As we mentioned in the last issue, we’ve got a new working pupil who has made a real difference to the place. We’ve just been doing the bare necessities for so long now it’s a real pleasure to have some help catching up with those extra jobs. The horses are appreciating all the extra grooming since they all turned into woolly mammoths this winter, and are anxious to get back to their summer wear. The fields are clear of muck, the fencing works, the lawns are mown. Two stables that were full of junk were cleared  out ready for a full clinic, and we’ve got a new feed shed.  I wouldn’t dare to say we’re on top of things, but they’re less on top of us now!

Our campaign to turn some of our free-loaders into earners is going well. There’s been some interest in a couple of the horses and our “leasing” scheme. The idea is that instead of owning a horse and having all that responsibility, the right person would take on one of our lovely beasts, have full access to them as if they were their own, pay us livery, be able to come on clinics and have on-going support from two of Intelligent Horsemanship’s most long-standing Recommended Associates, but not have to worry about long term commitment.  Lots of people seem to think it’s a good idea – it’s just a question of finding the right person for each horse!

At last! Some warm weather after the coldest winter in 31 years. It’s lovely to feel that Spring might really be on its way and that the snow could become a distant memory!

We’ve been doing a series of  Sunday Skills sessions since the beginning of the year, which have proved very popular. Some have been themed – Seat Training, or In-Hand, or Long-lining, and others have been more open-ended, giving us the opportunity to explore whatever issues arise for the participants. We’re also really pleased to be able to offer these in the current “economic climate” – very accessible at just £50 per day, which is between 4-7 hours, depending on the number of participants. They’ve also been good preparation for our longer clinics, which are now starting in earnest.

The yard has suffered from the severe weather and lack of time, and there is even mud in the field, which is a rare occurrence for us. But we’re delighted to welcome another new working pupil, Ruth, who is with us full time, and we’re looking forward to everything  being ship-shape soon! It’s an exciting opportunity to have someone on site to teach over a long period of time, and very satisfying to see the progress being made. After a few months of being in survival mode, just looking after the horses’ basic needs, and, quite frankly, wondering what it’s all for, we now have a real community of keen learners that will benefit our horses enormously, and the wider horse population, too!

Events on the yard have been set on hold, at least in theory, because of the publication of our hopefully soon-to-be best selling new book Born to Whisper  (available from www.borntowhisper.com), which finally took place on 16 Dec. That made us happy, given that the launch had been set for the following night, 17 Dec, at the Riding for the Disabled Centre in Cheltenham race course. This didn’t stop me having pretty major commitments like a pair of horses and their owner coming to stay the week before. Of course everything was supposed to be in the bag well before the launch date and ended up being frantically last-minute.

Christmas, of course, is one of those times when it would be nice if we could forget about mucking out, hammering through the ice on a trough or checking horses in a snow- covered field, and go and spend time with family. Fortunately this year we were able to do that thanks to the presence of our lodger Meg, whose family lives nearby. So for a few days we had no responsibilities, no phone to answer, and were able to concentrate on parenting and relaxing.

One of the biggest developments for us is that we have just taken on our first working pupil in several years. A 19 year old girl who came on some riding clinics and decided to give up her University course and learn our trade. It is great having extra hands especially now we are snowed in!

Everything is just about beginning to settle into an abnormal normality following the birth of our daughter Layla in mid June. She is thriving, an absolutely amazing little person.

It’s a distant memory that I took most of June and July as paternity leave. Then I was put to the grindstone. From Aug 7- Sept 6 I taught five clinics, most of them five days long. As usual, we had some fascinating horses, and it was good to get back to it, in spite of the intensity. I also did two call outs. Fortunately we had a great working pupil for a couple of weeks, and Nicole is already back teaching. She says it’s way easier than looking after two very small people, but having said that she has to teach with Layla in her sling, so she’s still very much on duty.  Somehow, we’re also trying to get our second book finished. We’re hoping it will be out for Xmas.

But the new arrival has given us the opportunity to re-examine certain aspects of our lives, and the fact that we have many “free-loaders” in our herd has become painfully obvious. It’s not that we didn’t already know we were an unofficial charity, it’s just that we’ve come to the realisation that it can’t continue like this indefinitely. We’ve come to the difficult decision to re-home a few.

