Although I have had a stable the last few years to accommodate for Tissy’s need for mash as a haylage replacement. I haven’t had to have her in and I’ve had other horses on full grass livery, so it’s been very flexible.

This year as part of the livery changes and in an effort to preserve the fields both my horses will be stabled daily for half the day. Now I still have lots of flexibility in terms of timing, it can be overnight, in the day and there are no set hours or timings.

This means I do have a new stable, so it was time to get everything prepped and ready for the switch to the winter routine. I’m actually quite excited in terms of the routine of it, a little apprehensive about the horse management side, ideally I would love to have my horses somewhere they can choose, in a field with others and a big barn/field shelter with ad lib forage and access as they wish. This is how our horses were kept at home when I was growing up and it’s how I believe we can keep them happiest. However, when you don’t have your own land it’s just not practical and there are many situations where it’s not possible. So fingers crossed Estrid settles into stabled life fairly quickly and we make it through the winter happy and healthy!

Dan and I got married in October. It was the happiest day of Tissy’s life as she feels she is now guaranteed butt scratches and extra treats for life from Dan. I was pretty pleased too.

I wanted to make this video for myself, to look back on, but also as a reminder to Dan of how much he means to me and how grateful I am for all his support in absolutely everything but particularly how he has fully embraced being a horsey girl husband from the very start.

Now the tack room has had a spruce up it was time to put my stuff back in. I was determined that I would only put the essentials that were used day to day back and anything else could go back in storage or sold/donated. My storage is in a loft up a pull down ladder so it’s not easy access. I’m the kind of person that if there are too many barriers in the way it get’s put to the side to ‘do it later’ until I have a pile of dusty rugs that should have gone back in the box 3 weeks ago…

I want to feel streamlined in the kit that I have but I also don’t want to get rid of decent stuff that may one day come in useful and would cost me a fortune to re-acquire. So I came up with a little rule system for myself: Is it used at least once a week? Yes, in the tack room. No: Is it seasonal? Yes, into storage. No: Will it cost more than £50 to re-purchase if needed. Yes, into storage. No: Sell or donate.

I’m quite pleased with what made it back into the tack room but I definitely need to do a savage sort out of what’s in storage. Sounds like a spring, future Beth job to me!

I love a good organise, clean out and spruce up. When the livery I’m on decided to downsize and as the saddle racks in the tack room freed up one by one the tack room started to look a little sad. So those of us remaining decided it was the perfect opportunity to give it a make over.

It got a lick of paint, the addition of some little windows, a new hardware layout and some bird proofing to hopefully stop quite so much bird poop covering all our stuff when they migrate back to the UK next year.

I’m a nerd and I love a good stat. I love to track training, expenditure, anything and everything really. I was curious as to how much extra competing added to the cost of my horses. I’m not taking into account the ‘usual’ costs such as livery, feed, Physio, Farrier, Vaccinations, Dentist etc. but just the competition specific costs.

First off EGB Membership for the year cost me £77

I then spent £466 on entry fees. That was for 3 GER’s I attended, one I never made it to and 6 pleasure or social rides. The costs ranged from £20 to £77 and two of those entries also included camping and corralling in the fee.

Training fees for riding out and about cost me £178. One subscription for an all you can ride season pass on a 4km grass field ride near our yard and 5 one off venues such as gallops, farm rides and lessons.

Fuel was my far my biggest expenditure and the trickiest to work out accurately, but I spent £802 to get to training, events and for the crew car.

Competition food for the humans cost £100. I haven’t worked out the extra horse feed but maybe something to geek out over next year.

I then spent £91 on competition photos over 5 separate orders.

Lastly I had the additional cost of padding and pinning our shoes for two shoeing cycles which added an extra £200 to our usual farrier fees.

In total my 2024 endurance season cost me £1,895. I think a rather reasonable sum considering the time spent riding and the fun we’ve had. It surely must be the best value for money equestrian sport in terms of cost per minute riding right?

Scropton RDA are raising funds to buy a new horse for their riding centre and as such had advertised a pole work clinic with the proceeds going towards the new pony fund. I seized the opportunity to get Estrid out and about doing something different. I especially don’t want her to think everytime we go in the trailer it’s for long training sessions or long endurance competitions.

Our goal this autumn is to work on our canter so that we can enter a clear round jumping competition. It needs a lot of work from our transition to our rhythm. My positioning is especially poor in canter as I’m so used to standing in the stirrups I really struggle with sitting canter and staying nice and sat up.

Overall Estrid made some excellent progress, her trot has really improved this year and I left with lots of ideas of how to improve our canter transitions and to work on altering our pace and stride length. I love having an objective over winter as it keeps my motivation high.

The time is upon us for the switch up of routine and preparing for Winter. We have summer and winter fields so I always check the fence line, tidy up any hedges and trees before moving the horses to a new field. This year will be our first year since we’ve been on livery that we’re in a different winter field, which is very exciting.

