Saddles and Hoovers

Q: What do you do when you take a day off work?

A: Spend the morning with the Saddler and if you have sycamore trees you spend the afternoon with a leaf blower

I have been very unlucky to see EAM up close and it’s not nice to see your precious boy in so much pain, so sad and helpless stuck on the floor unable to move. Even if they recover the muscle damage is horrendous.

I managed to get most of the leaves blown out the paddock today but with the rain the helicopters are sticking to the mud so that’s back to picking them up by hand tomorrow.

Last year I couldn’t keep on top of two paddocks. One was small so we didn’t use it. The other one had the worst section roped off under the trees.

We have cut a lot of the branches down this summer and so far it has helped to keep on top of the bad areas.

The paddock they are in gets a few helicopters that need collecting so all eyes are open everyone from now on. I am hoping the top paddock with the trees has enough grass cover for me to swap over paddocks next month.

The boys are out 24/7 at the moment but as soon as they go into the top paddock they will come in at night to make sure they have a break from that ground and get plenty of hay

Alfie has been giving me tell-tale signs his saddles needed realigning but we haven’t had him that long and we are still getting used to him. His walk was finally beginning to cover the ground but lately it has turned into a tight almost jig jog from the free into med. I noticed I wasn’t maintaining a good enough seat in the canter and looking at recent videos of my tests I realised I was starting to perch again.

The dressage saddle was lifted from mid to front and looks 100% better on him sitting straight and level once again. Even just sitting in the saddle for a quick trot round the field was enough of a test to know how much that was needed.

Fingers crossed no twitching of the neck tomorrow and a lovely ground covering walk in both tests