“The February tour got off to a flying start at South View last Sunday with Monty for the first time ever using a female demonstration rider: Intelligent Horsemanship Recommended Associate, Rosie Jones. Monty’s Western mount, Jays MasterCopy of the Mendip Stud, was in fine form, as was Pie. Nobody is going to say we look jaded or over trained, that’s for sure - when all the snow came down neither Pie nor I got any proper exercise for nearly two weeks and our waistlines expanded just a bit. Since then, we haven’t done any arena practice, we’ve just had a lovely time going out on rides and if there’s a gate to open or a reason to side pass or do a flying change, we’ll do it - otherwise we’ve just enjoyed the scenery and spending the time together. Pie was bang on form for his TREC routine to the Ski Sunday music and his newly released DVD ‘A Slice of American Pie’ showing the ups (and downs) of his career is proving really popular. He really has become a personality in his right.

Whether our new Intelligent Horsemanship horse, Harvey, is going to prove a success story is another matter entirely. After a very promising start as a supreme champion three-year-old, something went badly wrong in Harvey’s world and he’s come to join us now as a five-year-old and with a real ‘bad boy’ reputation. The professional producers weren’t able to get him into the show ring last year. He rears! He bites! He won’t load into the horsebox! He won’t be caught! He naps! Recommended Associate Rosie Jones has been working with him for a couple of weeks and brought him along to the first demonstration to show us how he was getting along. We were amazed how good he was. The only photo I have of him is him warming up in the fog the night before South View. It looks like it should be captioned “Who is this mystery horse and rider?!” Best of all with Harvey is that Rosie is working to improve on his talents for every single demonstration. Goodness knows what they’ll be doing at Keysoe in Bedfordshire!

This coming Sunday we’ll be in Kent, the next week and the next week in Somerset where talking of ‘Behaving Badly’ we have the lovely actor, Martin Clunes, coming along with his horse, Chester. Martin expressed great excitement about his Horse Whispering debut for the Intelligent Horsemanship members at The Hand Equestrian Centre, near Clevedon taking place on 26th February. He says: "I'm really looking forward to bringing my horse Chester to see the great man and hopefully join up with him... The horse that is, not Monty."

The lovely Irish giants, Corky and Banksy are having some time off in a great paddock on the side of the hill, they can build up and get agile in their own time before we start to make summer plans for them. I can’t believe my luck at what nice horses they are turning out to be. We’ll keep everyone informed through the Listening Post magazine what they get up to together with all the success stories of the IH Recommended Associates and educational articles. These new horses are teaching me all the time. The challenges of finding the right saddles for them, the best nutrition for each individual, you’ll already know I’m pretty obsessive about therapies to guard against muscle soreness or tension, the list goes on and on ... So in the coming weeks Monty and I are in various meetings with leaders in the field (so to speak) to try and do the best possible job we can for these lovely animals - and we’ll be sure to pass what we find on to you!”