Let It Snow!

Normal service has been suspended due to the snow! We have had a fair amount, which made it easy to say ‘no work’ for a couple of days and to get the horsewalker doing the work for me! Unfortunately, it meant no one else could get in to work, so Penny and I were left with 20 stables to do. Its amazing how a bit of snow can turn everyone into big kids – I’m not sure who was quicker out of us and the kids to get out the door into a snowball fight! Coming from Australia, it is still a bit of a shock to the system and I go out rugged up in every conceivable layer of clothing!

It does mean that I am going to miss my dressage lesson with Rhegan White, who trained with Conrad Shumacher. I watched Moorlands Totilas at Olympia on TV this week and was once again blown away by what the top dressage riders and horses do – very inspirational stuff. I am getting an increasing amount of dressage horses to break in, particularly colts, so it is only right that I learn more about it all.

I had a bit of an education last week with one of my homebred horses that I just started working on. Her mother, Little Miss Muffett, was one of the smartest (and hottest) horses I have ever sat on and she won a lot of awards in polocrosse. I remember Penny telling me that the first name she was given in new Zealand (where she was bred) was Gold Digger as she got so hot when she was ridden she used to dig holes with her fore legs! Her first two progeny were lovely to start and did nothing too outrageous, but this one… He has tried everything in his power to outwit me, it is like playing a game of Russian Roulette, but you never know when he’s going to pull the trigger! Then on Thursday, he started reproducing Muffett’s digging trick… an amazing example of personality traits being passed down through the generations... Here’s hoping he’s going to be as talented as her!

I hope you all have a great Christmas and New Year and a fantastic 2010!

BBC!!!

We had the excitement of the BBC on the yard last week – one of their sports presenters, Mike Bushell, tries out ‘unusual’ sports and he decided to give polocrosse a try! On Wednesday morning, we had an unusually high number of people ‘dropping in’ who just happened to ‘be passing by’! The things people will do to get on TV…

It was a really fun morning and Mike was great even though he hadn’t ridden much before. We gave him a lovely mare called Imperiosa to ride, who belongs to Sophie Harding, one of our liveries. She was on her best behaviour – almost too good as she decided that walking really was the best and only option. The only way to get her to trot was if I run up her backside on Diesel! We all sat watching ‘Breakfast News’ on Saturday morning with baited breath but it was all over in a matter of a couple of minutes! Of course, they cut out all my intelligent comments about the sport and the horsemanship involved, but I guess you can’t argue with over a million people being introduced to the wonderful world of polocrosse! Penny was just glad that they cut the bit of her interview when she said the best thing about the sport was the fact she found a husband through it… Perhaps we should try marketing it through the Lonely Hearts columns!

It’s definitely all guns blazing as far as promoting polocrosse goes as we are demonstrating the sport in the Main Arena at Your Horse Live next weekend. So this week will probably see some frantic clipping of horses and scrubbing of whites to look presentable. We are also taking Diesel as part of the Breeds Display to promote the Australian Stock Horse in the UK, so I am sure he is looking forward to showing off in front of the crowds… I’ll let you know how it all goes, hopefully he won’t make to big a fool out of me!

My rain dance has worked!

My rain dance has worked! The farm was starting to resemble the Aussie outback – no grass and an increasing amount of dust! Whilst the ‘Indian Summer’ that we have been experiencing in the south east has been great for most, it has been a bit of a nightmare for the farming and agricultural community. However, now it hasn’t stopped raining for 48 hours and you can almost see the grass growing. Answers on a postcard as to how long it takes before I start moaning about the miserable English weather though!

Grass is a top priority at the moment and I am turning slightly obsessive about it! We have between 45-50 horses on our 100 acre farm at any one time and it is imperative that the fields and horses are managed properly. At this time of year, with the polocrosse season over, our own playing horses and broodmares are turned out for about five months… hence my obsession with grass – the more there is, the later we can get away with introducing hay and hard feed, which as you know, costs a small fortune! I tend to rotate our young horses so they each get two ‘spells’ of work over the winter – I have four to start, and four others to continue with their education – a couple will probably go hunting with us a few times too!

We are lucky enough to have the best liveries in the world! Not only are they all lovely, but most of them are connected with polocrosse and their horses are very ‘fuss-free’! The majority live out in the winter so we divide up five ten acre paddocks between the liveries and our horses and it is really interesting to see them revert back to the herd animal instincts (although not so great when you have to catch the tricky ones!). I really believe horses need some down time, and although ours have a bit of an extended holiday compared to other disciplines, we look to have them coming out of winter happy, rested, in good condition and ready to go again.

