Horse care and holiday cover

Booking a holiday when you have horses is a problem of its own. Cover is hard to find and harder to trust, and for most people it means leaning on the same tired favour from the same person on the yard, again.

This is the alternative: someone whose actual job it is, insured, and doing it your way.

What I cover

• Turning out and bringing in
• Mucking out and skipping out
• Haynets, hay and hard feed, made up to your instructions
• Water: buckets, troughs, and breaking the ice on them in winter
• Rugs on, off and changed as the weather turns
• Field, gate and fence checks
• Poo picking
• A proper look over every horse: legs, feet, eyes, appetite, droppings
• Holding for the farrier or the vet

Holiday cover

Full cover while you are away, by the day or by the week.

We do a handover on the yard first, so I have walked your routine in your own words: who goes out with who, who is on what feed, who is a nightmare to catch on a windy morning, and which gate does not shut properly unless you lift it.

One-off and regular visits

It does not have to be a holiday. A midday check when you are stuck at work, turnout on the mornings you cannot get there, someone to bring in before dark in December. Those are all bookable on their own, weekly or as they come up.

What I do not do

Clipping, plaiting and anything veterinary beyond routine observation are outside what I cover. If you need those, I would rather tell you now than improvise on the day.

Your yard, your way

Every yard does things differently, and not one of them thinks theirs is the odd one out. Yours gets written down at the handover and followed to the letter. I am not there to improve your system while you are in Spain.

If something is wrong

Your vet, your farrier and a second contact go on the sheet before you go, along with what you want done and what you would want ringing about at two in the morning.

If something is not right, you hear it from me before you hear it from anybody else on the yard.