{"id":1565,"date":"2012-02-08T18:12:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T18:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2015-08-19T17:54:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T17:54:31","slug":"a-day-in-the-life-of-the-cotswold-horse-whisperers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-cotswold-horse-whisperers-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day in the Life of the Cotswold Horse Whisperers, 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>May 2008<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The last instalment saw us gearing up for the start of the clinic season, and worrying a little about the weather. Since then we have had 5 clinics, 3 weekends and 2 five days, and have experienced weather ranging from snow (! A first for us \u2013 luckily it wasn\u2019t cold so the school itself didn\u2019t freeze) to the glorious, mostly insect-free sunshine of early May. We\u2019ve had students ranging from the fairly novice to the very experienced,\u00a0 from very young to somewhat older. There have been \u201cpleasure riders\u201d (as opposed to those who do it to be miserable, I guess), competitors, an AI, and returning faithfuls,\u00a0\u00a0 and we\u2019ve also met some fascinating horses.<\/p>\n<p>A typical day starts at a very civilised 10am, which gives me a few hours to sort out our young son, Marley, and sometimes conveniently corresponds with his morning nap, giving Grandma an easier start to the day. Adam and I each teach the first 3 hours\u00a0 of the day, working on whatever the students have identified as their priorities. This might mean us both being in the school at the same time, but as often as not someone will want to work on some groundwork \u2013 maybe leading, going over water, long-lining, spook-busting, in-hand, or standing still to mount, and so they might be in the round pen, in the yards, or out and about around the set-aside. We\u2019re meant to finish at 1pm, but will\u00a0 overrun if the situation requires it, which it often does, particularly if it\u2019s Adam teaching\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>Lunch brings the opportunity of interesting discussions, in between mouthfuls of food, and Marley usually makes an appearance, sitting at his table, and seemingly loving being in the middle of it all. He sometimes helps with the afternoon sessions, too, strapped to one of us in his sling. He\u2019s usually very happy with this arrangement, although he does sometimes require us to keep moving, which can\u00a0 be a little distracting for the rider when we\u2019re trying to explain a point, but have to keep moving around them in circles! We have a nominal finishing time of 5-6pm, but again will keep working if we feel we need to. We\u2019ve had\u00a0 horses with some major issues this year, and we\u2019ve really felt the need to do as much as possible. When the horses are more straightforward, we get an earlier night!<\/p>\n<p>Then it\u2019s letting our horses out, mucking out the boxes and the field, and \u2013 luxury of luxuries \u2013 eating the meal that Grandma has been able to cook while we\u2019ve taken Marley out. It\u2019s usually more or less time for bed by then \u2013 can\u2019t think why there\u2019s a backlog on the emails and phone calls!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 2008 The last instalment saw us gearing up for the start of the clinic season, and worrying a little about the weather. Since then we have had 5 clinics, 3 weekends and 2 five days, and have experienced weather&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisperingback.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}