In The Saddle with Anita Marsh: One step closer to the dreaded winter months

For equestrians this can only mean one thing – we are closer to the dreaded winter.

Now, I realise many of you who don’t have horses might love winter.

All the hot chocolates by the fire and wrapping up inside does sound lovely. For those of us with horses though it’s just plain misery.

We get up in the dark and rarely see our horses in the light, apart from weekends.

Everything is caked in mud and that includes our horses.

We are always donning the wellies with thick socks, swapping one wet coat for another, as we trudge about in cold weather.

Then we have to deal with the water situation. That’s likely frozen taps and frozen water troughs.

Bashing away at the 3 inch ice with anything you can grab around the yard. Usually with a bit of swearing thrown in for good luck.

Head torches, fumbling around trying to sort wet rugs on horses and only able to see your breath.

Winter isn’t any fun for us.

It’s expensive with mucking out and hay bills and our time is mainly spent stuffing all the hay nets.

Then there are the days where you can’t ride because the weather is bad on the weekend. Honestly, I absolutely dread it.

The work, the lack of riding, the money. I just want to fast forward to spring.

So, why do we do it? It’s probably a question most equestrians ask themselves a hundred times in winter.

We all know what the answer is though. We do it because we love horses.

We love their smell, we love burying our faces in their manes and we are quite simply obsessed.

I always say if you were to chop me up you would see ‘horses’ stamped through my body like a piece of rock at the seaside.

It’s that obsession and love that carry us through the bleak winters.

If you see an equestrian full of mud, hay and wet-through, smelling of eau de horse in the supermarket, please feel free to buy us a bottle of wine.

We’ve likely been up since 5am trudging through mud to feed and look after our equine buddies. We probably can’t afford wine after paying our horse feed bill.

Would I recommend keeping horses? Absolutely. Would I be without my horses? No way.

It’s an addiction, for sure, but I can’t imagine this much happiness would come from any other hobby.

I absolutely live for them. My whole life is geared up around then. I don’t take holidays because of them and quite frankly I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let’s not get into whether it’s a hobby or a lifestyle. That’s a whole other equestrian column in itself. I’ll save that one for another day.

Thank you for reading my equestrian column. You can see more of the antics I get up to with my three horses by following ‘In The Saddle-Anita Marsh’ on Facebook.

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