Calm and Collected Equine Behaviour Consultant

15/11/2024

That look that says I know they are expensive but I needed shoes 🙈

12/11/2024

10/11/2024

Despite what first impressions may make you think, this is what success can actually look like! Let me repeat that, this was a success!!!

The owner of this beautiful horse contacted me in August as her horse always needed sedating to clip and often twitching aswell, she decided that wasn't in his best interests as he was becoming more anxious. She patiently followed the steps I gave her and today i visited to help her with the next stage. No twitch, standing outside on a loose rein and at will to move away if he felt unsure and he stood for about 15 minutes allowing us to clip him. We stopped at that point as its important to cease before anxiety sets in and over the next week or so he will be quietly finished 🥰. To some this may look like a mess 🤔 to me it shows an owner putting her horses emotional needs first 😍

09/11/2024

07/11/2024

Another successful loading session 🥰

03/11/2024

Lovely morning with this handsome but rather dirty chap

31/10/2024

Clip and mane tidy for Herculese 🥰

31/10/2024

31/10/2024

When your morning starts hu***ng 14 bags of feed and supplements, coffee time!

22/10/2024

Excuse the lack of updates particularly on my business page. Connie my beautiful bitch remains in intensive care following an adverse reaction to a standard medical procedure. Anyone out there close to the big man upstairs please say a prayer for her 💔. Not wanting this to be all gloom Fluffy did great at the dressage qualifier coming 11th out of a massive class of 32 despite the fact that I had barely ridden him in over a week. Wotsit on the other hand found it all a bit exciting busting additional moves but he had a lovely time and gave me a much needed smile 😃 Hug your animals people and let them know they are enough even when they get things wrong x

21/10/2024

A great reminder that things can change and the importance of listening

So me and this horse have been on an incredible journey from a 3yr old, I knew he was special when I tried him. So full 5 star vetting, neck and back xrayed and all was great and we have been competing and doing amazing. Fast forward to 6 months ago and he was slightly rushing into canter and I know my hose well enough that I knew this wasn’t normal. So listen to him and had a full work up and found to our amazing surprise he had ulcers, now this horse has grass up to his knees all day, ad-lib hay etc and not a lot of work but I had a feeling it wasn’t all that needed fixing. I had a premonition to get his back re-xrayed and to our surprise Sonney had 3 vertebra that were touching, in 3 years Sonney had out grown his body and we needed to do something. So Sonney did the Home Nations and we decided it was only right to do surgery. However we were told he didn’t need to have it as he was performing and no pain reaction but I needed to fix the issue now and not wait until til it was a problem. Anyway fast forward to now and he is ulcer free, back repaired and on his rehab. The reason for this long post is to ensure that we as riders and owners are always listening to our horses, doing the very best for them within our means and most importantly putting their interests in front of our own. Sonney had excellent X-rays that we got done when we purchased him but it shows that horses change and things happen. We will be back out competing in July and I’m super excited to get into the white boards again with him.

19/10/2024

Absolutely 💯

*** CHECKING HORSES AT LEAST TWICE A DAY ***
This is a repost from over a year ago, but just as important today!

The necessity to check your horses at least twice a day, is something I’m absolutely adamant about, and make no apologies for.

I saw a social media post a few weeks ago, where someone was asking if it was ok to go away on holiday and leave their ponies, as they were next to a hotel, so anyone could see if anything was drastically wrong. No, that’s absolutely not ok; if you’ve got the money to go on holiday, you’ve got the money to pay a local freelance groom to check your horses twice a day. Most of the comments on the post suggested that was unacceptable, but several were very concerning. Some people were suggesting that it was absolutely fine to only check horses once a day, as what happens if they got colic/were injured, in the 12 hours inbetween the twice daily checks?! How is that justifying not checking on your horses?

And by checking on your horses twice a day, I don’t mean glancing over a fence to make sure they’re breathing…..although that would be better than the nothing that some people deem acceptable! I also don’t mean a 20 minute check over of every part of their anatomy, before anyone thinks that I spend my days performing two stage vettings on all of my horses!

If you’ve only got a couple of minutes spare, then you need to check that

1. Your horse hasn’t got low grade colic. If you’re not feeding him, will he happily take a sweet, and was he eating hay/grazing normally when you arrived?
2. Your horse’s eyes are both open and non-painful
3. There are no swellings anywhere on his body, but especially the legs; this is when it’s important to know the “normal” for your horse.
4. He is walking sound

The above will take no more than a couple of minutes, and may save your horse’s life. That sounds dramatic, but spotting a low grade colic, rather than returning back 12 hours later to an inoperable colic, is just one example. Spotting the start of cellulitis, rather than returning 12 hours later to an enormous leg and lame horse with lymphangitis, is another. There are many more.

No, we can’t watch over our horses 24 hours a day, but we absolutely must check them twice a day. Leaving a horse with a nasty wound, a sore eye, or, god forbid, a broken leg, for 12 hours, is bad enough, but leaving a horse in pain for 24 hours is neglect.

I will never forget the day I was called out to a nasty wound, at lunchtime. They had last checked the horse mid-afternoon the previous day. I explained that I could hopefully save the horse (the wound was over a joint), but that I’d need to do the dressing changes for the next few days. It wasn’t able to be sutured at that point, as it was 24 hours old, and infected. The response was, “well how much is that going to cost, because if it’s going to be really expensive, I’d prefer you put her to sleep now”. I told the (now ex) client exactly what I thought of them, treated the wound successfully, and thankfully never saw them again. (Although they did think it was acceptable to bad mouth me on FB for years later!).

If you’ve got horses, you’ve got a responsibility for their welfare, and this involves checking them at least twice a day. If you can’t do that, then I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have horses.

Feel free to share, but not to copy.

15/10/2024

Today reconfirmed that age is just a number! 2 horses clipped, 4 horses ridden, 1 horse Lunged and 1 horse worked in hand for physio and stretching exercises. Outside horses hayed and fed for the night, now having a well earned brew before doing night time stables and walking the dogs before jumping into the bath. Feeling fabulous 🥰

14/10/2024

Cold early start to the day on Sunday but this boy was on fire 🥰

10/10/2024

I think my account has been hacked I've had a message to say this account will be permanently deleted, no idea what has been posted 🤔 so if I dissappear be warned

06/10/2024

Just chilling

03/10/2024

Looking for regular freelance yard help 8am-10am and 1pm -3pm Monday, Tuesday Thursday and Friday. Welford, Northants.Please pm for details