This month marks a small anniversary of Aspire NewsBook – we are 1 year old 🙂 From myself and all all guest bloggers, I would like to thank every one of you dear readers for stopping by and making the sharing of this content worthwhile. The Aspire Equestrian coaching project is an ongoing adventure both…
The lovely Lindrick Livery, one of the yards where we go to run our Grassroots Clinics have kindly opened the places up for outside riders for our July clinic there. If you live nearby and would like to join us, please don’t hesitate. All levels of riders are welcome, the only requirement is that you want to…
“I thought you might be interested in my story” – the email said – “My name is Verity Smith, I’m a blind dressage rider and my goal is to represent team GB and go for gold in Rio 2016. In the lead up to London 2012, my horse died of cancer and I was involved…
Sadly horses can’t tell us if they are unhappy or in pain. And very often the pain has to be quite severe before we notice something is wrong, because it is the horse’s natural instinct to hide pain. In the wild pain equals weakness equals death. So very often small aches will go entirely unnoticed until it is…
It’s a question that plays a central role for most competitive riders. How to measure success. We live (and ride) in a world where one record score is chasing the next. I’m not just talking about that international lot either – even at local, regional, national level reports focus on “highest score of the day”,…
Last weekend Otis and I were very brave and entered our first Pre-Novice Event. I had walked the course at our last event and I felt it was within our capabilities. Our preparation didn`t go quite according to plan – but it rarely does with horses! Our BE90 at Mattingley was rained off a fortnight…
Yesterday a lovely family I know lost their beloved horse to this dreadful disease within 45 minutes. A few years ago, a riding centre I ran my training days at lost a few horses and had many suffering to some degree. There are many more cases around UK and Europe (more than 400 cases last autumn) and yet…
