19/09/2026
I know. It’s been far too long since our last post.
I’d love to give you a profound reason for that, but honestly I’m spectacularly disorganised, and this year in particular I took on far too many projects, combined with the extra work a long, hard summer produces for pretty much any business that relies on British weather. There are never enough hours in the day, and my social battery is definitely not made by Duracell.
So, yes, we are still here. Very much here. We’ve just been considerably better at actually doing things than remembering to post about them.
But let’s not get hung up on the negatives. Instead, let’s jump straight into the motto I’ve now stolen from the Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA):
“It’s what you can do.”
It is the RDA motto, but increasingly I think it’s a pretty good motto for horses, riding schools and life in general.
For those who are new here, or who simply forgot we existed during our recent social media ghosting phase, a little bit about us.
We’re a slightly odd little set-up, and actually, I think that’s one of our strengths.
We have some incredible horses and ponies, each with their own strengths, quirks, skills and, of course, limitations. We have riders and learners from completely different backgrounds, abilities and starting points. And we have a team who genuinely care about finding out what someone can do, rather than getting hung up on what they can’t.
This year we’ve watched riders achieve things they once might not have thought possible. We’ve watched young people who struggled in traditional education discover skills, confidence and ideas for their futures. We’ve watched nervous riders find their feet, experienced riders discover there’s an awful lot more to “the basics” than they realised and, of course, our little RDA competition team once again smashed it out of the park.
And importantly, as always, we’ve learnt a huge amount ourselves.
That’s probably one of my favourite things about horses. The more you learn, the more you realise how much you don’t know.
Some of the best horse people I know are the ones who never assume they have all the answers.
There is always more to learn, and that means listening, adapting and being open to different perspectives. Learning from the horses. Learning from the professionals. And sometimes learning from the kid who thought they knew nothing, but had actually worked something out the rest of us hadn’t.
So that’s what we want to keep doing.
Learning. Adapting. Asking questions. Teaching the why, not just the how. Looking at the individual, looking at the horse and problem-solving what’s actually in front of us, rather than just sticking to the book.
And I think as an industry we could all do a little more of that. Celebrate people’s achievements. Help them work out where they want to go next. Remember that one snapshot rarely tells us very much about the horse or rider in front of us. And focus a little more on what people can do than what they can’t.
We don’t need to be everything to everybody. We don’t need to know everything or be good at all of it.
We just want to be really bloody good at what we can do, and celebrate every milestone along the way.
Whether that’s finally understanding how to use your outside rein, winning at the RDA Nationals, finding your way back into education or simply feeling confident enough to sit on a pony.
Because one person’s tiny achievement might be someone else’s absolutely enormous one.
It’s what you can do.
And perhaps, in our case, what we can do is get slightly better at remembering to post about it.
And for those who managed to read all of this rambling essay, let us know you finished it by telling us, what colour is this pony 🤔
