Milton was the perfect showjumper in my opinion and another great grey horse. I could watch him jump over and over again, as he jumped in the most perfect shape and always appeared to be in balance.  He hardly ever refused or had a fence down. He looked like he was a power horse who wouldn’t be fast against the clock, but he could turn on a sixpence and keep his jumping shape even when galloped flat out into a fence. I could go on and on…..he was amazing.

He had a good pedigree as he was sired by another famous showjumper called Marius, a Dutch Warmblood, out of an Irish Draft Sports Horse showjumping mare. He was bought by Caroline Bradley, who was a successful showjumping rider, as a foal and trained until her death in 1983.  Mr & Mrs Bradley continued to own the horse and he was competed by John Whitaker with whom he achived great success between 1985 and 1994. He had many international wins and was the first horse to win 1 million pounds outside of the racing world.  He is buried on the Whitaker’s farm in Yorkshire.

As a child I was told that rising trot was better for a horse’s back than sitting trot. However some recent research in the Netherlands suggests this may not be the case.

Certainly my experience was that rising trot was easier for me, once I’d got used to rising out of the saddle, and therefore I think for the horse too. As I became a more experienced rider I could also do a reasonably good sitting trot, but I think it is generally more difficult and much easier on some horses than others, depending on their confirmation. I’m sure any out of balance movements by the rider affect a horse’s back to some degree.

One of the things I’ve always found difficult with rising trot is the correct diagonal, as I remembered when I rode at the weekend! Most horses have a preference for one and it will be much harder to keep on the correct one on one rein.

An ancient hippodrome has been discovered in recent months at Olympia. This seemed a topical post given the imminent start of the Olympic Games.

Archaelogists have been continuously excavating the site since since 1875 and the discovery confirms historic writings about the racecourse from the 2nd Century AD. However it had been assumed that the remains had been lost as a result of floodings in the area.

Horses were the number one cause of animal-related deaths in Australia between 2000 and 2006 according to research done by the National Coroners Information System in Australia.

Of the 128 animal-related deaths during the period, 40 involved horses, 20 cattle and 12 dogs. By comparison, some of the more dangerous animals numbered a lot less with sharks killing 11 people, crocodiles or alligators 4, snakes 8 and spiders 3.

The numbers are a bit of a surprise but people do interract with domesticated animals much more frequently, so if the report showed the percentage of the interractions with the various animal types, the domesticated animals wouldn’t appear as dangerous.

I was taught from a young age to be careful when handling horses as they are both powerful and unpredictable. Experience over the years has just confirmed this to be true.

As I have written a lot about eventing falls and the need for cross country design changes, I thought I should mention some recent Australian research which followed up with approx 900 riders involved in accidents. It found that most riders thought they were mainly to blame for the fall and it could have been avoided . Other factors like illness, spectators, weather, poor fence design, equipment failure were small in number.

While I was initially surprised by this, I realised that this is likely to be the case for any sort of accident as the rider is supposed to be in control of the situation. Isn’t the same true in most car driving accidents?

Some other interesting findings were that few riders landed on their heads and quite a few landed feet first. Also riders felt that back protectors were effective in reducing injury. Wearing a back protector can be a little uncomfortable at first but I would strongly recommend one for cross-country. Like anything, the more you wear it the more you become used to it.