Boing! "It's spring", said Zebedee

I wonder if that title will mean anything at all to you people in other countries? :-)

Tia is sound today. She has had the day off, which she should have had yesterday with all the work she did on Friday, but I was just too keen to show her off to Nicola. She has a scab on the back of her pastern today on the foot she was lame on, which looks like a boot rub in spite of the gaiters. But at least that explains why she was a little off yesterday. Just in case, I took a skim off the front of her toe, to see if the white line had any fresh bruising and the answer was most definitely not. Which is good news.

Did I tell you that I may have found the injury which halted her racing career? She has a bald patch bigger than a ten pence piece on the bottom of her fetlock, behind where her ergot would be if she had any. Half way down the pastern there is a little bit of a scar and on the coronet band at the side of the heel a very slight mark hidden in the hair. Below the mark in the coronet band, now that the shoe is off and her foot is making its own shape, it is very clear that there is a deformity in the way the hoof is growing. At some point, that will have been a fairly serious injury which needed rest, which fits with the story. The reason I never noticed it before was that I thought it was mud fever - the scars have that scabby excess tissue on them that you sometimes get. I was puzzled that it didn't bleed when I picked it (like mud fever does, copiously!) and then I realised that it wasn't getting better either and it wasn't even mud fever, but an old wound.

Anyway, today I have had a friend who works far too hard all week for me to see much of her up to ride her horse here. She seemed to have a great time. Her horse, which hardly ever sees open grassland, certainly did, his face was SO happy. Tetley was on great form and as sound as a pound. He has got his extended trot back, which he couldn't do because of his hocks. It felt great - I was just playing with it while my friend rode her horse round a field we were in. I couldn't go with her because her horse was getting overexcited with the possibility of a race :-)

The saddle is performing better and better as it beds in. It is extremely secure to ride in and I am beginning to really like it. Tetley clearly loves it every bit as much as a treeless, which is something of a relief after spending that much money.

C

ps no, no, no! You are all in the wrong ballpark. You are thinking we are millionaires but we're not, we're just really ordinary people, ask Claire and Nicola. The secret of our lifestyle is that we never kept up with the Jones's. OK, we struck lucky with a very big house going dead cheap - but then again no-one else wanted it for 3 years so obviously we took a risk taking it on. But the key to living like we do now is to reach a lifestyle you are happy with and then STAY THERE. There isn't a designer label in my house, on my horse or on our driveway. We have a 7 year old Daewoo, a 5 year old Smart, a 30 year old landrover and a 17 year old lorry. We don't holiday in posh places - after all most of you know that our last trip was 5 days at Butlins!! Sure, we earned a lot of money compared to most people, but we didn't spend it, we banked it. And now we use it instead of having to go to work. Now, please don't get me wrong, I KNOW how privileged this makes me. I appreciate it every single day.

pps everyone in the UK will really really hate me when I tell you how I earned most of my money, trust me.

ppps my current work is unpaid, volunteer stuff, in fact it costs me money to do it.