Hey, Sarah and Tippy here:

Great news – I’ve started riding again. My back is much better although I’m still getting the odd twinge. I’m taking it very steadily, just walking, which is really annoying Tippy. I’m going to have to find someone to take her for a canter! If she doesn’t get a good run out every now and again she gets very twitchy on her hooves, like she’s going to explode or something.

Also, I’ve just got to show you this pic:

Isn’t it hilarious! Laura’s looking all summer cool. It was taken last week on a photoshoot when the photographer was testing his camera and lights. He could have found a cute pony to take a pic of!

Bye for now

Sarah & Tippy

Hey guys…long time, no speak. Sorry about that.

Jennie here:

It was half term last week (hope you all had a good one). I spent Thursday on a photo shoot with Angus, one of our trusty photographers. It was an uber busy day. We took FIVE discs of photos! One might say we were a little extreme but at the end of the day they’ll get used. We always need new snaps for you guys to look at. I just hope you appreciate them, we certainly worked hard and our models Daisy and Tom were so good! Thanks to them.

I’ve just heard I get to go to the launch of The National Riding Festival next week. I get to have a lesson with Mary-Ann Trevor-Roper who, amongst other things, trained the celebs on the last series of Only Fools on Horses. I’m well excited about it. I think it will be good to have a lesson with a different instructor to see what she says about my riding and of course I’m keen to ride another different horse. It’s all good experience. I’ll let you all know how I get on.

This weekend I’m headed to the beach with my friends which I’m really looking forward to. I hope the weather’s nice!

See ya soon x

Laura here

We’ve named the puppy! And guess what we’ve called her? Lexie, well actually it was an accident to call her that really. I got home from work on Friday and mum had almost decided but when I told her it was the name of H+P's cartoon helper, well, it was even better! So now our gorge little pup is kind of a mascot to the magazine too!

Hope you all had a top week off for half term and got to spend as much time as you could down at the stables!

See ya

Laura

Hi, just gotta show you these cute pics of Tippy and Gizmo. As a special sunshine treat we turned them out in the same paddock - well, we thought Tippy might stop Gizmo munching grass all day and think about some else!

And it seemed to work. Check out these pics of them grooming each other.

They spent ages grooming each other and less time eating!

Hey all,

My name is Sophie and I am here at H+P on my work experience. I’m 14 years old and I love ponies!

I have recently bought a new horse and her name is Chilli. She is very gentle, but she has to be as she stands at a whopping 16.2hh! Although this makes her very good at jumping, it also makes it a nightmare trying to put her rug on her.

Also on the yard, at the moment, is my Mum's horse, Mazz. Mazz is an ex-racehorse, though he still likes to go very fast! This is unlike Charlie, who is an 11hh chestnut pony who we have on livery. Unfortunately, Charlie is laminitic so he is on starvation rations at the moment, which he is not happy about, as he loves his food!

We have recently had a new addition to the yard and that was the birth of baby foal, Tizzy. Tizzy is only a week old, but she is already running around, unlike her Mum, Amy who is taking a well-deserved break! Tizzy is of course receiving lots of attention from us and she loves it!

My old pony, Monty is still at the yard because my younger sister Zara is now riding him. Monty is a little piebald pony who loves jumping, though he is not so hot at his dressage!

I am currently enjoying doing showjumping and one day eventing on Chilli, and I would love to compete at pre-novice level some time in the future. It has taken me quite a lot of time to get used to Chilli after Monty because of the huge difference in their strides.

This week I am going to the East of England Country Show to meet a scurry driver. I am looking forward to this as I have never done anything like this before. After this, I will be interviewing them and I will get to meet the pair of cute ponies who pull the carriage! I can’t wait!

See ya

Sophie
xox

Hey all,

Today, I have been working in the office preparing my questions for my interview with the scurry driver. I have also been helping Laura package and send lots of envelopes!

As soon as I got home I went out for a ride on Chilli, which was lovely. There are some empty grass fields round the farm at the moment, which are brilliant for having a good canter round. Although, Chilli loves this, we wont be able to do it for long. This is because once the grass has been cut it sets off Chilli’s pollen allergy :-(

After this I went to feed the foal her dampened nuts. Unfortunately, Tizzy is a very messy eater, so more of it went over me than she actually ate!

Tomorrow, I am looking forward to going to Peterborough show, which should be great fun!

See ya,

Sophie
xox

Hiya!

Jennie here:

Well, I went to Yarmouth last weekend and had loads of fun with my friends. The weather was pretty dull but that didn’t stop us heading to the beach.

