Very short horse ride

Maintaining/fixing the horses feet takes time, and involves a lot of reading and learning. We are busy growing the hoofs out from a very short trim (which was trying to resolve another issue) as well as treating for thrush (athletes foot in horses). We also have a new barefoot trimmer who is fortunately happy to help me learn to do it better myself. It is a great relief to have someone on standby for when I go wrong! 

We have ongoing sore feet problems and it is always hard to know if we have got to the bottom of them, when we make changes it takes a long time for them to fully take effect as sometimes you need the whole hoof to grow out to see the difference, this can take a year. Slowly over time they are getting better (I think!) and we have learnt a LOT. Sometimes it is easy just to leave the horses in the field and not worry about it while we do other things, but we are having another push to get on too of it...

I was also trying out the ‘pre-loved’ western saddle we recently got - it needs a bigger saddle pad than we have, but apart from that was great!

Coming up the drive. They only had to do gravel at the corner and a little bit at the bottom. We don’t want to push it as both are still sensitive...

Bit fuzzy! This is up through our woods above the house.

At the top of the land

The new saddle took a bit of working out what some bits are for, and even how to attach it as the tack is different to the english saddles we are used to.

I discovered this is for holding the end of the cinch when you are not using the saddle or if the cinch is longer than needed depending how you tied it. 

You can see similar here on the other side to hold the other side of the cinch when not in use.

The cinch is the girth on an English saddle ;) confusing!

You can see it is well work, but lovely leatherwork.