It looks like Picnic the Showjumpingshire may have to take things a little easier, at 18 years of age she is starting to need a bit more TLC and although is full of life her joints say otherwise. It is so upsetting when the best horses start to get old and she is one of those one in a lifetime type of horses! She will still be out jumping but cannot be my 'main horse' there is no way she is ready to retire and would be bored senseless if she wasn't allowed to do a bit of jumping and get out in the lorry every now and then but I have had to come to the very hard decision that I want her to last as long as possible so cannot continue to rely on her to be my main competition horse. If I could clone her I would, but as this is not an option the hunt is on for another to join the team, as they say onwards and upwards!
We have driven miles this month to try various horses, all aged between 4 and 6 with interesting outcomes, the joys of horse shopping. I am very thorough wielding out the overpriced, undertrained and wonky donkeys as best as possible but you cannot avoid turning up to at least one that is far from what was described in the advert! The first two I tried made my youngster Socks seem advanced and worth a fortune, another that was "cleaned limbed with no lumps or bumps" turned out to have a gash out of its hock, sarcoids, sores and far from ready to go out competing. Then I found a lovely 4 year old mare, the conditions were far from perfect when I turned up the try her, the heavens opened and the rain didn't stop until we were in our car ready to leave, we rode in a grass paddock and after such a dry week the rain made the ground quite greasy but although slightly slippery in the corners the mare managed incredibly well and had an amazing jump not phased by anything.
I was impressed and decided to book a vetting, drove up with the lorry (tempted fate) and was so excited to have possibly found my next horse. Our vet turned up and the vetting commenced, within the first few minutes something wasn't right and it turned out she had a heart murmur, not completely put off as I wanted her for show jumping not eventing we continued. Flexions were perfect, ridden assessment, and pretty much everything else went well until she threw a front shoe, then her microchip didn't match... well that was now 3 things so we waiting for the results of the microchip and it turns out the number had just been written down wrong, phew she was the right horse! However there was nothing we could do about the lost shoe so when trotting on a circle on the hard she was quite sore understandably. After lots of consideration a cardiologist and a chat with my vet we decided not to go ahead and keep looking, I cant afford to take another risk and after the luck we've had with horses not being particularly good I think it was a sensible decision. So back to the internet search!
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| Socks jumping at home |
Socks is going very well but I am still bringing her on slowly as I don't want to rush her just because Picnic needs to slow down. I have been having lessons with a dressage trainer, Tessa Thorne, who is really good and ensures I have enough to work on in between lessons to make sure we are on track to keep progressing. We are booked in to try working away from home for a lesson so fingers crossed that goes well, then we are off to hire an arena with showjumps to see what she thinks of that. At home she is up to jumping round 1m courses quite happily here is a little video of us enjoying a little jump over the bank holiday.
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