Summer? What Summer..?

Wow well that's 6 weeks gone in the blink of an eye...I keep thinking I need to sit down and update what we are doing in the yard, but there never seems to be time and all of a sudden its 6 weeks since our last update.

Im looking out of the window and its horsing it down again, that seems to have been the theme for quite some time, ride out in peeing rain and then 10 mins later its warm sunshine with gale force winds - is the world going to end??? Joking I am sure that the Earth will continue to exist when us humans have managed to eradicate ourselves from existence (which we are well on the way to doing), just like it existed for millions of years before we came along and tried to rule it.

Anyway that's enough doom and gloom, let's talk about horses!! Ours are all lovely and happy horses at the moment, its a very exciting time of year and they could be anything (mostly fresh and rather sharp, if i'm honest), when they reach the track.

I was disappointed with the way Starfoot ran a few weeks ago and decided to take a pull with them all whilst we sorted the issue we found, this allowed all of the horses to have a week walking and a week lunging, hence the freshness since we started cantering again. I am delighted with how they are moving and loving life and there should be 3 or 4 of them ready to go again in a week or so.

Very sadly Peter Skinner who owned Free one with me passed away unexpectedly a few weeks ago and understandably, his children have no interest in carrying on with the ownership of Freeby, which leaves me trying to find someone who would like to buy Peter's half share. I could never promise that he wouldn't refuse to start but I could say that he is loving life, so if any of you know of anyone who would be interested in him please do get in touch, obviously I would like to keep my half as he has come such a long way since we have had him and he is now a yard favourite.

So this season I have decided that myself and Ash will try to ride everything out with two people running the yard and tacking up and untacking for us. I know i'm very fussy when it comes to how the horses are ridden and it's easier if I do it myself, then I am not spending time trying to teach people who don't want to change or learn and getting frustrated or even worse do learn and then bugger off elsewhere. Believe me the amount of times I have heard "I wouldn't do it like that" or "she hasn't got a clue, that's not how it should be done" Ok how many winners have you trained? None? oh ok well crack on and train a few, preferably ones with issues that are impossible to keep sound and then we can talk and I will most certainly listen to how wrong I am doing things...

I saw an article written by a groom for the grooms association blog, asking the question "are grooms getting lazier?" https://britishgrooms.org.uk/member-zone/a-grooms-life-blog it sparked a lot of strong feeling and I could see both sides of the argument. In my experience and this is only what I have found - it may not be the norm - People who work in manual labour now do not want to do it for the same reasons as years ago, love of their horses and pride. They are bombarded with images on social media, television and advertising, about having the life they want, not wanting the life they have. This leads to constant dissatisfaction with their lot, often looking at the people they work with and wanting to feel superior or special. This manifests itself in petty bitching and sniping, criticizing when they perceive that someone else has done less work or made a mistake, instead of thinking "how can I set an example" or getting a boost of endorphins by being nice and helping someone else and getting people to raise their game, work as a team. I find that genuinely happy people are few and far between nowadays, which is so sad because there is so much to be thankful for and WIbble agrees!