Morris & Smith Young Horse Specialists

15/06/2024

*WANTED 148 Pony suitable for RACING * for our PRA academy riders.
Must be suitable for first time jockeys and enjoy a varied life.
8-17yrs old.
Experienced forever home.

15/05/2024

For Loan - Please can horsey friends share!🙏🏻

Section A 4yo gelding.
Todd is not very interested yet sadly so looking to loan out his pony for a year or two as don’t want him sitting in the field doing nothing.
Perhaps suit an older child wanting a 2nd pony to play with or to get used to bringing on a young pony.
He is gorgeous and will be really smart but he is green and has little mileage currently.

08/11/2023

FourFields Sport Horses have a lovely horse for sale, the first one in the clip!

29/10/2023

Looking for a new 🏠

25/10/2023

We have 1 space for breaking before Christmas due to a cancellation and then the next availability is January 2nd 2024 🤯

Where has the year gone!

09/08/2023

Gorgeous boy 😍

27/05/2023

01/01/2023

Hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas!

Happy New Year! Looking forward to welcoming lots of new faces 🐴 over the next few days

Neckstrap at the ready, 2023 let’s go 🙌

09/09/2022

What a Lady.
Rest peacefully Queen Elizabeth💔

“There is a place that you go,
No matter what you believe,
While all those who love you,
Take time to grieve.

The sweet smell of hay,
And the greenest of grass,
Gentle soft muzzles,
A place time doesn’t pass.

Your loss will be felt,
But we’ll take comfort and know,
The day that you left,
We knew where you’d go.

Reunited with loved ones,
No more to depend,
Reins in one hand,
Your ride never ends.

While we all mourn,
While we’ve lost someone great,
We know that so many,
Wait for you at the gate.

Thank you, your majesty,
For all that you’ve done,
Gather up the reins now,
It’s your time to ride on.”

🕊🤍1926-2022🤍🕊

Poem: cromwellandlucy

30/04/2022

You need a Digby.

Let me explain. You may think you need a Totilas, or a Rothschild, or a Stroller, or a Frederik the Great, or a Secretariat grandson, or whatever else matches your particular fancy...but you don't. You need a Digby.

You might have the ambition to sit that enormous trot, or jump those grand prix fences at speed. But you also have the adult amateur's physique we glean from working a desk job and riding one hour a day, from managing a household and children, from dealing the banalities of life.

A young, hot, fancy horse requires time, effort and know how. Either you're going to put it in, or you're going to pay someone else to do it for you, and most likely the latter. Or, worst case scenario you do neither and you end up winning a no-expenses-paid trip to the emergency room.

So, if you want to enjoy your riding, you want a pet you can visit, who enjoys your company, who you can pamper, and relax with.... you need a Digby.

Digby, in reality here at LOTW, is our older school master. He can tote a complete beginner around the trails one day, and teach a lesson on flying changes the next. Digby is fit, educated, and bomb proof.

Is Digby maintenance free? He sure isn't. He gets equioxx, extra senior and alfalfa feed, a hoof supplement, and everything is soaked... He's a senior, and he needs the kind of care and maintenance his body requires. Is he perfectly sound? Well, maybe not on a cold day, without a proper warm up. But he is strong and comfortable in his work.

Digby is the kind of horse where you could go on vacation for two weeks, come back, throw a saddle on, and walk on a hack alone, at dusk, on the loosest of reins. You could stick him in a trailer and head to a schooling show or off to a state park he'd never seen before and be safe at either venue.

So please, when you're looking for your next partner, do not buy the horse you aspire to. Do not buy the horse that's going to give you crippling anxiety, or a fast track to bankruptcy when you combine his price, training bills and your hospital bills. Buy an older horse, that needs and deserves the relationship you can offer. Buy the horse you need - not the potential you hope to be able to ride. You and horse will both be happier in the long run. I know the people who most need it will not take this advice. But it bears repeating anyhow.

Here is Digby out foxhunting at Opening Meet, at age 23.

15/04/2022

A really lovely horse 😍

11/04/2022

If only the whole day had been this cute! Really don’t know how people compete or to be honest, do anything at all with a small child 😩

05/04/2022

"Save the stick and spoil the child "

Your horse is your partner but he has no power to think like us, or like dolphins or chimps.

Those three species are the only ones that can actually reason, the rest "associate ideas". This is very close but the lack of ability to reason means our horse cannot lead us. We must be the one who leads him and gives him direction. He then learns over time to trust us, becomes braver and then usually loves what he does.

If his rider is not prepared to lead him and to give him a clear framework of discipline - [the go button means GO, the stop button means STOP / please don't walk all over me and respect my space ] then life becomes a less and less happy place for him as he is without direction.


xLucinda

04/04/2022

Managed to actually get out for a play on Sunday round the Fernie Team chase, a rarity these days with 9 breakers in and a mini human to look after!

