19/09/2026
So I have removed the video of Smushy at Hartpury as due to the number of negative comments FB took it on itself to spread it far and wide and number one people judging my horse's happiness on 1 min of seeing us together upsets me and number two if they are concerned about our lack of harmony, choosing to represent themselves with a judgemental and negative attitude is non harmonious to the world collective and I am not promoting that here.
Speak with kindness, speak with care, comment with consideration for how you are representing yourself and your way of communicating with the world. It you want to suggest improvements go ahead but do so kindly please.
For those who are worried about my horses happiness here he is in his field with his friends having a weekend off while I am in Sweden.
To answer a few questions, Smushy was bred in Portugal, trained in Spain and was sold to England when his nervous hot energy prevented him progressing in his training. He came to England, was gelded and had a year or so at sales livery working on restoring calm and balance to his life.
I rode him and fell head over heels with him and renamed him Mr Incredible.
My riding is mostly self taught and Smushy was my school master for improve my riding and I quickly learnt that riding a horse with more knowledge then me was one thing and improving his way of going and schooling him at that level was another. So to be honest we have the occasional lesson and muddle through.
He is primarily a pet first, then my riding horse and a demo/show horse last. He had done approximately 15 shows in the 8 years we have been together.
Hartpury was his first outing this year and we had 10 mins in the arena on Saturday evening and directly into our music on Sunday evening with less warmup then I would have liked due to needing to warm Teddy up and having 12 mins between horses with Teddy before Smushy. Our arena at home is 18mx30m outdoors. The Hartpury arena is 4 times the size and quite imposing with the crowd above you.
His piaffe work is a little hit and miss I spent a long time creating calmness and a small step and can work with that up to a full athletic step this particular work was a little flat but to be honest I'm more pleased with that then his stress piaffe where he offers it instead of anything else. I had a bit too much music and kept asking when he lost rhythm so that's on me but to be honest I'm still proud that we can try.
I am very much a progression over perfection and not in the way of horse training that repeats exercises until perfect, I like to challenge myself and see what we can accomplish. Smushy gets a varied work load, lots of downtime, hacks, has days we work on pony yoga and stretching, days we work on our collection and a little of lots in-between. It's doesn't produce such tidy work but so be it. I'm happy to share honestly where we are at and am super grateful to Smushy for accepting me and working with me and being a part of my life.
Blessings to all x
