It feels like its been a long winter so far with rain, snow, frozen pipes and show cancellations - roll on Spring!
Perfect time to buy a new horse.... hmmmmm perhaps not when the big freeze hits. I have been looking for a little while for a new addition to the team and a week before the severe weather made its appearance I found Flynn. He is an 8 year old 16.3hh Irish Sport Horse, lovely gent with a super jump and hopefully my next showjumper after a bit of schooling and fittening work, we managed nearly a week of training and he was taking it all in his stride, settled in quickly and it was all systems go.... or so I thought until the great British weather had other ideas. Hopefully it won't be long until we can get out and test ride him round a few courses :)
Along with probably the rest of the country we got a good covering of snow making it near on impossible to keep horses in training without the use of an indoor arena, this meant that even if competitions were not cancelled my horses were not prepared due to the wintry conditions so the showjumping shire has had to stay at home and unplanned holidays all round! Picnic and I did go for a stroll out in the snow but that was about as exciting as it got, apart from a sneaky canter, I couldn't resist being a big kid!
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| The new boy - Flynn |
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| Picnic dreaming of an indoor school |
At one point I got so fed up of not being able to get my horses back in work that I went out in the lunge pen and dug a track (I think this was slightly more of a workout for me than the horses) I was very pleased with my efforts and surprisingly I think the horses did too as they worked beautifully without any high jinx at all and even more shocking is that they stuck to the track, I think it's the way forward to assist horses staying even on both reins without falling in or out, but I don't fancy digging through snow every day to achieve this result :)
The thaw has begun so lets get the flooding out the way then fingers crossed for a dry cold end to winter.
The thaw has begun so lets get the flooding out the way then fingers crossed for a dry cold end to winter.
