Posts Written By Chloë

In order to speed up the recovery of Soap’s sore muscle I called out Mel Gurdon NAVP. She is a top physiotherapist who has worked wonders on other horses I have owned in the past. Mel gave him a quick once over to asses him, and he seems to have already improved as he exhibited much less reaction to having the sore muscle manipulated than he did for the vet’s visit on Friday 3 days earlier, which hopefully points to a quick recovery! Mel then proceeded to set up what basically looked like a horsey Slendertone on Soap! It is…

Unfortunately when I brought Soap back into work after Mattingley he seemed a bit unlevel. I had the physio check him over, and she agreed that he was a little out behind. Soon after the physio he was shod and suffered a bit of nail bind on his off fore! I have been icing his foot for the nail bind and putting him in a magnetic rug to help with his muscles post physio, but then his leg blew up! So completely baffled at what the problem was I called the vet. After flexion tests, lunging, trotting him up, testing…

My laptop is doing its best to try and stop me uploading video but I managed to get it behaving long enough to upload my round at Mattingley. I was really pleased with the round as the rhythm was much better, and he got a good stride (not a flyer!) to each fence, even if we did end up with 3 down! He has fence 2 which I think is because he just ran on a little down hill, and then we get it together (despite him trying to snatch with his head into 5!) until the last 2 fences…

To activate Soap’s hocks and strengthen his back muscles so that he can produce a more active canter my SJ instructor Rosie Moss suggested that I work him on a Pessoa training aid. I thought ok I’ll give it a go, until I saw the price! eBay to the rescue once again, as I found this fantastic seller who makes an exact replica of the genuine Pessoa for a credit crunch friendly price. Click here to see their version of the gadget The instruction diagrams are very easy to read, and they have even colour coded the clips! I set…

Last Sunday was a very rare non-horsey weekend, 4 friends and I took part in the Cancer Research Race for Life 5k run. It was a glorious hot sunny day, which made my desire to run about even less! We all completed and I came home in under 35mins which I was quite pleased with for my first ever (and probubly last!) 5k, and best of all we raised over £1000 in sponsorship. After this Soap and I had a mini holiday, he switched round to being stabled during the day and out at night and feeling generous I gave…

Mattingley has to be one of my favourite events, and it seems we never fail to have a lovely day there whatever the result. I had late times with a big gap between dressage and SJ in which to walk the XC so at midday we set off from home. Soap warmed up really nicely for the dressage, the last 7 weeks works on his canter is definitly filtering through to all paces as he felt much more balanced and straight. Walking around the edge of the arena before the bell I asked him into trot and he squeaked and…

Well this week just gets better and better! Frances from Hoplands Equestrian Centre got back in touch after I initially emailed her at the start of the year to offer me sponsorship in the form of free use of all the facilities at Hoplands until 2010! Eeeeeeke! excited is an understatement! It seems she has been keeping an eye on the blog and my antics, and decided that even though they couldn’t sponsor me financially, free use of their for hire facilities would be a great way to help me as a local rider progress this season, and I whole…

Despite the crazy winds and horizontal rain on Sunday I took Soap to some local dressage at Larkhill. Most of our warm up was done with both of us overbent trying to shelter from the weather! Soap did a very sweet test, and I noticed a huge improvement in the rhythm and balance of his canter as a result of all the SJ training we have been doing. His halt and centre lines weren’t straight as he just wanted to swing his quarters into the wind and his free rein walk was pretty nonexistent as he just tucked his head…

Word of my blog has been spreading, and it seems even a few top eventers have read the odd GHE post! Completely out of the blue Joanna from Robert Stevens Eventing got in touch to offer me a free SJ lesson with Robert himself! After reading a few of my event reports they thought that a lesson with Robert would be really beneficial to our SJ training. click images to enlarge To start the lesson Robert wanted to see Soap move and agreed with Rosie Moss that his canter is too laid back, and not active enough. We worked on…

Unfortunately I can’t make it to Badminton this year but thanks to their wonderful website I can listen to Badminton FM and currently am tuned into the dressage commentry coverage. The repartee between Carl Hester, and Pammy Hutton is hillarious, they are not at all competitive! Tomorrow I have planned my day around spending several hours watching the XC from the comfort of my sofa! Wish I was there to soak up the atmosphere and do a little shopping, but watching it on TV will have to do, can’t wait for the first horse on the course!