The newsletter is up on the site:

Autumn Newsletter

About to post it out to all the subscribers!

Here is the photo of Blythe, read her story in the Newsletter

I am always amazed at how it seems that every time we match a horse with a rider the horse teaches the rider exactly what they need to learn. I had two riders recently joining me at Mt Lyford for four days, and one rider rode our big St James horse, Rusty. Rusty is a sensitive, youngster who is reassured by confidence inspiring leadership, not strong leadership like his buddie Sam, but sensitive strength. There is a big difference. As it happened Rusty taught his rider to be a confidence inspiring leader for him. Well I heard it over and over. “He is just like my horse back in the States, and now I know what to do for them both.” How could we know that!!
Please write in any of your stories to me and I can add them to the newsletter and the websites. Everyone has a story to tell around horses.

Another photo.

Each end of year we have a Work for Rider’s end of year ride with an afternoon tea to finish. This year we had a lovely hot day, and Abi lead us up to the pond on one of our trails. We get up there and I see Abi instructing all the riders to take off their shoes and socks, saddles, and I am thinking this will be fun to watch! And it was. All the horses went into the pond and I saw Abi and Bash all but disappear into the deep water like real swimmers. Horses interestingly look almost like crocodiles when they swim with just their nostrils, eyes and ears on the surface of the water. They are strong swimmers and use their hooves to propel them through the water using a dog paddle action. As long as they dont panic horses can swim a long distance. In France in the Carmague they actually swim the horses in a herd across the waterways to get them in.
Looks like fun huh!!

Kate Tapley

Here is a letter from Heather one of a group of riders who came over from Australia recently.

Letter

Here is a snippet.

This was the day of our ‘big trek’. After grooming, saddling, and ground work we mounted and rode up the hill to Crystal Lake. We rode over alpine meadows, through pine forests and took in the fantastic views which were quite magical with the fresh snow. We had lunch at Crystal Lake, enjoyed chatting about ‘life’ in general and had some good ‘girl’ talk. We then had to walk the horses down the rough road for a short while, gave them a drink at the creek and then started our journey home.

This was a great day – we were just getting into the swing of it! After unsaddling,
grooming, feeding we gathered for another cuppa and another heart to heart talk
about what feelings can be brought up from the connection with horses.