It is day four of quarantine, the sun is shining and everything is going to plan, apart from motor vehicles and water works…
Unfortunately the lorry decided to have a few plumbing issues, which resulted in the whole of the living flooding! But little did I know that give Jenny Plumber Mckibben, as I now call her, a screw driver and she can fix anything. So it was Jenny to the rescue!
My car also has been having a few issues. Luckily the RAC was to hand and my car is currently in the garage having a new valve thingy… vehicles are really not my thing…
On a happier note Hilly (Fernhill Present) is doing great! He feels fit and well and I am able to exercise better than expected in the quarantine conditions.
His routine slightly varies from day-to-day but currently we are:
- 7.30am Hilly breakfast
- 8.30-9am Hilly goes on walker
- 9.30-10.30am I exercise Hilly
- 11am -12.30pm Hilly grazes in field
- 1pm Hilly lunch
- 1pm-3pm Hilly has a siesta
- 3pm Hilly massage/walker/or I school him
- 4pm -5.30pm Hilly grazes in field.
- 5.30pm evening feed in stable
- 9pm check Hilly’s temperature and give extra hay
I am using a Woof Wear app called Track My Hack which you can download onto your iPhone. It’s a great way for me to calculate how much work Hilly is doing as you can lose track going around fields.
Today we walked for two miles, trotted for three miles and cantered with little trot breaks for two miles.
Some people find hacking boring, but I’m not in the position to do this while we are in quarantine. This is all I have to work with and I don’t want to get half way around Adelaide’s four-star cross-country and wish I’d done more fitness work with Hilly.
Some may say my fitness training with the horses is old fashioned, but I like to do a lot of long slow hack work. At home I would hack up to 10 miles up and down the Surrey Hills with Hilly in preparation for a four-star. I find this is a great way to develop their core fitness and strength.
At home and here I never really “gallop”. By this, I mean I would never gallop Hilly in his top gear for a long period of time. I prefer to do short sharp bursts of a faster paced canter and long slow canter work with trot intervals so they don’t get fatigued and change their canter lead because they are tired and unbalanced.
I am a great believer in the saying: “You can only control the controllable”. I can control Hilly’s work load, fitness and stable managment to try and prevent injury, but I can not control the injury itself.
SO I AM NOW TOUCHING WOOD!!!!!
Hilly, as I said earlier, feels on tip top form and we are taking each day as it comes.
Until next time… (Hopefully there will be no more pluming/car dramas on the way!)
Alice x
