My
horses get into every aspect of my life - as you can see, Dancer and
Tess attended my wedding, along with, oh a few other folks, but they
were definitely the shiniest there - just a shame they didn't stay for
the dancing.
I always said that given half a
chance I'd fill the house with horses - and so that didn't happen we
moved to a place with enough acres so the horses could fill the fields
and not the house. Always a bonus not to find Dancer eating your
marmite on toast of a morning - well she never puts the plate in the
dishwasher.
And so the obsession began - I mean the Stud. The endless talking about
pedigrees, conformation, stallions, colours, genetics, health care,
feeding... I am very thankful to have great friends and family to help
out and discuss things with. Oh and pick up poo. You can never have
enough people to help with that.
The learning curve is
extremely steep, the hours very unsociable - especially at foaling
time, when the mares pretend they're nearly ready for three weeks and I
stay up watching the CCTV all night for those three weeks. Listening to
the sound of contented mare chewing hay loses its magical rhythm by the
third all nighter. Then they move round, lie down, grunt. Is this it?
Of course not, they're having a lovely night's sleep while you watch
the one hundred and twelfth episode of Knots Landing on UK Gold.
However the moment the newborn takes its first breath and mum turns her
head to whinny at her perfect child - all that tiredness is just a
memory.
And so we go forward once
more into another breeding season with the gorgeous Josh.
His temperament is astoundingly good - he's gentle and sweet natured,
obedient and easy to handle. He has what they call a "good mind" and
that coupled with a great body is a fantastic package to pass on - add
his guaranteed colour to that and you can see why we're so excited.
As for the future? Plans are bad - things change all the time and good
luck runs the same as bad. Our aims? To love our horses, to have as
much fun as we can with them
and to breed beautiful, loving and talented babies so we can take
over the world - one field at a time.
Virgins and Born
Again Virgins
Dancer is the elderly matriarch of the Dashdance
herd. She was my first horse, and taught me how to stick on, close my
eyes, pray, and most importantly how to laugh in the face of
doom.
She's never been used for breeding, but is an
invaluable 'nanny' for
the youngsters now that she's retired, spending her days teaching them
good manners
(and her large collection of rude jokes).
Tess is my
precious girl. She and I have done
pretty
much everything together in the last 13 years - dressage, jumping,
cross country, endurance,
TREC...
She's the kind of horse you can never forget or replicate.
Never sad or sorry, always a forward going ride and guaranteed to
brighten up my day.
She's bred me two lovely foals - Dashdance
Solo
and Dashdance
Little Brooke, but is now coming back to being a riding horse.
Sean
is an ex-National Hunt racer, he had
a successful career on the
track and as a point-to-pointer and hunter, but he's
now found himself enjoying a rather more relaxed pace of life!
He is adorable with a charming temperament - a
total
mummy's boy who pulls the funniest faces if he thinks
he's being ignored. When ridden he is very
generous and tries his hardest to do as he's asked. His only bad point
is his gender!
And now for the
dogs!
Living with us are several sofa
oppressing, shoe stealing, muddy paw wearing dogs.
A few of them came here with some life threatening condition, unwanted
by owners or bereaved. Among the ancients, we have a labrador with
cancer and a golden retriever who
spends her time proclaiming things we're glad we can't understand, and
trying to remember her name. They have it rather too good here - doting
owners, sofas, bean bags, Sky TV, the
internet - it's a surprise they haven't worked out how to use eBay yet.
The younger models spend their
time playing or
helping me around the farm - mainly by supervising. There are a lot of
very experienced farm hands in doggy form who could easily manage to
re-fence fields, muck out, trim hedges and stack hay - if they chose
to. Instead they like to sit and watch - or unstack hay by leaping all
over it.
Mostly though, they exercise only their rights to sleep, eat and cuddle
up to warm humans. Wouldn't be without the little hooligans!
My
horses get into every aspect of my life - as you can see, Dancer and
Tess attended my wedding, along with, oh a few other folks, but they
were definitely the shiniest there - just a shame they didn't stay for
the dancing. 
The learning curve is
extremely steep, the hours very unsociable - especially at foaling
time, when the mares pretend they're nearly ready for three weeks and I
stay up watching the CCTV all night for those three weeks. Listening to
the sound of contented mare chewing hay loses its magical rhythm by the
third all nighter. Then they move round, lie down, grunt. Is this it?
Of course not, they're having a lovely night's sleep while you watch
the one hundred and twelfth episode of Knots Landing on UK Gold.
However the moment the newborn takes its first breath and mum turns her
head to whinny at her perfect child - all that tiredness is just a
memory. 
Dancer
Tess 
Sean
The younger models spend their
time playing or
helping me around the farm - mainly by supervising. There are a lot of
very experienced farm hands in doggy form who could easily manage to
re-fence fields, muck out, trim hedges and stack hay - if they chose
to. Instead they like to sit and watch - or unstack hay by leaping all
over it.