To that end, whenever there’s been a spare moment on a clinic, we’ve been working the perfectly sound  but underused horses that have been gracing our pastures for the last few years. There’s Karma, Sensi’s daughter, a Trakehner x TB, and High Flyer,  the Welsh cob. We’re hoping to get them just a little more established before moving them on. Selling or loaning horses has never been our strength, which is probably how we’ve ended up with no less than nine of them! Of course, it isn’t an easy time to be doing this, and we’ve had even more enquiries ourselves from people wanting to find homes for theirs, but we’re confident that in time we’ll find somewhere really good for them. (Anyone interested?! Email us@whisperingback.co.uk if you are!)

We’re looking forward to several more clinics this year – in fact, it’s really only Christmas that we’re stopping for. We had our ten year anniversary of taking over the lease here last week, and we’re wondering what the next ten years will bring.

This last couple of months we have concentrated on getting things ready and right for the birth of our second child. In the build up Adam worked very hard doing call outs and clinics. But things haven’t worked out quite as we planned.

The main thing is, that Layla Rose was born happy and healthy, here on the yard in our foaling box, which is now known as the birthing room. Since our first baby, Marley, was born there in 2007, we kept it all decked out with beautiful throws, drapes and tea lights so with a quick tidy up, blowing up the birthing pool and setting up the music, all was ready. It was an amazing birth, so gentle and calm. Like nature intended it to be. It’s been wonderful, but it’s exponentially more difficult to get anything done.

However, the horses have been much more high-maintenance than we had hoped. Twice now, they have had raised pulses indicating the imminent onset of laminitis, which has meant bringing them in off the field for five days, feeding magnesium supplements, and feeding haylage. It seems ridiculous with all that grass in the field that we are using hay, but we hope it will keep the vet away.

The other main event has been the arrival of a new livery, Alfie, a big coloured cob who has been living in stables in London all his life. He’s such a lovely chap,but  he has never been out with others so we gave him lots of time to meet the others over the stable door and put him out in a small paddock next to them overnight for several days. However, since he doesn’t understand herd dynamics, at all, he did get some unpleasant scrapes and bites. Luckily, since the herd is barefoot, there were no serious injuries.

There’s been a plus side to the laminitis, risk, however – not all of them had raised pulses, so ALfie has gone out with the smaller group who don’t, and has been getting on with them very well. It’s lovely to see a horse who is used to being in all the time enjoy himself in the field with some others. The flies have been a real nuisance, though, and they seem to find London blood very attractive, so he can’t be out as much as we would like.

In hindsight it would have been better for us all if he had come after the horsefly and birthing season is over!

In our last article, we were praying for good weather in January for our In Hand clinic, following a cold snap earlier in the month. Well, we were very lucky for the clinic, and able to fit in full sessions both days without anyone getting rained on. The sun even shone. What we weren’t expecting, shortly afterwards, was to have snow on the ground for two weeks!

Not just a smattering of it, either, but inches of the stuff. Not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere. The horses – all eleven of them – got through the last of our hay stores alarmingly quickly. This was meant to be for the clinics, since the whole point of having excellent grazing is not having to supplement it, but there was simply nothing for them to eat otherwise. No chance of running water in the field, either, and as before when the water pipe burst, we had to carry buckets across from the tack room to the yard. At least it wasn’t case of filling up containers and ferrying water in a car to them, which must be the situation for quite a number of horse owners in the country. Our normally low-maintenance gang suddenly required almost constant care. At least their feet stayed clean!

We arrange Intensives (rather than clinics) in the winter for just this scenario – at least only one or two people will be affected by less than clement conditions, and usually a break in the weather will appear at some point. It was a shame, nonetheless, that the clients we had who were due down from Liverpool had their plans so disrupted. Not only couldn’t they bring their horse, but even when they came down just the two of them, with the plan of doing some dismounted work and theory and maybe working with one of our horses, they still had some treacherous driving conditions to negotiate, and a daily slide down our steep driveway. We had been prevaricating over the various options, and they had delayed as long as possible in coming, before deciding  to not bring the horse. This was just as well. By the time they did come, the only way to get a horse down the drive would have been to get it to sit down and slide here on it’s bum. If people have this level of rapport and understanding with their horse, they probably don’t need our help.

The school wasn’t remotely usable, not even for humans on foot. The minus 11 degrees freezing nights meant there was a hard pan of ice on top of the snow, but not so hard you couldn’t guarantee suddenly falling through it in a nasty jarring sort of way. Worse, though, was that since the driveway was impassable and there were no real signs of improvement, the prospect of getting more hay in was dismal.

Luckily, our landlord came to the rescue with his JCB and fetched a large hay bale from a neighbouring farm. This gave us a couple of days leeway for our regular supplier to dig himself out of his village and attempt the journey to us before he disappeared to Spain for a well-deserved and (for him at least) well timed holiday. In spite of our efforts with a shovel, he still couldn’t risk a trip down the drive though, so our trusty landlord helped us once again by ferrying the haylage bales down the drive with his tractor.

