This time of year I go into ‘spring cleaning and winter preparation mode’. Whilst it’s still technically summer and Dustry is living out 24/7 I get cracking with all my pre-winter prep.
First up his stable gets a make over, I pressure wash out all the cobwebs and am currently halfway through repainting the white walls which look decidedly grubby and poo splattered after last winter. This year I have roped my Daddyo into helping me with some stable modifications too. I want to put a clear roof panel in so that it acts as a skylight making his box brighter and I’ve had some of his rug rails moved to improve the feng shui….only joking!
In an attempt to store my rugs more effectively rather than having them all hanging in his box gathering dust I have been on the hunt for an old broken chest freezer to use as a storage chest. Chest freezers make ideal storage because they are lined with metal making them mouse proof. Trying to get hold of one though was not as easy as I had imagined! I called recycling centres, scrap yards and the local council but they either don’t take them or can’t legally sell them back to the public. Facebook came to the rescue though as in a horsey fb group I spotted one for sale and snapped it up. Before this happened I emailed some local appliance companies asking if they ever had broken ones in and a week after collecting my first one they emailed me back saying they had a broken freebie if I wanted to collect it I could have it FOC. It seems freezers are like buses, nothing for ages then two come along at once!
One will be used for rugs and the other I am going to use to store feed in, probably HiFi as the bags are always just too big to fit in traditional plastic feed bins. Before the rugs can be packed away they have to be cleaned so I bagged up D’s heavyweight winter turn outs and popped in to see my sponsors Trotters Equine & Country Store and drop off the rugs as they offer a rug cleaning service too.
In addition to all this cleaning we’ve also been training hard and continuing to work on our flatwork and jumping. I had entered another BD competition to collect some more points towards Winter Regional Champs qualification but the morning of the competition it was torrential rain (the tail end of hurricane Bertha!) and I was still coughing and spluttering with a cold so I decided against going and getting drowned and stayed at home in the warm and dry instead. It meant we missed the chance to potentially pick up some more points but having done my fair share of competing in horrendous conditions (show jumping in -2 and dressaging in a deluge) I felt justified in giving this one a miss 😉
We’ve also been back to Rectory Farm Arena for some sj schooling with my instructor Amanda Brewer. D jumped really well flying round the course. Not one to ever give me an easy ride Amanda made us warm up over a couple of fences and then go straight round the whole course as you would in competition, she takes no prisoners! 😉 D was ace, bold as ever and seemingly blind to all the fillers and colours the course builders had lovingly included in the course. Another productive training session under our belts and we even had time for a ‘lorry ramp tea break’ before trucking back home!
