March Update

Coronavirus has taken us all by shock and the impact it’s having on our everyday life is being felt by us all. After a few days of constantly changing situation’s the decision was made to postpone the season after it had only just started. We thought we would still be able to hire facilities and had Summerhouse and Rectory booked only two weeks ago. As you know this has all changed and we took the decision to put the yard in Lockdown to protect ourselves and limit the contact with our staff. No lessons now but luckily Georgie was able to get some good dressage lessons in with Laura Tomlinson beforehand - a good grounding for the next few months of “home schooling” for the horses! 

Our main plans with all the horses is to focus on 1 task for between 1 and 2 weeks, this started with a block of jumping with the wonderful Jump for Joy cross country jumps, then gridwork and now progressing with pole work and flat work. Hopefully you are enjoying the videos we have been sending out - Although please try not to share and jumping these online, riding is under a lot of pressure to not show people taking risks at a time that the NHS is under extreme pressure.

We have built the dressage arena now and the horses will start schooling on this in the first few weeks of April. To add some fun and keep everyone motivated (for the riders as well as the horses) we have decided to work up to a full dressage test to give us all something to aim for. This is going to be filmed and judged! The following week will be used to hopefully improve on the scores in a second test! No pressure guys!

You may have spotted some new long faces on the social media recently - the new youngsters are keeping everyone busy and entertained as you can imagine.

We are so lucky to have the facilities we do at the yard and with the rain finally stopping Dad, Mum and Toby have been very busy getting our fields ready to turn the horses out – a huge thank you to them! We are able to now have dressage and show jumping arenas on grass as well as the arena and we will even look at getting some grass cross country jumps set up soon. This is great for keeping the horses in work without the need to travel! 

As you can imagine there has been a flurry of activity and one hell of a spring clean which has left no bucket, rug or brush without a good clean, nothing has escaped- ask Maisie she’s been keeping an eye on us all rushing about. 

Something that has been lovely is that we have been spending extra time spoiling the horses. Loads of grooming, working on carrot stretching exercises and of course plenty of kisses!

All in all what we have been making the best of a very difficult situation, and the horses are all still working as normal - All of this wouldn’t be possible for our girls so a huge thank you to Chloe and Sara (and Tui and Connie pre lockdown!)