June Round Up Of Hesteyri Horses

June began with more gorgeous arrivals at Little Hesteyri! We welcomed three faces in the first couple of days of the new month!

Firstly, a new sales livery, Shadow arrived! He’s a little Blagdon cob, standing at just 12.2hh so another little one but he has a really big heart! Shadow needed bringing back into work so we expected him to take some time but he surprised us by just having the best attitude! He loves to please, adores attention, has proved totally bomb proof with the most ridiculous machinery and he even pops a jump! 

We are a little bit in love with him as he seems to improve masses each time we get on him and is happy just being around people. We spent the whole time laughing when we got him and another livery, Jysar, into the arena for the first time! Check out the video for a good laugh!

The second little man we welcomed to the yard was the above mentioned: Jysar! Jysar is a Norwegian Fjord who came to be backed and sold! He’s the first Fjord we’ve had in so we were very excited and we just love him! He was brought over to the UK for a Flu vaccination experiment where he was barn kept with a herd and they were kept pretty feral.

When his owners first got him, he was a bit rude and bargy and was also afraid of combined spaces. He now loads and travels well, is super chilled in his stable and can be led to and from the field by anyone!

We knew that he had been sat on briefly in the past and ended up riding him in the first couple of days of him arriving. He proved to be really easy and lovely! Jysar copes amazingly with the big farm machinery we see around here, particularly in hay making season, and is lovely on the ground.

We took him in the arena for the first time with Shadow and he led the way for the majority of the time and was such a star! We are working on getting him a little bit more athletic, particularly with jumping! Watch to the end of the video above to see why!

Our next arrival was another sales livery, the beautiful Sparkle! Sparkle is a15.2hh warmblood x thoroughbred with a stunning jump and a great attitude to work! She has been an absolute treasure with us and has excelled in everything asked of her.

When she arrived, she had been doing light schooling and hadn’t jumped for several months. We took her to Moores Farm Competition Centre for their clear round jumping and intended to pop her in for the 70cm to ease her back into it. However, we had four horses with us and time flies when you’re rushed off your feet, so Sparkle was put straight in for the 80cm and did a lovely clear!

Sparks has had a few fun outings and worked hard in the arena at home too, including a fab grid work session, focusing on straightness.

Sales livery, Macaroon, was still with us for a lot of June to gain competition experience! He had an outing to a local show for Working Hunter and Novice Dressage, coming 2nd and 3rd!

His next outing was Dressage at Hartpury College where he did a Novice Dressage and his first Elementary! He did a stunning job of his Novice test for 63% and absolutely nailed the Elementary, fining the moves easy for 64%! He took home two 5th place rosettes.

Macaroon was sold to an amazing home after going beautifully in his viewing. We say horses choose their riders all the time but it couldn’t have been more obvious in this case! We hope to see Macaroon on the Eventing circuit in the future! 

We also still had backing livery, Charlie, for the first week in June. In his last week, he was riding out alone and not spooking at all, and he had also got used to the arena!

Throughout June, we’ve had lots of updates on what a perfect little prince he is, looking after various tiny tots!

https://www.horsemart.co.uk/horse_advice/charlie-backing-with-hesteyri-horses/1912

You can read all about Charlie’s progress in our previous blog for Horsemart!

Another arrival was Dotty, who was here for just a week! Dotty’s owner wanted her to come for a bit of intensive jump training as neither of them had much experience in the area.

The day that she was supposed to arrive, Dotty wouldn’t load! So we travelled to her yard and got her on board and then worked on her loading each day that she was with us.

We took Dotty to a show the day after she arrived and had to get to know her on the job, when we took her around a 70cm and 80cm class!

After a hack and a gridwork session at Little Hesteyri, Dotty went to Moores Farm Competition Centre and breezed around a course of 70cm and 80cm there too!

The day before her owner came to pick her up, we tried a new exercise to get her to steady to her fence.

The day her owner picked her up, we ran through the same exercises and then got her mum on board. They looked brilliant together and popped up a grid together beautifully!

Dotty’s owner is really happy with her and apparently Dotty’s loading well at home too!

Our next arrival was Charlie, another sales livery! Charlie is an ex point to pointer who had been off work for several months. So, naturally, the first time we rode him was bareback in a head collar down to the field!

Charlie is such a gem and is as genuine as they come! He’s a bit of a project, purely because of how unfit he is, so we’ve been doing lots of light work to help him muscle up. We briefly took him in the school to show just how amiable he is, he even popped a jump easy as anything!

He’s had a full body work up from sponsor, A.P.Equine & Canine Chiropractor, now he just needs to build muscle and the world is his oyster!

We had a session at Moores Farm Competition Centre with a client horse, Perez, who loves to jump but is rather inexperienced in this area. It was lovely to meet Perez and pop him around a couple of courses! He finished on an 80cm track and did a super job! He’s very careful and likes to take his rider to his fences but needs support when he gets there for his confidence.

We also practiced some self-carriage in the warm-up arena as he relies heavily on his rider keeping him in a frame so has quite a forced outline which isn’t ideal.

Our own horses have also had a fantastic month!

Tom has had a few sessions to Moores Farm Equestrian Centre where he jumped around 70cm courses. We also travelled to Hartpury for Prelim Dressage, his first competition with us! We were so proud of how nicely he warmed up and how hard he tried and can’t wait to get him out to more Dressage soon!

He’s a bit full of beans at the moment because his schooling sessions at home have had to drop back a little with how busy we’ve been! We will be aiming to up his work load again in July so look forward to that!

Swift has also had a couple of competitions and done plenty of schooling at home too. Her first outing in well over a year was to a local show where she did a Prelim Dressage test. Swift had been standing around all day as many of our classes clashed, she ended up going into her test with no warm-up, having not eve cantered! Still, she tried really hard and went home with 5th place!

We also entered her in a Prelim at Hartpury and she was a really good girl, though she had the opposite problem and warmed in too much, ending up a bit tired for her test!

Rose is feeling amazing and has just had a couple of treatments from our sponsor, A.P.Equine & Canine McTimoney Chiropractor so is on good form!

Rose had an outing to Moores around 80cm and 90cm and was a star! We look forward to getting her out to some competitions soon!

We are hugely grateful to our sponsors for their continued support!

We received some more fly veils from Gatehouse Hats and ran a prize draw alongside them to win one!

We also received a whole box of goodies from Farm & Stable Supplies including Kurasyn, their joint supplement and SynBioVit, a prebiotic to aid the gut, along with some branded clothing and buckets!

We were lucky to receive several tubs and bottles of Silverfeet and are so glad that they have chosen to continue the support that they gave us last year!

Last but certainly not least, we had a very excitement shipment from Horsemart which included our branded clothing!

Our biggest event of June was probably Meg getting married! This, of course, incorporated horses! 

Rowan and Phoenix went down the aisle with the team and were an integral part of the wedding.

Rowan is 26 and is the pony both of us learned to ride on. He has mopped up many tears and looked after us when we needed him!

Phoenix is 18 and was Meg’s best friend as a teenager, just about getting her through school

and out the other side! 

Both of the ponies scrubbed up well and seemed to shine for the occasion! Huge thank you to everyone involved in making the day so special! Big mention to Lucy and Janine who helped scrub them up! Lucy even chalked Phoenix’ sock and they both looked so smart!

So that’s all from June, let us know what you’ve been up to!