace. Then I just change the amounts around until I get a perfectly balanced diet for each scenario.

I have a 10% discount code if anyone wants to give it a go:

https://feedxl.referralrock.com/l/1BETHLANGLE54/

Secondly I need to make sure my saddles are fitting the boys well, as they will have changed shape over winter. I bought Qantas a new Reactor Panel saddle back in November, and just recently bought Azid the exact same. So now we’re awaiting a fitting with the saddlers (although I’m not bad at fitting panel saddles myself I do prefer to get them checked a couple of times a year). I decided to switch from my BUA because it’s just too light and it doesn’t look like the FEI will be abolishing weights any time soon and my Free and Easy’s because I would like the support of the manufacturer and the ability to order new parts or have a custom design (Free and Easy are no longer in production). Both those saddles are now up for sale if anyone is interested in having them.

Lastly the farrier will pop shoes back on, as they have been barefoot over winter. Once the basics of feed, feet and tack are sorted it’ll be time to get back training ready for hopefully a fun season. That I will savour all the more after the last year of no competitions!

I have been asked a couple of times to share how I got into Endurance and my story in the Sport, so I have finally filmed the video telling the story of my endurance journey. Now turns out I can chat forever about Endurance so this has had to be split into two parts.

I got into Endurance purely by circumstance. I grew up with miles and miles of amazing hacking next door to the Welsh Team chef de equipe. My Mum was the first to give it a try and I followed in her footsteps the very next year. It has shaped so much of my life, I am the person I am today because of my Sport. My closest friends are from all around the World because I have met them at a competition and my best moments and dearest memories usually involve a horse!

I’ll let the video explain the rest, the ups and downs, the horses I’ve had the privilege of riding. Goals achieved, Dreams just out of reach and everything in between.

I have been asked a couple of times to share how I got into Endurance and my story in the Sport, so I have finally filmed the video telling the story of my endurance journey. Now turns out I can chat forever about Endurance so this has had to be split into two parts.

I got into Endurance purely by circumstance. I grew up with miles and miles of amazing hacking next door to the Welsh Team chef de equipe. My Mum was the first to give it a try and I followed in her footsteps the very next year. It has shaped so much of my life, I am the person I am today because of my Sport. My closest friends are from all around the World because I have met them at a competition and my best moments and dearest memories usually involve a horse!

I’ll let the video explain the rest, the ups and downs, the horses I’ve had the privilege of riding. Goals achieved, Dreams just out of reach and everything in between.

What does everyone’s lockdown weekends look like? Anyone else getting bored of the same hacking routes from home yet? I mean I can’t complain, for a start I can go hacking from the yard, yes they’re not great, yes it’s a lot of road but hey it’s something! Lockdown 3.0 seems loooooooooong compared to 1 and 2. I quite like the winter weather so for me it’s not so much because the sun isn’t shining it’s more because the lack of adventure is creeping up to its one year anniversary. I feel like we’re all work and no play with nothing certain to look forward to (Maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but you know what I mean).

COVID has had its challenges for everyone, and affected us all in different ways. For someone like me, who is driven by goals, deadlines, schedules and routine, I’ve had to learn to manage the way my brain works, but I have also learnt to just enjoy the present for the sake of it, which is something I rarely did before. A good training ride was good because it got me closer to that competition goal not purely because it was fun at the time.

The other great thing to come out of this strange time is riding other peoples horses. With more time on my hands and less need to train my own horses hard I have been riding the hunters over the road from the yard and I’m a little bit in love. They are so smooth to ride, really quite speedy and it’s been great for my riding having a variation in horses to train.

The funniest thing for me is that every weekend is the same. It’s hard to distinguish one from another. I ride, bake, walk, eat, read, sleep, repeat. So here is a taste of what every weekend looks like for me at the moment.

When I finish work and get to the yard I’ll pull the bed down, sort out any haynets for the stable or field, make up the hardfeeds, ride whichever horse needs training that day and then bring Tissy in as my last job so she gets as much turnout time as possible. I wash her legs down as this is what works best for her sensitive skin and susceptibility to mud fever (I’ve tried leaving the mud on and letting it dry but it just doesn’t work as well for her) pick her feet out, switch to her stable rug and tuck her up for bed.

So really my evening routine doesn’t consist of very much. I think the hardest part is lugging my giant haynets the 200m up hill through the mud in the dark for the feeders out in the field. It’s always touch and go whether I might lose a welly, fall on my face or send a haynet catapulting through the air.

If I’m not riding, the yard jobs and checking the ponies usually take me around 30-45minutes (depending on if I’m feeling chatty or anti-social, ha!). If I have a horse to train then I’m usually there for about 2-2 1/2hrs. I do like to schedule the training so I never have two to do in one evening but if all goes well there may come a time where I have two training for FEI and I will have to start training two a day in which case I imagine I’ll try and get one done in the morning.

It’s been a few weeks since Tissy started her new winter routine, in previous years she has lived out 24/7 with grass, ad lib haylage and hard feed. But she’s 23 and starting to need a little bit of extra care. Her teeth aren’t as good and she has arthritis in her jaw so keeping weight on her is a little bit harder. Getting her fit and building muscle also takes a bit longer which is why I don’t really give her long winter breaks anymore but keep her ticking over fitness wise.

So Tissy will continue to do 2-3 training sessions a week to ensure she keeps her muscle bulk and stays nice and fit and active. These tend to be one hack, one lunge and then whatever fits into that week for the third session. It’s a balance as although I want her to stay fit and healthy I don’t want her to lose too much body fat. So I take pictures and measure her weight every week to keep an eye on how we’re doing and act accordingly.

Tissy is now stabled overnight, I started bringing her in as soon as we needed to supplement the grazing with haylage, as she finds it harder to chew these days. She comes in around 6pm after I’ve finished work and goes out around 6:30am. Basically I wake up, pop on some trackies, waterproofs over the top and hop straight in my car to the yard at 6am.

I switch her rug over to her turnout and take her straight out, then I muck out, throw up the bed, soak her fibre beet/speedi beet mix, which were using as a forage replacement, but she still has ad-lib access to haylage at all time. Then I go back home, do a 20minute workout, do about 15mins of housework and then get ready to go to work which starts at 8am in clinic.

I know that it sounds like a lot before work but if I don’t do it in the morning it’s not happening at all, plus I feel much better throughout the day knowing a couple of things are ticked off my daily list and the last thing I want to do when I get in from doing the horses around 7pm every evening is housework.

So far she’s looking really good this winter and has settled into her routine nicely, I even enjoy mucking her out every morning!

Now I’m aware snow can be quite disruptive but the child in me just loves a bit of fresh powder! I actually don’t mind it as a horse owner, it’s preferable to ice and rain and mud, and although yes, it does create a bit more work, there is just something so lovely about snow.

I love the quiet, the bright blue sky in contrast with the white scenery, the sound of crunching snow beneath my feet and how it makes everything look so beautiful. The only real change I make for the horses during snow is extra fibre in the form of fibre beet to replace the missing grazing and just make sure they have plenty of haylage.

We had a great time building a snowman with Tissy (she didn’t look as pleased as us) and Dan even gad a go on his skis outside our house!