I hope you and your horses are all doing well. It turned bitterly cold up here in the North East of Scotland, Hectors winter rugs have all been cleaned and reproofed and he is tucked up cosy in his stable at nights. I’ve been breaking the ice on the field water trough most mornings and my car windscreen takes forever to defrost! Winter is most definitely here.

Hector is doing well, loving his Lite & Healthy, he licks his bucket clean to an extreme and picks his bucket up once he’s finished! In an attempt to give him a little more oomph in his ridden work, I changed his balancer, and it had an incredible effect, unfortunately however, he turned into psycho Hector!! He was spooky, silly and yee-hawing around the arena having far too much fun! I swiftly stopped the new balancer and put him on an alternative, which has had a much more reasonable effect on him! I had never really considered that just a change of balancer could have such a dramatic effect, but it really did!

Dressage December!

This month we headed out to our first dressage outing! I had been looking out for an intro class and finally one came up, so I entered straight away! It was a new venue for Hector but he behaved so well in both the indoor and outdoor schools and I was SO pleased with him! He also got a great score of 68.5 and I was so chuffed with that. We had lovely comments from the judge and have a few things to work on for next time! I don’t have anything else planned for this month but may attend a local show jumping show if there’s one on!

I’m looking forward to Christmas and having a bit of a break from work, its been non-stop recently and I’ve been working lots of overtime. Hopefully it settles down soon, but I’m at least glad that I have Hector to give me a bit of breathing space and respite after busy days behind the computer screen.

I’m also looking forward to getting Hector into the side saddle! Those of you who know me well know I’m passionate about riding side saddle and its always been in the plan for Hector. I can’t wait to see how he goes.

We’ve been going out to winter training nights and Hector has been coming on really well, in particular loving his pole work lessons!  Being so busy at work recently has meant I’m trying to ride in the mornings at 6am, but I’m not sure how much Hector is enjoying this!! I’m trying to hack at the weekends wherever there is a chance to see daylight! Schooling every day just isn’t for me and I like to let Hector have as much variation as possible.

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas; it may not be exactly as you would have liked or how it usually is, but may it still be a good one!

Thanks as always to Honeychop for their continued support.

Grace and Hector x

Jumping lessons
Christmas Pole work