It was another 5 days before the snow disappeared, and then we had 7 days of back-to-back Intensives, who enjoyed glorious Spring sunshine every day of their visit. We’re thinking of hiring these clients to attend all of our clinics, to see if they can guarantee us the same sort of lovely weather for the rest of the year.

In some ways the recent cold snap was very welcome. The horses were very happy out in their winter field, with grass that would be up to their knees if it were standing upright, out of the wind, and with nice hard ground to walk across. No one seemed to bruise their feet, and some of the days were stunning, with bright sunshine showing off the amazing hoar frost. It’s also a pleasant change not to hear anyone talking about the daffodils being “confused”, and nothing so far has been tricked into thinking it’s an early spring. The snow was welcome too, and meant that when a prospective new livery client arrived, I hadn’t even felt the need to sweep the yard!

Of course, there were also downsides. We can’t get up our drive when there’s so much as a smidgeon of snow or ice, and as we won’t have a four wheel drive, it does mean that if the cold weather catches us by surprise it is possible to get snowed in. With a bit of warning, we’ll leave the car at the top of the drive, and make the slippery journey on foot (or bum, occasionally!). Then there was the issue of water and having to make sure 12 horses were getting enough to drink. Luckily there’s some running water in their field, so although they seemed pleased to come in and drink more easily out of buckets, they weren’t going thirsty. Really, the main problems came with the thaw. One pipe at the back of the feed room burst spectacularly in 2 places, and water was gushing out – luckily down a drain. However, we are on a private spring water supply, and there was every possibility of the reservoir draining out if we couldn’t get it stopped. The stop tap is located down a ceramic pipe behind some rhododendron bushes, and is not easy to get at. The pipe was full of earth, and by the time that had been dug out, it was clear that the tap was seized. Of course, it happened just as Adam was about to start teaching, and I was about to go out with a friend, and baby Marley, for a social visit. Adam and I tried everything, to no avail. To top if off,  the landlord was away for his Sunday lunch down in Winchester, and was not delighted to hear the news. In the end we had to phone a plumber, who saved the day but broke the tap.

I’m just hoping that the thaw continues until our next clinic on the 23-24th January, although at least it’s an In Hand one, so no-one will be wanting to trot or canter and be limited by a frozen school. Ideally, no-one will get snowed in here with their horses, either! It would be particularly good if it didn’t rain all day as well, as “bum to the wind” is not a recognised dressage movement. We might be pushing it to attempt clinics in January – we’ll just have to wait and see.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to run clinics in November to accommodate interest after the Monty tour. And with the weather so unpredictable, there was no particular reason to suspect the weather would be much worse than it had been during the “summer”. In fairness, we got perfectly normal November weather: cold, windy, some light rain, some heavy rain, and the odd bright spell. And as usual, an interesting group of students.

First (I have to put him first, because his owner is so proud of him), there’s Mouse, an Exmoor with a lot of baggage and history. His owner, Steve, is an experienced Intelligent Horsemanship student, and has done a lot of great work with him. We’d had him on an extended stay before, to work on his feet and general happiness around humans (Mouse, that is, Steve is already quite sociable), and now he was back to be backed. He had been sat on a fair bit before, but quite a long time ago, and the plan was to get back on him and try to get him as established as possible before Steve took him home again, in a week or so. He was the star of the clinic, and was ridden on three consecutive days, each time more calmly, in spite of the blustery weather. And all done in the way we like best – so calmly that it’s almost dull for the spectators to watch. Excitement is not the name of our game, here.

Pele had also been here before, with a massive issue about being mounted, which after a lot of work he  has completely overcome, but his owner reluctantly felt she needed him to have a bit of a haircut, as it had taken him several hours to dry off after a fairly un-strenuous lesson she had had at home. I know lots of readers won’t be keen on clipping, and it’s not something we feel the need to do with our horses, but I can accept that some horses are so woolly that it can cause them difficulties. He was worried about the prospect, but with gentle desensitisation to electric toothbrushes and massagers, and very useful cordless clippers, he was getting much better, and his owner has plenty to work on to gradually get him happier about it all.

Then there’s the lovely mare who perhaps shouldn’t be named, whose owners had only had her for 3 weeks, and she had been in training with someone else, but she was aggressive in the stable, and generally a very unhappy horse, and the owners were feeling that she really wasn’t getting any better. Adam worked with her, and the transformation has been nothing short of spectacular. As suspected, under those bared teeth, there was a lovely horse who just wasn’t quite understood, and who really wants nothing more than to be  pleasant and agreeable. A lot of the frantic behaviour around food disappeared with giving her more hay than she could possibly eat, and cutting out the hard food.