I then have between 10 and 15 ‘Trainers’ on the yard that are in to be started or have some behavioural problem worked on. These horses receive the royal treatment with individual turnout, stabling and lots of attention lavished on them by the girls! I am very fortunate to have incredible staff so I can literally go from horse to horse… it is a tricky feat to fit in 15 horses in the winter days… I still can’t get used to the fact that it is dark more than it is light! I am really enjoying my work this month – I have five lovely colts in amongst them, three of whom I think will be exceptional dressage horses… its times like this I feel very privileged to do what I do! I’ll get some photos of them for the next blog!

What a trip...

A trip of a lifetime? I think I could describe my week in Zimbabwe as that! The Zimbabwe Open is the only ‘professional’ polocrosse tournament in the world… by professional, I mean we don’t get to win money but we get flights and everything else paid for and get to be treated very well for a week! The competition has four teams, sponsored by a company and ‘patron’ like in polo. On the Wednesday evening, a ball is held where four ‘wildcard’ players are auctioned off to the highest bidders to form the final teams. The teams play each other on Friday and Saturday with the highest two teams playing in Sunday’s final. Along with my UK teammates, Guy Robertson and Greg Sargeant, we formed the ‘northern hemisphere’ invitees!

Flying into Zimbabwe I was really keen to catch up with old friends and see the country I last knew back in 1996 when I spent eight of the best months of my life there playing polocrosse, skydiving, watching elephants and hippos in the back yard… just enjoying everyday African life! After seeing the terrible scenes of devastation on the news and hearing of the country’s demise through friends, I was apprehensive to see for myself what state the country was in. To be honest, it was hard to gain a true picture as we stayed in the capital, Harare, for the duration. Although the country had been bought to its knees, and I saw terrible poverty in parts, there was an air of cautious optimism that improvements were happening – shops were well stocked and fuel was becoming more freely available. A stark contrast to last year, I was told.

On the party front, nothing much had changed, with beers thrust into our hands from the moment we stepped onto the tarmac to set the tone for the first half of the week! The worldwide polocrosse community is very sociable, with the Zimbabweans surely taking first prize! The Ball on Wednesday evening attracted 500 people and the bidding for the ‘wildcard’ players was fierce, with an Australian player, Lance Anderson, going for a staggering US$11,000! My team, Renaissance Capital, bid for another Australian, Beau Moore, who coincidently worked for me two years ago. At just 18 years of age, Beau is a truly talented sports and horseman and it was great to have him in our team. My other team mates included an old Kent Target (my UK club) team mate in South African, Andy Heynes… the most competitive man on earth and one who you want playing with you rather than against you!

Each team had a pool of 12 horses, and I was fairly confident that I could get a decent game out of my allocated horses. Our first game was up against Capicol, full of world class players. We had a dream game and beat them by 9 goals… However, our next game was up against the favourites, Koala Park, so named as it was stacked with top Aussie players! We didn’t fare as well, but we were confident we would go through to the finals. However, our fate was sealed as we watched in amazement as Capicol scored an incredible 9-0 chukka to overcome Koala Park in the last chukka of the game. With a target of 36 goals in our last game against Millers to get to the finals on a ‘goals for’ countback, we ourselves put in a pretty good 7-0 effort in our last chukka to score an agonising 35 goals! Still it meant we could kick back and watch a hard-fought final, won by Koala Park.

It was a really special way to end the polocrosse season for me. Now, back to work and normality for a while! I have just spent this pas weekend building an all singing and dancing climbing frame for Jack’s 4th birthday. The thing has taken me 10 hours to build (my DIY skills are a little hazy) and taken up our entire garden… still it was worth it to see the excitement on his face!

To Heathrow and Back!

To Heathrow and Back! Just returned from a 5am journey to Heathrow to realise that I am flying to Zimbabwe tonight not this morning! Penny has taken the blame for not looking at the tickets properly though so I am off the hook… at least I haven’t missed the flight! Will spend the rest of today doing banking and accounts… fun stuff!

I am off to Zimbabwe to play in the prestigious Zimbabwe Open – a competition of four sponsored polocrosse teams with players from predominantly Zimbabwe and South Africa, but also from Australia, New Zealand and the UK. I had the time of my life out there 13 years ago when I played a season of polocrosse there. It is an incredibly beautiful country with wonderful people. After everything it has been through (and still going through), it will be interesting to compare it to the country I once knew… I hope it’s not too harrowing.

