After last week's fall I had a chat with my instructor about what's going on with Legacy and we have come down to a possible answer of she's not getting worked enough. In the past she's never been the type of horse that does need to be worked constantly as I have left her out of work for 2-4 months before and getting straight back without another thought. But it seems to be that with us now having lessons she's starting to get into a routine of at least being ridden once a week, and she must be liking it. So after deciding that could be the answer to theso many questions of why? I had my fall on Tuesday then lunged her Thursday although she wasn't the most cooperative we sort of got there as when I changed the rein to lunge she came up lame.

I'd arranged another lesson with her on the Monday so I decided to give her until then to come up sound which she did. We just had some awful wind on the Monday and the 2 horses were bolting and doing laps around the field, just to give me that little bit of confidence just before my lesson, thanks Legacy. After explaining to my instructor what had just happened and knowing that Legacy could be a little spooky by the arena due to sheep trailers clanging in the wind I didn't want to get back on her in those conditions.

We decided to give her a lunge to see what type of mood she was in that day. After having a good lunge and not playing up once I decided that I would be brave enough to get on her. During the lesson she then went really well, she was a little slow and lazy and made me work to keep her going but I would much rather that than what I had last week.
Towards the end of the lesson she was stretching out and staring to lower her head, it felt a little odd for me to give her more reins so she could lower her head as I'm used to her ears nearly hitting me in the face. And we did some transitions where I didn't shorten my reins before asking for trot as this has become somewhat of a safety thing for me as I never know what she will do.

So it definitely feels like we're onwards and upwards now, myself and the instructor have decided on working Legacy 3 times a week. We feel this would be enough to get the energy out of her. I'm aiming to ride on my 2 days off and give her a lunge on either the Thursday or Friday. But obviously when it comes to the winter I will have to work harder at sticking to working her the 3 days and possibly not be so much of a fair weather rider. How that will go, I don't know. We'll have to see...

Yard Before Work

Due to me working odd shifts in work, I only muck out the horses on my days off of Monday & Tuesday and when I don't start work until 10:45. I work odd times on the weekends and then on the other days opposite to the 'late' shift is the 'early' shift to where I start work at 8 and don't finish until 4:30. With the horses not going out until 8:30 and coming in 4/4:30ish by the time I get there after work they'd be in. Now these 2 horses seem to be the worst 2 to muck out when they're in there, always knocking the wheelbarrow over, standing in the way and making more mess. I'm lucky enough to be fussy not to have to work with this when my mum can muck them out on the days I can't, it's always handy because if either of us need a day off from doing them there's always the other person there. 

This is a quick image of what I wear when I do my yard work. The bottom half of the outfit rarely changes apart from the odd change of footwear.
The trousers I wear are Regatta waterproofs. They are similar to these Regatta Stormbreaker ones I found on ebay for only £8.69 with free P&P. For this price I'm definitely adding these to my ebay watch list for when I need another pair. Although these are lightweight and thin they are durable and last a while. The current pair I'm wearing have lasted me for 2 years. So for the price you pay they do last a long while. These trousers are great because I wrap up warm for work in the winter so those clothes keep me warm while mucking out and then throughout the summer they are light enough to not make me hot. 

On my feet I'm currently wearing my Harry Hall Yale Country Boots, these are some of the most comfortable boots I've ever worn. They are not longer for sale but I recommend if you can get your hands on a pair they're great. 

On my top half I wear a hat on my head no matter how I've done my hair ready for work. Any wooly hat does the job of keeping my ears warm and keeping the smell of dirty horse bed out of my hair, which helps keep me presentable for work. 
I then have a variation of jackets & coats to which I wear on top of my uniform. Due to how warm I can get at times when mucking out I only wear my thermals and work t-shirt under my coat. The current jacket that I'm wearing for this weather is my Dublin Trinity Blouson Jacket, then in the winter I wear my Equine Answers Regatta coat. Throughout the summer I typically just wear a hoodie to cover my uniform or depending on how hot it is I'll wear a different t-shirt and then will get changed when I get into work. 

