I've always wanted to work with horses I just love being with horses,
spending time with them and getting to know their individual personalities,
getting the best out of them. All three of mine i've had since they were 3/4
so I started from the beginning from scratch and then brought them all the
way through the levels so it's really satisfying and pleasing to see them
progress and learn with you. It's nice to be given lots of things
to go home and work with that I need to make sure she bends a lot more than she
already is your because she becomes quite stiff in the neck when she's not bending
and then her quarters fall out. Oh I've been really excited about this day
because of where I'm based we don't have access to a lot of top class trainers.
So it's been really exciting to come up and meet some top class trainers. I'm
also really excited about getting my feed plans done for the horses. I've always fed
Dengie but I want to be making sure I'm feeding the right amounts and the right
things for them. Lenny actually he suffered with ulcers and
he still sort of does, it's we're learning how to maintain them. I did speak
to my vet and we scooped him and he did have grade 3/4 ulcers and so she gives us
lots of advice and she actually pointed me in the direction of Dengie in the
fact that it's a very high fibre feed because at the time he was on quite a
high cereal feed which aggravates the ulcers and she suggested that we feed
the Alfa-A Oil with Performance+ Balancer and then before we exercise, give
them like a scoop of chop, so it lines the stomach and stops the
splashing of the acid. So today it'll be really good to work on our flat work
because that is always improving it is getting better and better and then with
the jumping practice we will concentrate on the tricky ones.
We're here in the middle of January, in quite cold conditions and the horses are
getting either their first or only their second look at cross-country jumps for
this season and so we've been taking them through their early season prep
ready for their competitions ahead. As always I was pretty excited by the quality
of the rider and the quality of the horses that we were able to work with
today. I think everybody's super keen as one
would hope one would be in January and I think each of them came with quite clear
vision of what they wanted from their lesson which makes my job as a trainer
much easier. We were largely focusing across the board on the riders position
and the horses rhythm because both those two things I think are key to a good
cross-country round, key to producing a confident cross-country horse and key to
good safe fast clears and I think each of them came with that as something they
wanted to work on and each of them I hope went away with a really good clear
direction on how they can improve it specific to them and their level and
their horse. With Amy she wanted to focus on her lateral work, developing her half passes so I was giving her some exercises
to help create more body bend in half passes, so we were doing a lot of shoulder in, into
half passes getting more connection from inside leg into outside rein so when she went into the
half pass she didn't feel the horse ran onto her inside leg, into her inside
hand she was getting more genuine body bend but that was our main focus really and
then just towards the end we were working on developing a little bit more
engagement and suspension in the trot by doing some more elevated steps and
bringing the horse back and forward. I really enjoyed it and Lenny
enjoyed it as well and it was it was good fun, really good. For me I mean a 315
mile journey each way, 16 hours on the lorry I was sort hoping it was going to
be good and it's been absolutely fantastic. The whole team from Dengie and Horse and
Rider have been lovely and the lessons have been brilliant
facilities have been brilliant I've had a fabulous day.