We also had a mother and daughter over from Germany, who had only been riding for 18 months, and who just felt they could be making more progress. It was lovely to see the penny dropping as they changed what they were doing and got the results they had been looking for.

So all in all a very successful weekend, and one which more than made up for getting a bit cold, damp, and windswept. And if it sounds like I’m blowing our own trumpets for having helped these horses and people? Well, not really- it’s always just testimony to how well the techniques we have learned over the years work. Without them, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing today, getting paid to do what we enjoy the most.

We recently had our vet inspection for our Riding Schools Licence. It was one of those “summer” days we’ve been having recently, with torrential rain that started sometime in the middle of the night, and looked set in for the day. Everything looked tatty, and the horses were miserable. I was due to be alone for the day, too, with Marley, but the receptionist had assured me that I wouldn’t need any help, as the horses wouldn’t need trotting up or anything. In the event, Adam’s appointment was cancelled – due to the horrible weather – otherwise the difficult morning would have been impossible.

The vet arrived when the rain was coming down so hard that he didn’t even want to get out of his car, but when it had eased just a little bit we got started. It hadn’t occurred to me that he would want to inspect their eyes, so my plan of having all the horses he was checking conveniently in the yard was already scuppered, not least of all because they were all looking so bedraggled. He also wanted me to trot them up across the gravel yard but I kept to the rubber matting. They’ve all got pretty good feet, but it seemed like the better idea. At least he wasn’t fazed by the lack of shoes!

Cobweb, at 33 years old, had a little retinal scarring, but was passed fit for work, so he can continue to do his small bits of consultancy work on the clinics. Sensi also had a little scarring on one retina, and at 22 is also not a youngster, but was passed. It’s possible they have been exposed to the leptospirosis bacterium which can be present in any untreated water, and they drink from a stream here. Amber behaved like she had never been handled before, and quivered and shook when the vet inspected her, hardly giving the impression of a reliable school pony, in spite of the fact that she has proved to be fantastic when we occasionally use her on the clinics. Finn, the Exmoor, who I thought would be tricky, stood like a rock and behaved like a perfect child’s pony, although he’s usually only ever ridden by adults.

The vet then checked the tack, and although the semi-treed saddles we use don’t really respond to traditional testing for broken trees, he still did it on each of them. He checked all the reins and all the stirrups, and it took me a while to realise that he felt the need to check all of the stitching. It was at this point that I finally felt a little offended, at the suggestion that we might use faulty equipment! But the ordeal ended with no issues, and that’s it for another year.

The end of summer is always a busy time, not that any time of year is slack when two people are looking after 10 horses as well as teaching. On days when we haven’t got a clinic running, we bring the horses in only for a couple of hours, during which we can move the electric fence to give them a new strip, and muck out the field, then let them out and clean the boxes and yard. During a clinic they are in all day and some even have to work! This means less muck in the field, more in the stables. Muck is easily cleared from areas with short grass, when it is fresh and hasn’t been rained on. In long grass, especially after a couple of days, when the rain and birds have battered it, it’s a much longer job to clear the same amount of muck. So we try to keep on top of it, and never let it go for more than 2 days without clearing the field. By strip grazing, very long and narrow strips, they tend not to trample the new grass, but graze along it practicing shoulder-in, and doing their droppings on the short grass they ate up the day before. It’s a hassle to have to move the fence every day, but it makes everything else efficient.

It’s the time of year for removing ragwort. There’s more and more of it around. No matter how diligently we clear the fields, there’s always more than you find first time round, and as a general rule, even though I have excellent eyesight and can spot a ragwort at a hundred metres, I find that if I see one, there are ten out there. Since most of our pasture has been topped and some has been grazed by sheep, it’s more difficult to find than it would be in a permanently grazed pasture, but strip grazing definitely suits horses better. They’ll have abundant grass all winter, about 25 acres of fresh pasture to share between 10 horses. Additionally we are privileged to have an orchard. Tons of apples which if we get round to collecting them and storing them properly, provide a daily treat and vitamin boost for all the horses till about February.

It’s also the time of year for getting rugs fixed, washed and waterproofed, but most of ours have no rugs and appear happier that way, and those who do wear rugs have been in them most of the “summer” anyway. Plus, I’d be lying if I told you we generally get that done before the cold miserable weather reminds us we needed to do it weeks ago!