A cold, windy and wet end to the week. We managed to avoid the hunt this morning and Julie sat on Buster for the first time (if the picture was bigger you'd see the rain lashing down!). He then went home again after a week here being long-reined out on the Forest. We all got taught yet another lesson in trailers - as the back bar in his trailer is fastened by two clips which allowed the bar to lift and the pony to leave backwards. Very fortunately no harm done and he did re-load fairly readily. This time we put the ramp up immediately after the back bar and before the front bar. Not very keen on this Sinclair trailer that his owners had hired for the day. The partition only moves to one side at the back, the front and back bars are thin and mean and allowed this to happen. No wonder that Ifor have stolen the market on value for money trailers - they are very easy to work with. The only problem I have heard about is the pins coming out of the bars when travelling. Some horses don't seem to like the skirting on the partitions either.
I sometimes feel like a Health and Safety officer and try to do a dynamic risk assessment whenever I'm working. It annoys me when purpose made equipment like this, lets me down. Fortunately Buster was wearing a New Zealand rug and went under the bar cleanly.
