A broken ankle but progress all the same

Where to begin with this one. It's been a few weeks since I last blogged about home life as there has been far more exciting things going on like crewing at the World Championships!

I made a start on building my field shelter before I went away and with the Autumn weather hitting hard and seemingly early this year, all my free time went into getting that finished. I promised I'd write a full build blog on that, with breakdowns on materials, designs, pitfalls etc but I can't really do that until it's finished and sadly, with my now broken ankle (coming to that) the completion is on hold!

Luckily, it's in a usable state already and the horses have been spending lots of time in there so I am really relieved! As with (I'm sure) most build projects, it's cost more than I anticipated and also taken longer! A lot of people said to me that they won't even use it but I think the reason a lot of people's horse's don't use field shelters is because they're often very small and I don't think horses actually like tight spaces - especially in a herd setting if they are worried about getting stuck inside. I very specifically designed mine with three entrances/exists so it's a much more open structure and I think that's been key. Anyway, I digress - point is, I think it's been worth all the hard work.

So the ankle - yeh not ideal! It happened last Thursday so a little over a week ago now. As you know, my horses are on a summer track system and we strip graze out the centre until the track gets taken down for the winter. We can't really keep it up as it just creates too much mud once the weather sets in. Anyway, I tend to move the fence on an every other day basis and I do vary the depth of the strip depending on how 'well' everyone is looking AKA how fat they are!

Anyway, so just like a normal day I was moving the fence but unfortunately my yard owner's horse rushed forward for the new grass and leapt onto the back of my heel sending me flying forwards and I've managed to break my ankle at the front!

Enter 'ripped of the internet ankle diagram' - it's my talus that's fractured.

Luckily, I've managed to get away with not needing it in plaster and have instead just got a moon boot. Also too, it's actually not been that excruciatingly painful - of course it was a lot of pain when it happened and for the first few days whilst there was so much swelling but now it's quite tolerable. I'm feeling pretty hopeful it's going to be more like 4 weeks to get back to riding rather than 6 - but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

So on the Friday, the exact day after the break, I had the saddler (Amy) coming out for the Autumn checks and I decided to go ahead with the fit as I was a little worried about Chip. In his last physio session Siobhan had picked up a new area of soreness at the base of his wither - but on his spine not behind his shoulder blades. We both had looked at his saddle and there was no way it was touching his spine anywhere near so we couldn't work it out.

Anyway, even though at this stage I was still extremely hobbly and didn't know how long it would be before I could ride again I really wanted to get his saddle checked in particular and also Raine's because the grand plan is still to aim for the Christmas pleasure ride, even if we might be 4-6 weeks behind schedule on her backing and training...

So Amy came out and helped me manoeuvre horses to where they needed to be to have their saddles checked and we played a fun game of musical saddles!

After much discussion and trying on of different trees we swapped Chip into the saddle that Fern had been using. Slightly narrower but also a different panel design. Fern needed to move to a flatter tree as hers was now bridging and Raine also is going to share the same saddle as Fern. My original Jeremy Rudge endurance saddle is now relaxing in the tack room as no one is needing that slimline panel right now. I was trying to work out how many hours or thousands of kms I've ridden in that saddle because I used to ride both Chip and Spice in it. It must be nearing 3,000km and in terms of hours I'd say well over 10,000 now... Crazy that it looks as good as the day I got it still! I have looked after it of course with leather care but it's absolutely testimony to the craftsmanship and quality or the leather.

So that was a really worthwhile visit and totally worth the pain of being upright on my ankle just the day after as I had the piece of mind to get cracking (once I could) for the autumn.

The week then progressed as stressfully as it began as my boyfriend and I moved in together. He has moved to my neck of the woods so I can still be near the horses, which of course I am very grateful for, but it turns out he is not very organised at all and whilst I'm not an OCD cleaning person by any means, I seemingly can't quite cope living in chaos - or maybe my tolerance level is a bit lower whilst I'm hobbling around. Either way, it's been a full on week and I could have done with having two working legs to help make everything go a bit more smoothly.

To add to my 'insistence to achieve all things simultaneously' I also arranged to have the first (of I sadly I think a few) deliveries of hardcore to top of the loafing area. The crazy amount of rain we had this past week meant that the horses were just pulling the mud in with them and so the loafing area was starting to resemble the rest of the field - brown!

Due to access the largest lorry we can get in is a 4-wheeler which means an 8tn capacity. I've persuaded my boyfriend that he'd like to use his Sunday morning to help spread that as I think my contribution is going to be pretty feeble...

Chip and Fern also had their 6-weekly physio appointment (whilst the delivery driver came to drop off the hardcore) on Friday. As they'd both had a whole week off with my ankle I was interested to see how they would be and whilst I couldn't (for obvious reasons) trot them up as I usually would, Siobhan was largely happy with them both. One of the biggest indicators is their reception to the treatment as they are both quick to let us know when something is uncomfortable but they both were super relaxed and enjoyed some autumn sunshine and some 1-2-1 time. I do have the offer from a friend to get them both ridden whilst I'm off but I'm actually quite liking the idea of them having some down time. I really don't think it does them any harm to have some breaks and they obviously live out 24/7 so it's not as if they don't get to move around all day anyway.

I am hopeful that by next weekend I'll be stable enough to start long reining and lunging again. I really hope so anyway as I'm so eager to get going with Raine. Anyway, I'll just be guided by my pain levels.

In other news I also had to cancel the endurance ride that I organise in central Milton Keynes due to run on the 20th October. I spoke with the committee to see if anyone could take it on as it's a pretty technical route to mark. I usually run 30km to one day and then 10km the next day to mark the route and I knew it was a bit of an ask to find someone to take on that responsibility. Whilst I think I might be able to hobble around the arena for 10 mins I'm definitely not up for running those distances with the weight of the chalk spray paint (that we use to mark the spray arrows on the ground) in just two weeks time. Very sadly, no one would commit and so the last ride of the UK season has been cancelled!

The final piece of exciting news is that my long term sponsors, Reincoat have now given me a discount code so that all of you can enjoy 10% off my favourite coats too! They have the Lite (I think great for above 10C) and the Pro (perfect for anything colder than that) and they are 100% waterproof and perfect for the yard and riding and actually anything else you want to do outside! My code is BELLA10 and you just have to checkout directly with Reincoat to access the saving.

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