Welcome to the Grey Mare equestrian blog

Thinking harder about horses.

I’ve been around horses for most of my life and one of the slightly annoying things about that is that the longer you do it, the less certain you become about quite a lot of things. I can remember when we did things because that was simply how they were done and feeding, shoeing, turnout, veterinary treatment and training have all changed enormously over the years. Some ideas disappear for twenty years and then come back with a new name and usually a much bigger price tag, which I always find quite interesting.

I think that is probably where Grey Mare starts. Not with me pretending I know everything because I absolutely don’t, but with the fact that I have spent a very long time owning horses, riding them, rehabbing project horses, breeding them, competing them and worrying about them and I still find myself asking why we do quite so many of the things we do.

I’m Henrietta Forrest and I’ve spent most of my life around horses, riding them, owning them, breeding them and competing them. At the moment I have six, ranging from youngsters to retirees, and between them they are very good at reminding me that however sensible a plan looks on paper, horses don’t always feel obliged to cooperate with it. I have also run a small livery yard on our farm in Scotland for over 20 years now, so over the years I have seen a fair few horses and a fair few different ways of doing things.

I also love researching a subject once something catches my interest. One of the things I really enjoy now is just how much information is there if you are prepared to go looking for it, and I can quite happily disappear down all sorts of rabbit holes following research papers, veterinary information, old ideas, new ideas and the people who know far more about a subject than I do.

Quite often that is where a piece starts for me - with one question that leads to another and then another until I have enough information to work out what I actually think about it - although often it leaves me with more questions than answers!

That doesn’t mean I think everything horse people have done for years is wrong, far from it - a lot of commonsense around horses seems to have disappeared. There are plenty of great horsemen and women who knew an enormous amount long before there was a research paper to back them up. But equally there are things we have all accepted because everyone else did and I looking back now we should have asked more questions.

Do horses really need all the things we are being sold, are some things genuinely better for them or just easier for us, and when everyone says welfare comes first does it really when money, competition or ambition gets involved? I also find myself wondering how much of what becomes accepted wisdom is actually based on anything much at all.

Those are the sort of things I want to write about here. There will be research and current equine issues and probably quite a lot of my own horses because they are the reason I think about most of this in the first place. I’ll talk to people who know far more than I do and I’ll look at what the evidence says where there is some, but I’ll also say when I think something doesn’t quite add up.

And lets face it there is plenty in the horse world to have an opinion about. Turnout, shoes, bits, supplements, feeding, breeding, competition, retirement, veterinary intervention and rider weight will all produce a fairly strong response if you mention them in the right group of horse people. I’m not particularly interested in getting cross for the sake of it, but I am interested in asking why we do something a certain way, who says it's better, whether it is actually better for the horse or whether we have all just got used to doing it.

And every now and again I think it is probably worth asking whether we are kidding ourselves a little.

Why Grey Mare? Well it seemed the obvious name really. I have owned plenty of mares, I am going grey and I am definately old enough to recognise when the horse world has reinvented something we were all doing twenty years ago.

So my ramblings on here will be a mix of the serious and the humourous. There will be horses, competitions, products, welfare, reviews, things that interest me and almost certainly things that drive me nuts. I won’t always be right and I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, which would be pretty dull anyway.

If something on here occasionally makes you think then that's great and I would love your comments.

Welcome to Grey Mare.

Still riding. Still learning. Still asking questions.

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