On my hands I then wear kids gardening gloves as these keep the smells off my hands. The gloves I use are these kids gardening gloves from Wilko. They are also great as the haylage we can can sometimes get thistles in it, they are quite awful when they stick into your hands when you grab into the bale. They are great throughout the winter as they keep your hands dry and keep the chill off of your hands. 




The other alternative to wearing all of these before work is a pair of overalls. I have a pair of these from back when I was in college but I don't really wear them for yard work as they're a bit big for me, and I found throughout the winter I was needing to wear waterproof trousers and a coat to stay dry. 

Legacy's Take on Bedding

In the 3 winters I've had Legacy I have tried a variation of types of bedding. Most of them have worked well in the beginning and then have just majorly fallen down hill as I thought that plan and type of bedding was working. During the time she's been at the current livery yard she's been in 4 different stables. In these stables her stress levels have been different in each one, this has contributed to how messy each stable has been. Pretty much each variation has included shavings at some point and it even went to the point of trying out different types of shavings. 

All of the stables she's been in have had rubber matting in, so this has been a major help when it comes to putting down a bed for her. When I first had her she was on shavings, in a average stable size she would just poo where she was standing when eating her hay, the only problem with this would be that when she would walk around the stable, the poo would be walked into the shavings. 

Apart from this the main dilemma I've always had with her beddings is that she's very wet, this at times could be to the point there would be a slight puddle in the middle of the shavings if there wasn't a thick enough layer down. 

The bedding variations she's had are:

- Shavings with thick banks and thin bed layer

- Plenty of shavings all around, thick banks and bed layer

- Shavings banks with Megazorb in the middle

- Shavings banks with shavings and wood pellets mixed in

- Wood Pellet banks and bed

- Straw banks and shavings bed

- Shavings banks with straw bed
- We've also tried deep littering her on shavings

Before trying her out on what she's on now she was going through a bale of shavings a day if you were mucking her out properly she was that wet, so I knew I had to find a better alternative for her. She now has Straw all over for banks and bed with a sprinkle of shavings underneath in the middle. This seems to be working well for the time being, and she will probably be on this until she goes out for the summer which I'm hoping will be within the next few weeks if the weather sorts itself out. The shavings layer beneath the straw is enough to soak up the wee from the bedding to make it not so soggy or have wee running through the stable. 

She also seems to be very much less stressed while she's in this stable, she is now next door to Cloudy who she is very close with as their never separated now, being in both summer & winter fields together. He has really seemed to calm her down and it's really helped cut down on her separation anxiety. She still has a few stubborn moments trying to get her into the stable on her own, but with a little persuasion she's much more better and willing to be on her own. 

Here is a quick before & after picture of Legacy's stable. 

Gardening gloves or Yard Gloves?

Out of all the gloves I've tried for my yard duties, gardening gloves have definitely been the best I've tried so far. Okay so I haven't tried any that are £10+ in the equestrian range but when I found some for £1.25 from Wilko that do the job for me I couldn't justify trying any more out really. The ones I've found are these kids ones. That's another struggle I had when trying to find a great pair of yard gloves was that my fingers are so small I have to wear kids gloves. This includes riding & everyday gloves too and to be honest these gloves are still a little too long in the fingers for me. I find that I get the end stuck in the little clip to keep the hosepipe head turned on when filling up water buckets. These gloves have a tough bottom half of polyester, this means they are waterproof as long as I don't end up fighting with the hosepipe and it gets the orange bit wet, this has actually happened a few times. 

These are great for when you get the off thistle in the haylage, as there's nothing worse than having a thistle thorn spiked into your finger or under the nail when you reach in for haylage. 

These types of gloves are more frequently found as work gloves in adult sized gloves. You can also get some which are hi-viz which would be great for riding out hacking if you were to use them as riding gloves as well. These would also double up as that due to the grip they provide.

I'm Back! Where I've been.. Quick Update.

Hey guys! Long time no write. 

