I hope you are all enjoying the mild start to this winter – hopefully it means we won’t be inundated with snow like last year!
I have been busy both on and off the horses, with the Event Horse Owners’ Association ball being a great success. I didn’t making it to the fundraising day for Team GB at Cheltenham the next day though (it’s a long story, read all about it here) which was a real shame.
The horses are all working very well and the phone has finally started ringing for the sale ones. I was worried that I had written something in the adverts to turn people away, but I think October/November can just be a bit of a quiet time for selling. We have been going showjumping a lot and have hired another working student, Rita, to help cope with the workload. She has settled in amazingly well and it’s so nice not to be in a mad rush all the time.
My big news, which if you follow me on Twitter you will know I have been keeping you hanging for, is that I have a new sponsor. It is very common knowledge that my lorry is a little bit unreliable, which is actually a huge understatement. My lorry is close to dangerous to drive now, so she is limited to local runs.
I was tweeting about my latest breakdown when a company called Equitimo Horseboxes got in touch. They are based down in Somerset, so a little off my beaten track, but as they are an up-and-coming bespoke lorry building service, they thought we could work together and get a lorry that would befit the business better.
Shane and Victoria, the couple who run Equitimo, are absolutely lovely and a pleasure to deal with and I cannot wait to start building a lorry with them. They have been building non-HGV boxes for years, and so wanted to sponsor a rider with an HGV horsebox (6 horses actually!) so that the truck could be seen at competitions around the country.
It’s an incredibly scary prospect, but I feel it’s a decision I had to make with the business getting bigger. I couldn’t ask for a better company to deal with and hopefully by the beginning of next season, the horses at Shannon Eventing will be travelling in style.
Lauren
