Spring Newsletter 2024

Well like the signs of spring, this letter may be considered to be a little late, but as I’m sure you are all the same, it seems to be busier than ever just now. I think it’s the fact that weather is still being very challenging and everything seems to take longer in the wet and muddy conditions, on top of the nights just starting to draw out, so coaching is going on later, combined with endless online meetings that seem to be getting more regular of an evening – but we would not be happy if we were not all busy and gaining some positive momentum for the year ahead.
Again, we are seeing many equestrian sporting events being compromised by the endless wet conditions and it’s just so frustrating for everyone involved when they have had to cancel. It’s also again very difficult for riders to get horses fully prepared and conditioned for working on different terrain when we really have struggled to find cross country courses willing to open and most grass gallops still too wet to train on safely and without ruining them for the rest of the season. Using surfaces is all well and good but as we all know more horses sustain injury following sessions when suddenly working on very different ground to what they train on – and therefore the importance of carefully training on different types of terrain to fully condition horses for competing on grass events.

I like so many of you like to have horses out as much as possible all year round but it has been increasingly more and more difficult to try and save paddocks for the rest of the year and not end up with nothing more than a few mad baths!

My all-weather play pen system has been an absolute lifeline this winter and the horses have either been out in the field or in the play pens so have in effect been out nearly every day moving about and keeping their heads good rather than endless days in stables, but I know not everyone has been able to achieve this. It was certainly a great investment for my old arena surface and a bit of extra thought and effort to construct and has had a very positive impact on the horses’ well-being this winter. Do share all your winter tips with us on Facebook, let’s keep supporting each other as we drag ourselves out of winter and look forward to some warmer and drier days to come.

So, it’s actually only 10 weeks since our super Annual Course, even though it feels longer! We had a great course as always, there are already three reports written about this so if you haven’t yet do have a look at them, I always find it is great timing for this conference, to really kick start the year and go away full of inspiration and ideas for my coaching and training of the horses, and riders I know we all love these two days, and it’s certainly our most important get together of the year.

Following this, in February, I and a handful of&I members joined the “Horses Inside Out” two day conference, with our discounted tickets and an F&I table at the gala dinner. The two days did not disappoint; this conference always gives you endless food for thought and makes you really stop and re-assess all the horses you work with and makes you want to ensure you leave no stone unturned when things maybe do not seem to be just right. This year it was called “Growth and Development a Journey of a Lifetime” we were all well-educated by a great line up of speakers including Nicolas De Brauwere, MRCVS, Dr Sue Dyson, Dr Russell Mackechnie-Guire, Dr Chris Pearce, Dr Sebastian McBride, Dr Simon Curtis, Dr Meriel Moore-Colyer as well as top practitioners Richard Davison, Kelly Marks and Laura Tomlinson. They covered many topics here are a few:

• Can performance and longevity be predicted by assessment of confirmation?
• Understanding laterality, improving our training by understanding the science.
• The science behind training aids, pole work and other conditioning exercises.
• Dental problems in young horses, the relation to starting ridden work.
• Angular limb deformities and common developmental issues: how and when to intervene.

A really fascinating few days and some key aspects being brought up and I for one really feel so well informed after attending this conference, I will definitely be asking some of the presenters to do more for us in the future.
So, on that note, future F&I events, and there are lots of them. Tuesday 19th March we have the excellent Talland Study Day, this day is always a very useful day especially for people considering taking the Fellowship, but as always it is ideal for all members and a great chance to network and catch up with other members. We all know we all take away so much from Pammy’s days, so really looking forward to that. (let’s write something Tuesday night/Wednesday… )

Thursday 25th April 7pm (zoom) Managing your energy, organised by Liz Eaton, this looks like a great subject for us all to listen in on and I’m sure will benefit us and in turn our clients.

Monday 29th April is the Judy Harvey Study Day organised by the formidable Ann Bostock, this is a very privileged opportunity to spend the day at Judy’s. It’s a great day both for riders and spectators, often with opportunity for some to also do a little coaching for us all to discuss. Judy’s CV is phenomenal – if you do not know what this amazing lady is really all about you must do your homework and then you will appreciate just how privileged and lucky we are to have both Ann for organising this and Judy for hosting us again for this relaxed but very informative and inspiring day.

The next event on the calendar will be on Thursday 9th May at Badminton Course Walk with the brilliant Eric Smiley, it is again organised by super woman, Ann Bostock.

Tuesday 11th June we hop across water for the fabulous Irish Day organised by Faith Ponsonby and Brendan Bergin, including a visit to Marion Hughes, a prolific Olympic level competitor and breeder of the modern sport horse, and the Ballylinch Stud, home to one of the world’s leading sires Lope De Vega, so this will be another very privileged trip that money cannot buy. In addition to this we are hoping we may have an add-on day to this event to make it an even more worthwhile trip across, we will let everyone know as soon as we have more details on this.

Next event to this will be on Thursday 5th September and this is the annual course walk at Burghley Course Walk with Nick Turner, again organised by Ann Bostock.

This brings us onto our next 2-day F&I event running on the Monday 7th / Tuesday 8th October. A new F&I event, the “Equine Coach Assembly” will be held in Scotland at the Scottish National Equestrian Centre, Broxburn, near Edinburgh airport. Very exciting to have master coaches Ferdi Eilberg & John Ledingham. Day one is dressage orientated. Day two is jump orientated.

This event is going to be a very different format to many CPD days, involving three different zones to visit during the mornings with each one having a different approach to sharing of information.

These days will be as interactive as possible. With top presenters, F&I member Russell MacKechnie-Guire from Centaur Biomechanics will provide a great evidenced-based research approach, focusing on dressage and show jumping on each appropriate day. Alongside that we have two master trainers Ferdi Eilberg and John Ledingham for us to observe, evaluate and absorb their expertise and techniques. There will be more to these sessions than meets the eye, that’s all we are going to say for now.  We also have a section called Ready-Steady-Coach (for those of you that can remember the cooking programme), hosted by Sam York FBHS. This will have a similar theme, bringing a little bit of fun into coaching but with lots of serious discussions and identifying of useful coaching strategies and approaches behind it.

The Coaching Assembly will also host a gala dinner on the Monday evening, with after dinner speakers and a real Scottish experience.

This event has attracted strong interest and key sponsorship so far from F&I Association, BHS Scotland and Horse Scotland

Really excited about this event and great credit to Jen Morris who is leading the organisation and running of this event.

Just to ensure you all have the dates in your diary for the next major F&I event, the Annual Course at Addington Monday 6th / Tuesday 7th January 2025 as always, excellently organisated by Ann Bostock and the team.

Please stay in touch – I feel very strongly about you the members, and that you do have a voice, and you can feel comfortable to ask about anything as well as offer any other suggestions for the F&I committee, please email me or any of the F & I committee team.

Massive thanks yet again to the hard-working committee, who are endlessly working on behalf of us all in the F&I Association. A huge thank you to volunteer member Sam Champney-Warrener for looking after our Facebook page, and a special thank you to Alison and Jude, who really do put in endless hours of administration and organisation to keep everything running so smoothly.

Best wishes,

Sam

Sam York FBHS
F&I Chair