02/04/2022

🙌

A livery yard owner who is concerned about the industry’s future believes the staffing crisis is “entirely of our own making”. Ali Dane, a rider, judge and coach who owns Hurston Dressage and Eventing in Oxfordshire, contacted H&H having read “with alarm” recent pieces on the plight of gro...

07/02/2022

Love a TB!

16.1/2 6yo German TB gelding, really moves beautifully and jumping like this after only ever lunge jumped once before.
Super Eventer in the making 😍😍😍😍.

Message for viewings…..

03/02/2022

09/01/2022

Proud to have been a small cog in Nero’s big and potentially very shiny wheel! 🥰🥇🥈

31/12/2021

Happy New Year to everyone! Thank you to all our clients old and new, not just for your custom but also for recommending us to friends and fellow equestrians 🥰

We are a very small business so your recommendations are very much appreciated.

A few pictures from this time last year to now, as it’s so easy to forget how much has happened in a year! Let’s see what we can do in 2022 👊
Have a good one 🥳

25/12/2021

We would like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas!
Hope everyone is enjoying a bit of rest and time with loved ones where possible.

Christmas carrots all round this morning 🎄

Lucy & Glen x

21/12/2021

Trying to plan what to add to our obstacle paddock for next year and found this buried within the 3000 videos on my phone!

I think a nice ditch is definitely in order 😀

Not only does it help with building confidence but is really beneficial for teaching them to think before placing their feet.

Love watching horses progress from insecure or constantly looking to you for reassurance, to almost coming out with a little swagger towards the end of their stay 🦄

19/12/2021

Our website has been up and running for a couple of weeks now but I completely forgot to mention it whilst we’ve been busy getting most of our breakers ready to go home in time for Christmas!

So if you are bored feel free to have a nosy and let me know if anything doesn’t work properly!🙏🏻
It’s www.younghorsespecialists.co.uk
Hopefully over Christmas I will be posting some blogs on there with some tips for young horses and general things to think about before breaking them in, which I hope come in useful for a few people.
In the meantime we are filling spaces for next year so don’t forget to get booked in early if you would like a space 🦄

02/10/2021

01/10/2021

Thank you so much to Glen’s nephew Bobby for this lovely video for our website that should be live in the next few days (only about 9yrs too late!)

With very limited knowledge of horses we think he’s done an amazing job and can’t wait to see how he gets on in his career in film 😀👏👏

https://youtu.be/F1zPyNxDCLQ

08/08/2021

So we have decided on a cheeky little name change now we have settled into our new premises!

When we first set up Morris & Smith Equine Services we wanted to encompass all aspects from breaking, liveries, schooling, producing horses to sell and anything else that came our way.

Over time we have learnt our strengths and also our weaknesses (cannot sell horses to save our lives!) so we have decided to really focus on the breaking side of things, we are still able to help with behavioural problems and issues people are having, but there are lots of great people out there that we are more than happy to recommend in terms of selling, schooling and producing on to the next stage in whatever discipline 👍

So thank you to for our new logo which we think really shows what we are about 🤩

07/03/2021

Well it took longer to do the reel than it did to build the entire barn and erect the stables ourselves 😂😂
But FINALLY we are finished!
Absolutely massive thanks to for the groundwork for the school and for the base of our flooring in the barn.
Horses have arrived, our are looking beautiful and we are up and running 😀

Thanks to everyone for their help we couldn’t have done it without worlds no. 1 Dad! .see.smith

Let’s gooooo 👊

02/03/2021

Rare space available in Derbyshire for breaking or restarting due to cancellation, first come first serve! 🦄

28/02/2021

So after nearly 4.5yrs at Fox Covert Farm we have FINALLY packed everything away and I’m dragging Glen even further away from Essex, (sorry Sue Morris!) and are busy getting ready for the start of a new era in Wirksworth, Derbyshire.
We want to say a massive thank you to Holly Smith Showjumping and Graham for having us, letting us use their amazing facilities, and being the most chilled landlords going 😎
Graham Smith farriers for shoeing, trimming and providing a tiny bit of banter! Megan Plummer our Sunday girl who we wish we could take with us!

Paul Mcalinden and Scott St Clair Sinclair for helping on the yard when we’ve been super busy or I was pregnant.
Kate Dodd for always being able to lend a hand and provide Glen with coffee or red bull when I haven’t been able to be at the yard!
Shane Kitching for providing our young charges with top notch equine dentistry and lastly to all of our clients who have used us and recommended us, without whom we wouldn’t now be able to make this move to a place we can call our own.
Thank you, thank you, thank you ☺️

So here’s hoping that spring has sprung, coronavirus is on the way out and we can crack on with backing this years youngsters 🙏🏻

You don’t have to watch the whole video! But a few of the horses that have kept us busy, forever learning, laughing and cursing over the last few years.......