On the way we spotted some horses pulling carriages up and down Great Yarmouth’s sea front. I snapped some piccies of them for you to see, although we didn’t take a ride cos the people in the carts looked freezing!

A very well behaved carriage horse! He didn't even need holding on to.

Yesterday, I got the opportunity to have a lesson with Marie-Ann Trevor Roper, one of the trainers who worked on the Only Fools on Horses TV show last year.

I visited Mudchute Equestrian Centre, right in the centre of London. It was amazing to find a riding school surrounded by busy roads and sky scrapers. Mary-Ann was instructing lots of journalists throughout the day to help launch this year's Petplan Equine National Riding Festival.

Look out in future issues for snaps of the gorgeous pony Pickles, who I rode. It was really good to have a lesson with an instructor other than Jane or Bev and I feel I got a lot from it.

This Sunday I’m going to a local competition in Keyso, Bedfordshire. Make sure you and your pony are looking your best at any show you go to, just in case I turn up. And of course, good luck!

Speak to you next week, I’m sure. x

Hi

Sarah (and Tippy) here:

It's been an up and down week weather wise. Tippy's in her stable at the moment, as rain was forecast but the sun's been shining all day. She'll be in a good mood when I get to the yard tonight. She much prefers spending time outside.

Although, the silly old fool did a really stupid thing this week. I got her in from her paddock the other night to find her legs (only up to her fetlocks) covered in little bites. They didn't seem too sore but must have hurt nonetheless.

I guess she'd been standing on a red ant's nest of something and they'd got annoyed with her clod hopping hooves crushing their house and bitten her to move her off. All I could say to her was: "I hope the grass was worth it Tippy!" As she was no doubt after some tasty grass when she trampled their nest.

Hey all,

Laura here

I just want to say a big thank you to Tina, Hannah and Saucey who have been sending in some great polls to put on the website. If anyone else has any they’d like to put up then send them in and they may end up on the site. Email them to me - laura@horseandpony.com

I hope everyone has finished doing exams and SATs. Now you can look forward to the summer and lots of great riding!

Bye

Laura

PS Lexie (the puppy) is in trouble. She ate my trainers last night!

Hello everybody

The horses have finally gone out for the summer. Foxy and her fave grazing pal Snowy (a 14.2hh Connemara) are in a heavenly paddock. The flies have been awful though, so we have had to put cute fly fringes on them both. Foxy’s is gold and black, very stylish! Snowy’s is more a manly, leather coloured one. Foxy loves living out. She doesn’t mind the rain (which is just as well, because it hasn’t stopped raining for ages) and she and Snowy take it in turns to lie down.

Foxy and Snowy in their fly veils

Foxy enjoying a good roll!

My exams have finished, finally! So now I can get back to some serious training. And lots of FUN! I have a pairs cross country on Sunday, there’s nothing more fun than that! I am riding with a friend whose horse is huge – bigger than H+P's new blogger Sophie's – Alfie must be at least 17hh and he's still growing!! It will be a real laugh if we have to dress at a fence (that is jump it together alongside one another), I will be in shadow and it will be impossible to match his stride. I’ll try and get a photo to show you.

Can’t wait for the sun to come back, I hate getting drenched at cross country rallies!

Keep riding
Hilary x

Hi guys,

I have been very busy at H+P, writing up my scurry driving experience, and helping out round the office. I have discovered that I can type a lot faster now!

I went out on a long hack on Chilli at the weekend, and ended up getting very wet! When will the rain stop? It is making all the paddocks very muddy, which is not good news as Monty loves rolling and is currently black and brown, instead of black and white!

The foal, Tizzy, is growing fast, and has just discovered a new hobby: chasing Balloo, my dog, around the field! She’s just going through the stage of losing all her baby fluff at the moment, and growing her proper coat through. This means there is lots of Tizzy hair everywhere!

I hope the rain stops soon, so we can all look forward to a great summer with lots of riding!

See Ya

Sophie
xox

Hey everyone!

Sarah (and Tippy) here:

Tippy got some new neighbours on Tuesday, although they had to be evacuated a couple of days later.

Tiggy hasn't been in for a while so her stable was empty. Linda shut her dog, Saffy, in there for a few hours while she took Tiggy out for a ride. When she came back she let Saffy out as normal. The next morning, she realised Saffy had been digging in the straw at the back of the stable and went to investigate. Scattered amongst the straw were some tiny hedgehog babies - but no sign of mum! We decided to gather the two babies together and put them under the straw and leave them for the day to see if mum came back.

