Hi guys

Sarah and Tippy here:

We've got copies of the new look, tack box size H+P in the office!! (And some of you lucky subscribers might have by now too - depends on your postal service!)

For everyone else - just a few more days to go before you too can get your hands on one totally cool mag. We've been very busy talking to you peeps and finding out exactly what you'd like to see in it, so I'm sure you're going to love it... All very exciting!

Hi guys

Laura here:

Don't forget, The Brooke is urging us all to give our messages of support and remember Horse Heroes, past and present, in celebration of World Animal Day, this Sunday, October 4.

To mark the occasion, the charity is planning a tribute at the Animals in War Memorial in London to share the messages received for these often forgotten heroes.

During the First World War, horses, mules and donkeys served on the front alongside people supplying food, water and ammunition to the soldiers. Today horses, ponies and donkey are still helping us humans survive in many parts of the developing world.

It's in fact the plight of the war horse which inspired the formation of The Brooke. In the 1930s, a Mrs Dorothy Brooke, whilst living in Cairo, Egypt, saw many of the British war horses who’d been abandoned when they were no longer needed. Mrs Brooke was appalled and wrote into the Morning Post newspaper about what she had seen. Her letter raised £1,000 (which was a lot of money in those days) and she saved 5,000 horses and set up the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital, which still operates today - as The Brooke - 75 years on.

So show your respect and celebrate the important role of working horses, donkeys and mules please visit www.thebrooke.org for more.

Hi from Hannah and Maisy!

It took an hour and a half to get to the PC Endurance Championships. We slept over in our tent at the competition.

On the evening before the ride started, me and my friends; Kathryn, Katie and Bryony all went on to the cross country course and played around the jumps. We then had a barbeque and we had cooked marshmallows!!! YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After all the marshmallows me and my friends all went onto the cross country again and we went for miles.

On our way back Kathryn thought that something was following us. When she said this Katie and I started to get pretty scared that something was following us! We didn't get back from our adventure until ten past ten! Everyone was waiting to go to bed.

The next morning I got up at half past seven in the morning. I had to have breakfast quite early so I was in time to get ready to vet at eight thirty, which meant I had one hour to get ready.

When I was ready to vet my escorts were already there. They both passed as did Gemma (my sister) and I. Finally, I set of for my three and a half hour ride.

Ready for the off!

The ride was fantastic and very fast. The weather was just right as it was sunny but not too hot. We went round an old airfield and we met Mum twice who sloshed our ponies down with water and gave me drinks and fruit cake to keep me going. It's very hard work to trot for all those kms!

When I finally got back from my ride I was in a rush to lower my pony's heart rate to be lower than sixty beats a second. We have to wash the ponies down and walk them round and round to lower their heart rates as quickly as possible. Your pony's recovery heart rate is taken into account when points are awarded to work out the winners. I went to the vets and passed with a heart rate of 42 - which is really good!

A while later Gemma came in on Kizzie and all the rush began again. When she came back from the vets she was very upset as Kizzie had failed the vetting. She was lame!

At the presentations I was 5th individually in the Novice Junior (under 13s) and my team was 1st. Gemma's team was 2nd in the Senior Open even though she was eliminated. There were 13 teams altogether from all over the country. Some had had a five and a half hour drive from Yorkshire to come! We are now planning our rides for next year's championships.

Hannah and Gemma with their awards.

Hannah and her rosettes

Hey Everyone!

Hilary here:

Wow, we’re here at HOYS! We’re sitting in our room right now waiting to watch our team in the Mounted Games. We’ve already done one performance on Wednesday and one on Thursday night and everything is going really well! The atmosphere is electric and it’s only Friday!

Everyone loves the music (which changed ever so slightly since the article in H+P) and we’re all singing along. It’s really funny to see everyone’s faces when we walk past them in our costumes but it also gives you this thrill from hearing everyone clap when you perform a tricky movement. The horses look brill too; there are all sorts on them now, from glitter to glow!

It’s so great being here. We’ve all got blue wristbands and it’s so much fun using them to get everywhere around the show. We have walked past Robert Whitaker and Geoff Billington already and we expect to see more during the weekend. We are really close to the International Stable Yard and so we see a lot of the horses when we go for our morning hack. We are also stabled near Daniel Naprous (Luke is directly opposite one of his horses!) which is also pretty amazing!

The shopping is HUGE! We saw the area before all the shops were put in and it is unbelievable that they managed to fit all those stands in that space!

We all get very excited every time we get dressed for our next performance and we go into the arena with HUGE grins on our faces. It’s so much fun that the only bad bit will be going back home!

Hey folks

Laura here:

Well peeps you can now rest happy knowing that it’s not just us lot who fall off. Poor old John Whitaker will be laid up for a few weeks after he broke his ankle when he fell off his top horse Peppermill, at a comp last week. Get well soon John!

I don’t know about your fave ponies but McVity is getting very confused. It was so warm at home yesterday that he was allowed out in the field without his rug on and now he’s wondering how winter has passed so quickly and provided him with so little mud to splash in! Poor boy. But don’t panic Mac, it’s Britain so it’s bound to rain again soon enough and then there will be lots of mud for you to get messy in!

TTFN!

Laura