Liz Taylor

The Endurance season is in full swing

The endurance season is in full swing, but unfortunately I am on an enforced break, due to Karaanza injuring her Suspensory in training for a 120km**. Kara is getting the nickname ‘sick note’ at home, and I hope to turn this around and have her back racing as soon as she’s had her rest!

Meanwhile I am being kept busy with SG Enigmatika who has just returned from being broken in by Ann and Chris Hooley. ‘Ennie’ is a 5yr old Russian x Polish Arab I bought as a yearling, she was a weak and backwards youngster who needed time before being introduced into the world of Endurance, you also can’t do much with a 4 year old and I don’t see the point of rushing young endurance horses, I like them to be big and strong enough to take the work before we do too much with them, so consequently Ennie was put in foal at 3 (to Shuwaiman Al Bahrain, himself a 120km endurance stallion) and produced me a gorgeous little colt we named Miyaz. I would like Miyaz to be our first homebred to race at 160km level… watch this space!

Chris and Ann did a fantastic job with Ennie, she has come back a confident, trusting, well balanced youngster who seems (so far!!) to be taking everything in her stride. My ultimate aim is that Ennie will take over from Falaina and Karaanza and also be a very successful endurance horse – so I thought I could diary her progress on here, from breaking to 100 miles…The Diaries!

Our first step with her is to strengthen her up and get some schooling under her belt – she’s still at the wobbly baby stage…if her head goes one way, her body swings the other! So she is doing a bit of light schooling as well as hacking out to see the world. So far she has encountered cars, scooters, bikes and barking dogs without too much of an issue, the scariest thing we came across was a horse in a full Boet rug, her eyes were out on stalks!!!
On her first ride into the woods I took her down the wrong track, and we ended up pushing through undergrowth that was knee high and stepping over fallen trees, she did very well, which is encouraging as we sometimes have to encounter this on Endurance rides!
She’s obviously very unfit, so our time out is limited to an hour of mainly walking with some trotting, she lost a bit of weight when she was away, but is now starting to put the condition back on with the Alfa-A and Fibremix Complement.

We are aiming to take her to her first in-hand show in June as I think it’s important for them to get used to going out and doing things, before they are expected to go to an endurance ride and behave impeccably in a strange environment with other horses going in all directions. I am also toying with the idea of taking Miyaz to the Young horse futurity classes as some of them now have an Endurance class, he looks fantastic and his Alfa-A and Fibremix Complement is giving him real shine to his coat and a lovely covering… I’ll see if I’m brave enough to take a yearling out in public!!

Liz

28th May 2009