Meanwhile I set Laura the task of phoning St Tiggywinkle's Wildlife Hospital to see if there was anyone near the stables who would be able to care for the hedgehogs if mum didn't come back to the nest. Luckily Laura tracked down Sadie at Hedgehog Row, because that night when I got back to the stables the tiny hedgehogs were still there all alone.

I put the two babies in a box and then had a good dig through the stable in case there were anymore. I found another one. All three were very weak but still alive. When I got to Sadie she examined them and said they were two or three days old, very cold but a good size. She was hopeful she would be able to hand-rear them once she'd warmed them up.

I'll keep you posted!

Hiya!

Jennie here:

There is much excitement in the H+P office today…Laura and I are off on our holidays. Not together, though. Oh no! We need a break from each other! I’m going to Spain for a few days with family which will be nice and sunny. Laura is heading to Ireland where I have told her she will get rained on for the entire week…ha ha ha!

That leaves poor old Sarah in the office on her own. Well sort of…today we had another ‘assistant’ in the office. Only this one wasn’t as helpful as Sophie, our work experience student. Fudge the dog has been sitting under our chairs so we can’t get close to our computer screen, whining at any loud noise and he’s been trumping like a ‘man on curry’ (as Laura says) which has been unpleasant to say the least.
Fudge is going to keep Sarah company, while we’re away. Unlucky, Sarah!

Hi all

Laura here

Oh my gosh you will never guess what happened?! Someone broke the fence to the ponies field and they escaped. The naughty things tore across five allotments and caused all sorts of damage. Tut tut.

We eventually caught them and told them what for but it wasn’t really their fault some stupid person had dismantled the fencing. Hmmmm.

Ah well, I’m off to a wet and rainy Ireland for a break with my boyfriend now. Yay!
Speak to you in a week or so.

Hey all

It’s been a busy week as far as Foxy is concerned. It was Cheshire Show week so I was washing and plaiting to get Foxy looking spick and span.

We did the pairs cross country on Sunday and we did have to dress (ride side by side over a jump) at TWO fences! Luckily the sun was in the right position so I could still see and wasn't totally in Alfie's massive shadow! We would have come 3rd but because Alfie’s stride is so much bigger than Foxy’s we gained five penalties for bad dressing! Later Foxy and produced a wonderful clear in the Open but we were two seconds too slow to get placed.

On the first day of the Cheshire Show (Tues) my Pony Club took part in the inter-hunt relay. I was picked for the B-Team so it was stress to get Foxy REALLY clean for the Tack and Turnout. It turned out to be a great success because our A-Team came 3rd and my team came 4th.

The relay itself was good fun. It was a course of jumps and you had to go through some bending poles in the middle. We had to hand a whip over to each of the members of our team so they could then do the course. What made it so much fun was that you had to race another team! My team was very inexperienced (including me!) so we didn’t get past the first round. It didn't matter though because we all had fun and we were really pleased with our ponies who had all tried so hard.

The relay handover.

On the Wednesday I did the novice working hunter class. It wasn’t too technical but the course did pose a few questions. Only half of my class turned up because of the awful weather and even fewer went clear. A lot of people got eliminated at the last, which was a grass covered water tray. Someone was even taken away in an ambulance after they had a fall at it!

Foxy makes the hardest jump of the course look easy!

Foxy jumped her heart out and when I didn’t place her too well for a fence she helped me, and vice versa. There were no slip-ups, even though I did jump the last a bit sooner than Foxy, and we jumped clear! I haven’t had a lot of practise in showing so it wasn’t top notch, but I was happy with it! The in-hand show was great fun and it went well! The judges had to confer for a short time and then they called out the line up and I came 4th! I was so pleased! We then came back home after a long day.

I have combined training at the weekend, in the rain! In a fortnight I have another ODE, finally! Foxy will be just as pleased as me!

I hope that this awful rain goes away soon; it’s hard to jump in this weather!

Keep riding
Hilary

You will all be pleased to hear the hedgehog babies are simply thriving. Sadie, at Hedgehog Row, says they opened their eyes for the first time yesterday!

There are two little girls and a little boy and apart from Sadie being very tired, the hedgehogs are doing really well. They get their last feed for the night at 2am, just like if they were with mum (who would then go out to find some tasty slugs and snails to munch on) and their first feed of the day at about 8am. If they were in a nest with mum she would then feed then throughout the day, so Sadie is having to feed them every couple of hours every day!

She says they are very lucky as so many young animals living in the wild will have been lost in this week's floods.

Check out this pic of the cattle grid on the track to Tippy's stable. Luckily she was tucked up in her stable when the worst of the rains came!