Although technically it is further away from the barn for haynets, turnout and feeding I won’t have to carry anything up muddy slippy hills as it’s more or less flat and on hard standing all the way to the hay feeders.

There is a beautiful new wooden post and rail fence complete with new automatic trough on hard standing which the next door farm put in. My only concern is that Tissy, the wood muncher, may chew it but it’s going to have a run of electric along the top and it’s creosoted so hopefully she thinks better of it, otherwise I’m going to have to fence off the fencing!

The best bit about moving fields is watching the horses have their first run around, explore and get straight onto munching fresh grass!

After the unfortunate cancellation of Oakover’s original date and then it’s back-up date due to a waterlogged venue, I thought I’d take Tissy out in the trailer for a bit of exploring anyway. Oakover is one of my favourite social rides near me and it was such a shame that the hard work of the organisers didn’t pay off, especially as the day it was meant to run was absolutely beautiful.

Instead I took her to Dunstall estate, which has some lovely bridleways not too far from me. Tissy as usual was super keen and excited to be out and about. We had a lovely morning just enjoying each others company and it reminded me that I should go out exploring just for the sake of it more often rather than waiting for an organised event.

I’ve had quite a few requests over the years to do a video on what to do in a vet gate. Basically I haven’t been doing any vet gates until this year to film it, so now we’re back to doing them I thought it was time I put together a video showing what we do.

Now everyone does it slightly differently, horses and riders have different needs and how I do it might not necessarily work for anyone else. But my hope is that this will help for anyone doing their first vet gate and that you can go into it with an idea of how it could go and develop your own style from there.

I am extremely lucky to have crew so my routine and experience is from that perspective. It can be done without crew you just need to be a little more prepared and have your routine absolutely down.

This is my vet gate check list:

• Collect time card from timekeeper (this will show you when you arrived so you know when your time runs out to vet and you need to present it to the vet in the vet gate. Always keep it in the same place so you don’t lose it)
• Untack the bit and saddle
• Offer horse a drink (I do this before we start cooling as I don’t want to put them off drinking, the more experienced they get then you can start doing multiple things at once)
• Begin wash down (at the moment I know Estrid’s heart rate will be quite high so I don’t take the heart rate straight away, I wash her down to get the sweat and dirt off and then see how much more water we’ll need to cool her)
• Boots off and pick out feet (I do this before the heart rate as I can’t vet until it’s done so there’s no point checking if we can go in yet)
• Take heart rate (Above 70bpm and I continue to pour water, below 70bpm and dropping then I present to the vet as by the time we get there and stand still it’s usually dropped below 64. This is where a stethoscope can be super handy as it’s easier to tell if the heart rate is dropping, steady or a bit erratic but you can tell with a heart rate monitor too)
• If I’m ever unsure then I will walk a 20m circle and then take the heart rate again, if it’s shot up were not ready, if it’s remained the same or dropped we’re good to go.
• Present to the vet with your time card and remember you need to pick it back up as it will have your hold time and time out on it. (Always check it, everyone is only human and sometimes it might be incorrect so best to double check it).
• I then wrap Estrid up in rugs to keep her muscles warm during the hold, sometimes we may do a light massage if any areas are of concern but mostly we just let her walk, graze and eat from her buffet.
• We then set timers for 10minutes before our time out to start tacking up. (Tacking up takes me less than 5minutes which allows time for a hand walk to warm up again or a ridden warm up before we’re back out on course).
• Now is the time for rider toilet stops, if you don’t desperately need to pee at this point you’re probably not drinking enough on course.
• I have electrolytes and Y food in the vet gate, alongside a banana and flapjack if I want it. (Y food has 500cals and is a complete meal drink so I’m confident I’m fuelling well).
• I then check the next loop so I know what distance/colour/letters I’m going to next.
• When the timer goes off we start tacking up and head towards the timekeeper for a warm up.
• I always hand in my time card a couple of minutes before so they know I have arrived and am waiting to go back out.
• Just before we head out we’ll offer a last drink and do a quick slosh and off we go.

I’d love to know what other people routines and tips are and if you’ve yet to do a vet gate what are your thoughts?

Everyone always shows the packing, and I love a good packing list and putting everything neatly in the trailer and van but very few people show the aftermath of an event. So I thought I’d take you along for the unpack, wash and put away, which actually takes longer than the packing in the first place!

I do try and put everything back where it should be as this makes the process much easier, but sometimes with multiple people helping out and the excitement of the day everything ends up everywhere, as was the case after Lions Tail. Thankfully I have a van and it basically serves as a giant box but nothing makes me happier than well organised, clean tidy and ready to go kit.

So everything needs to come out, be washed down, dried off and packed away in it’s place ready for next time! If anyone has any hacks, tips or tricks on how to make this process better then please share your wisdom, we all need it!