Towards the end of last week, I recieved a lovely letter from one of my customers thanking me for my help and advice for her pony, here is a short extract from it.

“Your knowledge and advice on the actions of the bit, the benefits from each bit and how mouth conformation affects bitting were invaluable. Your customer service is excellent, your product knowledge instills confidence, and I would without doubt recommend you to anyone.”

Needless to say, I am very proud of myself!

Oh it is good to be home! I had a good time and met some lovely traders and customers but it is always nice to come back to the horses. Paddy (the patterdale terrier) made a guest appearance on the trade stand on Saturday and Sunday courtesy of my good friend Tina who acted as his driver. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and has spent most of today in bed recovering. I will be spending most of the rest of today and tomorrow cleaning the stand etc as we were all in a gravelled area and everything got covered in dust.
On a good note, I thoroughly enjoyed the champs and it was good to see customers face to face again – thank you to everyone who stopped by for some advice and a chat.
Horseball – how fantastic is horseball ?! I had never seen it before but I am definately a fan – there were two matches every evening and it was absolutely unbelievable to watch – such skill from the horses and riders with some amazing moves and control. The british team narrowly missed out on a medal and I have to say my favourite horse was our number 4. I have never seen horse sport like this – it was amazing.

Currently busy making last minute preparations to travel to the championships at Bishop Burton. It should be a really good week so I am very much looking forward to it.

HBH is officially one year old tomorrow, the 22nd of July. What a year!! It has been a mixture of highs and lows, both personally and professionally but overall a very good start for the business.
Thank you to all of my customers and I am looking forward to a succesful second year.

Well, it was the first Royal Festival of the Horse and it would appear that it has had a mixed reception. From a business point of view, myself and fellow traders were disappointed that the estimated footfall was clearly an overestimate. From a cameraderie point of view, I met some fantastic people (hello Jane & Clive from Smartrideruk.com – fantastic breakway safety stirrups, and Niall from equinecare.ie -Finish Line supplements) but from a personal point of view, it was a harsh weekend as Sixty, my 20 y.o IDxTB came down with laminitis!
Following lots of help from family, friends and the vet, he is on the road to recovery now hopefully (fingers crossed) but we are just taking each day one step (literally) at a time. I’ll keep you all posted on his progress.

I would like to say thank you to all of my new customers and to all of those previous customers who popped by for a chat with progress reports – its always good to hear how you are getting on.  I am going to be updating the testimonials page soon so if anyone has any stories or photos I would love to hear from you.

Following a customer complaint earlier today (my first complaint in all my years of business, which I am very unhappy about), I felt I needed to comment on the mouthpiece material for some Myler bits as it has become obvious to me today that not everyone understands sweet iron.

Not all Myler mouthpieces are made from sweet iron, some are stainless steel but those that are sweet iron (and all of the MB04SSC bits are, for example) will oxidise in use and this makes the arms of the mouthpiece give a rusty appearance. The rust does not flake off and is not harmful to the horse and indeed, all Myler bits with sweet iron mouthpieces are sold with tags which quote “This Myler bits mouthpiece is made of solid sweet iron which naturally oxidizes or rusts. Harmless to horses, it has a sweet taste and promotes salivation”.

If anyone has any comments on this, please let me know., thanks, Gail

What a fabulous weekend of competition and fun. It was great to see the likes of Rhett Bird, Richard Davison, Carl Hester and David Pincus. Some of my customers had excellent results and as I had help on the trade stand from the lovely Diane, I was able to pop out to the stables to do some bit fitting which was great. Next road trip is the Royal Festival of the Horse so I better start preparing quite soon.!

I’ll be at Hartpury on the 26th and 27th of June with the tradestand and available for bitting advice. I’m based in the gallery of the indoor and am very much looking forward to it!

Tina and Andy’s wedding went very well – they’ve gone off to Borneo and I am now back to business as usual.  I’m catching up on missed calls and messages and should be back up to date by the end of today hopefully.  Its the first day the advice line has been closed so thank you for your patience.

I will be a bridesmaid for my friend Tina’s wedding today (28th May 2010) so the advice line will be closed for today only.

It will be reopened again tomorrow.

Thanks,

Gail.