It's been about 7/8 months since I last updated, but to be honest not much has happened in that time. I think that's why I haven't had the urge to get back blogging until now. I haven't been riding much over that time. I was busy with work throughout the summer then I was finding it was too hot for Legacy when I did have the time to ride on my days off. Then on the other scale of the weather when it wasn't too hot we had the horrible winds and rain where I live. I'm a fair weather rider at the best of times too, although I'm working on that after realising how much time out of proper work Legacy has had. 

I haven't had any confidence to ride Legacy out on the road as at the beginning of last summer she took off cantering on the road with me for no seeable reason, I stayed on but it still affected my confidence on the road with her, she was nappy on the road as it was so adding that on didn't help. Where she is kept for livery the roads get quite busy over the summer and the speed limit is 60. The tourists and most of the locals don't seem to care if there is horses on the roads, they'll come past speeding or beeping their horns if they can't get past. So because of this I can't hack out over the summer resulting in me totally losing my confidence on the road with her. 

This is something I'm working on though, I'm back to having lessons every 2 weeks with her. At the moment we're learning for her to respect me and listen to my legs while out on the roads as when she has her napping moments she's either not going anywhere or prancing a little in the middle of the road, the more I try to push her over out of the way of cars the more she plays up. So this is our main goal for now so I can regain my confidence on her out there. 

One of the other main reasons to why I didn't get to ride much throughout the summer was on one of the windy days we were putting a rug on her in the field, we only did this as she's very good standing there to put a rug on no matter what the weather. Unfortunately on this day the wind caught hold of the rug when we'd only managed to get it half on and it flew over her head. Due to this she spooked and took off around the field, falling over the rug as it came around her front legs. She was very lucky to come out of it without any major injuries, just a couple of grazes and burn marks from the velcro on the rug. What happened that night is something I never want to see again, it was horrifying. 

We're very lucky that she's not scared of putting rugs on in a breeze or rugs at all now. Quite the tough one Legacy is. 

The winter weather hasn't been the best on my 2 days off a week so I haven't had much luck riding there either, but as I mentioned I'm working on riding when the weathers not the best to try and combat the lack of riding for next winter.  

That's just a quick update to where I've been and what's been happening and as you can read, there's not much been on going on. I'm back at blogging now and I'm planning to update and post more frequently now.

I have also updated the pages Legacys feed and I have changed the link of my for sale page to my Preloved page now. 

Quick Update: Where I've been

Where have I been? Well I know I have done a few of these posts where I've been missing for a while over the time of the blog, But now I'm actually going to make an effort to continue with the blog posts after this. Over the time I've been gone there has been a lot going on with Legacy but none of it has been good. After she recovered from her worms she has been putting the weight back on great, which she still has all of and is looking better than ever.

Due to the bad weather we've had this winter I didn't get much riding time in and then she cut her head open, the vet had to be out to sedate her to then add stitches. She looks great with a bald patch just by her right ear haha.

Just as the stitches have healed and I could chance getting the bridle on her without any sensitivity in the area from her cut, she came in lame from all of the wet weather we've been having in Wales her soles have gone soft. So to fix this she came in on box rest for 5 days. After this she was great and her soles were getting better, she was allowed out if she came in when the days were really wet. The first day this happened and all her friends went out she hated it, she really hates being left alone in the stable on her own. She was pawing, kicking, shouting & neighing basically being a right terror. She had to be out the next day, over the next few days she went lame from the wet again. The farrier has been checking her feet throughout this, and due to her going lame again she now has silicone pads on with back shoes to help her soles recover from the wet field. She instantly went sound with them on as she was only a little lame.

As the weather was great we decided to go out for a small hack, a few of us from the yard. After legacy having near enough 2 months off work she didn't put a foot wrong out on the hack, she was brilliant. Now that she's back sound and her heard has heel, I just need the lighter nights, which are working their way here and the spring weather to come through to get her back working and hit come accomplishments with her this year.

A few things I want to work on with her this year is her canter in the school, so she doesn't speed off and she needs to gain more balance in canter, I also want her to become more engaged from her behind to learn to work into a contact. After she's managed this I want to work on doing some jumping with her. In the mean time I will be doing lots of ground work with her and some trotting work over poles.

I won't leave it so long to update next time.