22nd August, 2009 Give and take

Two more new and lovely customers towards the end of the week. Kelly has a delightful, steel grey, seven year old New Forest pony called Cassie who is sometimes a bit ambivalent about being caught. It was just a matter of honing Kelly's technique so that she could acknowledge Cassie's first offer to be caught. Yesterday saw me working on loading with a big Warmblood called Boris and his owner Maisie. He had taken to stepping backwards out of the trailer rather smartly whenever anyone approached from behind and we had to prove to him that we had no intention of doing anything horrid.

I've been keeping a bit of a note and worked out that I am giving at least 12 hours free advice per week often on the telephone in the evening when David is home and sometimes quite late or at weekends. This is the equivalent of working an extra day every week and much as I don't mind giving a bit of extra advice to current clients, the rest of it is going to have to stop or I will end up poor and single. Accordingly we would ask people to e-mail about their horse wherever they can and certainly not to phone after 8.30 p.m. I will put up some general advice, for free, on this and my main website http://www.logicalhorsemanship.co.uk In any event, it is really difficult to give specific advice about a specific horse without having met it, as there are so many variables to take into account. I would say that I can help with most horse problems and help to get it right first time and that it is always worth having a visit.

We have also been having at least six telephone calls a day from telemarketers and my original ploy of asking them for their home telephone number so that I could ring up and talk to them about their horse wasn't making me feel any better. As well as registering with the telephone preference service, I am now going to ask for the address of the complaints section of anyone that rings us and then threaten them with aprivate prosecution for behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Just call me Mrs Meldrew!!