It will be a great way to finish off the polocrosse season after a slightly disastrous National Championships for our team. We lost our first game heavily to Arden and although we managed to draw 15-15 in an exciting game against the favourites, Highlanders, it never felt like we were play to our potential. I rode a friend’s mare, Loreal Lee, who went brilliantly… it’s a shame I didn’t really do her justice!

On my return, I am really excited to get stuck into work again. I have got some lovely horses coming into the yard for starting… lots of big, posh dressage horses who I get vertigo on! I also have to get round to finding time to start my homebred two year olds. I tend to only give them about four weeks at this stage of their lives then leave them to mature for anther 8 months or so. They are so much easier to break-in at this age… I tend to worry slightly when clients drop off 5 year old colts for starting – they certainly know their own strength by then!

Talk to you when I get back from Zim, with some good pictures hopefully!

A Successul couple of weeks!

Could life get much crazier…? I feel like I haven’t had a sit down in weeks! It has got to the business end of the polocrosse season, with just the National Club Championships left to go on the 28th-30th August at Ashfields Polocrosse Club in Essex. We had an excellent ‘dry run’ at the Midlands Tournament with our club, Kent Target winning the A, B and E divisions. It’ll be a different story come the Nationals, with all the clubs sending out their best sides and no doubt the Highlanders Club, with 5 out of 6 players representing the UK this Summer, will be favourites to take the A Division title. It was also a great party on Saturday night – a wonderful trait of the hosts, Arden Polocrosse Club… shame I managed to fall off the stage after attempting to dance on a speaker. I’m still sore from it!

In my last blog I was stressing about my top horse being out of action with a suspensory injury and that I was going to have to rely on my young horses… well my four year old, Banjo, won Champion Horse! I couldn’t have been more pleased and excited about it. He feels really impressive and now it is all about teaching him the game… Penny is going to play him in the lower divisions and give him a nice time so I can get on him and go hard next year!

This weekend just gone, we held our annual Open Day at the yard. Everyone put in so much effort into making the place look amazing – I was really proud of all the staff. Over 220 people came along and my poor mother-in-law was swamped on the Tea and Cakes stand! I did a series of demos from loading a yearling to starting a young horse and getting a breaker used to traffic. Everything went well, except Diesel, my colt, decided to have different ideas to me when I was doing some ‘at liberty’ groundwork! Still, he worked well in the end and I got what I deserve as I just haven’t had the time to put the work in that he needs… that’s the thing about horses, you never stop learning from them!

Ups and Downs!

Well, I guess I’ve got over the disappointments of losing to South Africa by now! But, the worst thing to come out of it was that Honey, my top mare, has strained her suspensory ligament in her near fore and needs at least six months off… still at least I have a great excuse to breed a foal or two out of her – she is still young enough to bring back into work after that! I have decided to send her down to a young Argentine stallion called Open Maestro, standing at the Beaufort Embryo Transfer Centre. His breeding has really captured my interest as I feel she needs a good dose of Thoroughbred to put a bit more size into her foals… I am sure my stallion, Diesel, will get his chance later on in her breeding career!

Polocrosse differs to polo as you are only allowed to play on one horse for the duration of a weekend competition – this could mean up to nine 6 minute chukkas over a weekend. These horses have to be incredibly fit and tough and we have to look after them like gold dust! Having sold some older horses this year and now losing Honey for the season, I have had to look to the future. Our breeding programme that we started when I moved to England permanently in 2002 is starting to come to fruition… I have a couple of young’uns by Diesel who I am seriously excited about, and I am full of hope for my Australian import, Banjo, who at 4 years old is showing all the talent you could wish for… I am just hoping that they all live up to their promise!

The short lull in polocrosse competitions has allowed me to get stuck back into work with a vengeance! I have twelve clients’ horses in at the moment, mostly for starting but I have a couple of ‘problems’ to sort out too… there was one particularly impressive rodeo performance – I wish I had it on video! I have a stunning Thoroughbred racehorse colt in for starting and a bit of pre-training. He is being syndicated and I must admit, I am sorely tempted… it’s been a little dream of mine to ‘own’ a racehorse over here. My dad breeds racehorses back home and has a scary obsession with bloodlines, so the love of the Thoroughbred is definitely bred in me!

We are also gearing up for our Open Afternoon on 15th August – opening of our new barn and facilities (hmmm, I think we’re going to be up in the middle of the night with a paint brush!), free demos of groundwork (leading and loading), starting a young horse and the Australian Stock Horse. I’m thinking of doing a ‘first ride’ on a breaker in front of everyone… well they do say that fortune favours the brave! See you there?!