Hot Topic: Social license and horse sports – the future?

Looking at the photo illustrating this piece – do you see first a horse with a ‘harsh’ double bit and a rider with spurs or do you notice the gentle pat and the calm eye of the horse? Even from within the equestrian community, let alone those outside it – many are torn about what…

Read More

Tune in to some Brilliant Equestrian Plodcasts!

As the vast library of podcast grows there are loads of brilliant ones to tune into for an equestrian fix through your phone. Think that podcasts are the preserve of only the young? Not a bit of it. There are some brilliant equestrian podcasts out there – even if you are a digital Luddite grab…

Read More

Horse riding in time of Corona

So the Coronavirus is upon us. It has put the entire globe into a lockdown it seems. Equestrians are of course heavily affected by this – how much so varies from country to country. In those worst hit such as Spain and Italy – you are simply banned from riding at all – unless you…

Read More

Mardi Part 3: The cob with the Bentley engine!

The last part of Jay Johnson’s visit to help me with Mardi Day three dawned and it was my turn to get straight on to Mardi. She was feeling fresh but not crazily so as she had done two days of very hard work. Before I got on Jay again went through exactly how I…

Read More

Dutch Master

I have had the great pleasure of meeting and attending training clinics with Albert Voorn many times. In 2019 I interviewed him for EQy magazine 2019 Issue Olympic silver medallist Albert Voorn is a class act – not only is he a brilliant showjumping coach and a visionary rider, this outrageously outspoken character is known…

Read More

Mardi Part 2: Jay Johnson works his magic

So my scruffy-looking project mare turned out to have all sorts of tricks up her sleeve (read part one here). Turns out she arrived with a spare eject button. After a fence, she had a neat way of dropping her shoulder bucking and spinning all at the same time making her pretty tricky to sit…

Read More