"Sorry for the absence, my mother passed away and I have needed some time to recover from this sad loss. Mooiman and I missed the planned demonstration we were to do at Addington Manor during the Brightwells Auction because of my recent bereavement. Sometimes things happen and you suddenly take a step back and reevaluate the importance of life. 

On the home front, all of a sudden winter is upon us. I feel I have gone back in time to the beginning of the year! Taps are frozen and we've got hose pipes coming from the utility room to the stables; the walker's doing overtime and we are catching up on all those little jobs that never get done like oiling the tack, pulling manes, clipping, de-cobwebbing and cuddling the newly weaned baby horses.

Project pony

A new project recently arrived for me to ride. He is seven year old Ferdie who has come from Holland and been scoring 69% over there. We think he will be a very interesting prospect for an ambitious young rider to enjoy some medium level success. Barinka hfd qualified in her first two outings for the winter regionals, so we more to look forward to after the Christmas break.

Mooiman is enjoying a little rest period now and I'll lighten his work for a few weeks - just enough for him to stay physically fit without losing muscle tone, so short sessions with rhythm changes with collection and loosening work for very short periods, then a nice long hack around the arena is his current regime.  

With Santana hfd making the highest price at the Equine Elite Auction we have been able to introduce some new blood to the stallion barn for the 2011 season. The new boy is a coloured stallion called Spyder hfd. He is AES Licensed by Sanyo x Sambuco B. He's a beautiful coloured German Warmblood with great breeding for both dressage and jumping.

The AES system explained

For those confused by the different terminology of the different studbooks, when referring to stallions successful at grading with the AES studbook, these are the categories:

Registered: This is the basic level of grading and normally young stallions attending their first grading would enter at this level if graded. Registered Grade stallions can cover up to 10 of their owner's mares per annum.

Licensed: At this level a stallion should be competing in age classes and can cover up to 30 mares per annum and strand at public stud.

Approved: This is the maximum level of grading and usually applies to stallions competing or that have competed at an International level. Also with proven offspring. Approved Grade stallions can cover an unlimited number of mares. Mooiman hfd is Approved.

Approved Elite: Stallions are given Elite status subject to the judges' discretion and based on proven competition and offspring success at the highest level.

The passports issued for the offspring are exactly the same and are equal in quality. 

Ongoing online wrangling 

In the blogosphere the war of words continues (the you-know-who blog realy unearthed a can of worms, or should I say a bucket of boa constrictors!). Any of you who read breeders thread regarding our new stallion Spyder hfd on the Horse & Hound forum can be reassured by the statement we made on the hfd Facebook page. We chose not to join the H&H debate as it didn't really carry any very interesting or thought provoking topics, but we did get quite a lot of free advertising for dear little Spyder. His message is well and truly on the airwaves - we have eight bookings for 2011 resulting from the forum.............GREAT!

Maybe we should all go on Jeremy Kyle? I might give him a call.

Meanwhile we keep our ponies warm, cosy, watered and fed. A little piece of advice: Don't forget to take the chill off water buckets - we don't want colicy ponies as well as these arctic temperatures. Keep warm everyone!"