Monday 3 February 2014

The ongoing saga - are we in or out?!

This is just a brief update, the rain has kept coming so Nickel has been confined to barracks for some time. It is a hardship but necessary, from a paddock management point of view, if you have to graze a field for 12 months of the year, you do need to bring the horses off it when they are doing more damage than good. Now some people do not like to have horses stood in, whether that is from a cost point of view or horse point of view, sometimes we just have to suck it up and get on. I have enriched Nickel's stable time by giving him alternative forms of forage, like Readigrass and I have ridden him or taking him for a hand graze every day. He is quite happy with this, although he has got rather fresh and squeaky to ride but that is understandable. I'd rather he was in than out with his leg problems and in all honesty when he is allowed out he will graze for about an hour or so and then he stands and cries at the edge of the mud begging to come in.

One good thing about the weather this year is that we have not had to stop riding due to ice or snow, this is not a bad thing really and means that since I started fittening Nickel, he has not had any breaks in his regime. Next week he is being clipped, so I will have an even sparkier horse, but he will look a lot smarter! Slowly we are working on finding him competitions, so now we have hunting on Feb 22nd, then dressage on March 1st and the ODE on March 9th, as well as a jumping lesson somewhere in there. So it's go go go......