I’ve also been very slack about bike riding this year, just 700 miles. But if I want at any time between Kirsty and I there are enough bikes in working order that I can get out for a ride. Only laziness and availability of alternatives is stopping me from setting to the inner tubes with the Tip Top or rebuilding a wheel, the work of but an evening, with beer.

But now it turns out that Monster has a “bog spavin on her hock”. This means two things.

Firstly the horse world really can compete with mountain biking for impenetrable jargon.

Secondly the bloody thing can’t be ridden for 6 weeks. I could get a custom frame built and made up in less time. Provided it’s not a Hunter or a Jones, obviously. The decision whether to ride or not is out of my hands. Like a child hoarding toys, when you can’t have something what do you want? That’s right, what you can’t have.

Just as cycling is always better larking about with mates so is the horse riding and this is the time of year to be enjoying riding – start when crops come in, stop when lambs come out. When the bloody thing comes right the first two weeks are ‘light work only’ i.e. on my own, and by then the season will be over. We’re missing Boxing Day, and at least three meets in what I like to call hedge country. A joint favourite of Monster and I.

Kirsty used to have a horse that went lame, and I was always sympathetic, but now I know just how frustrating it is I realise that my sympathy always fell short of the mark.

She not that sympathetic that I can call on Mabel as a second string though. Mabel is too young and inexperienced to borrow, so pleas of “oh go on, let me take Mabel, we can do a non-jumping meet, we’ll be good” are falling on deaf ears. Actually even if she did call my bluff and say I could take Mabel then I might have to do an about face, because, well, she’s just not Monster.

I always used to offer her Monster to ride when her old horse went lame, so right now I fully understand why she used to turn it down. It’s not like a borrowing a bike. No matter how old and worn and just right and yours a bike gets it’s still ‘just a bike’.

Half the fun of riding a horse is riding “that” horse because you know that you’ve forged a relationship and it’s going to jump that hedge because it’s you that have asked it and over the years it has come to trust you and you’re actually a team.

I always used to say last winter that even when I was riding the horse every weekend I was still a cyclist underneath. Now I’m not so sure. At least I know which meets will be good to follow by bike – I’m not fast enough across country on foot or shanks-pony to lay the trail – so maybe I can still go up and watch and crave sympathy from 40 odd people.

That said, ‘throwing a horse over a hedge’ and ‘throwing a bike over a hedge’ convey the same intent, but you just know that one is a lot less glamorous and far more literal than the other.

Monster is obviously pissed off too. Here I am a forty-something man having to cuddle and re-assure half a ton of meat to try and cheer the bloody thing up!

I am a firm believer that horses should be treated as horse, not expensive china, and should be turned out in all weathers and at all times of year. Obviously you need to rug it appropriately, but restricting turn out to protect “my little precious” is not my ethos.

However it turns out that oh-so-tough Irish hunter, Monster, also has a caveat, and that is “but only if the horse wants to go out”.

Ever since I got this creature, born and raised on the Emerald Isle, a land not noted for it’s dryness she has hated rain or cold and has been a bit, ahem, wet, about staying out.

As we are now in one of the wettest winters since horse-ownership began turn-out has already been heavily restricted, but it now transpires that even two hours twice a week is too much for her to bear. She is obviously pacing to come in, and twice now I have brought her in with minor lameness. The irony is that this has caused her to miss two weekends hunting, which she longs to do whatever the weather.

Whatever my opinion on winter turn out that of the horse must come first, and if Monster wants to stay in, then she can stay in.

Hunt buttons are awarded for services to the hunt. I received mine last night from the Vale of Lune Harriers for my work on the hunt website. Those readers who hunt will appreciate how proud I am of this.

I recently had a day of mountain bike skills training with Ed Oxley of Great Rock.

[Image copyright and courtesy Ed Oxley]

A lot of what I had to learn was about fore/aft balance and how, for too long I’ve been leaning too far off the back of the bike. I had to learn to have my weight forward, and shift it back at the right point.

Sound familiar?

It should do.

The impact on my horse-riding has been immediately noticeable.

Four Legs

[Image copyright and courtesy Hooves-R-Us]

No longer worried about my position I’m now able to better judge if Monster will be overfaced, and I’m not unbalancing her. This season she is really coming on.

My husband lent me his piebald to go hunting. I can see why he loves her now.