Horses, Ponies, Shows, Bullying, New Products and More...

Hi Guys,

This last few weeks have once again been void of any major event, I think that is probably a good thing as "major events" usually involve one of a few things. Injured Horses, Injured Kids, Injured Husband... broken equipment, Staff issues or Stable Fires. So I'm thinking perhaps non eventful may be a positive thing for me?

Things that have happened.

In my last post I told you all about Crystal and Equador two older horses that we took on at the yard, well we did go ahead with arranging a few lessons on both Crystal and Equador to assist in covering their costs. We decided to go with people who had ridden before but required training rather than beginners kicking the poor things all around the arena.

I have to say that they both seem to be enjoying the exercise, attention and general business of working for a living. Their temperament is ideal and for the few lessons per week we have booked on them it mean that their food and farrier are pretty much paid for which helps us a great deal. Happy Me, Happy Horses... Happy Everyone!

Crystal

Equador (He is starting to look much better)

If you are a young aspiring horse rider and you like the look of either Crystal or Equador let us know and we will send you a nice photo of either of them for your bedroom wall. :-)

JUST RIDING OHIO -  OUR DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

In other horse news my young hopeful "Just Riding Ohio" took part in his first 1.25m this weekend gone, we were so fortunate to have a proper photographer at the show and so we grabbed these amazing photos some of which I have posted here below.

A short history on Ohio, I'll keep it relatively brief as I don't want to bore anyone to death so early in the blog. Just Riding Ohio was originally named Otok arrived with us as a 3 year old from a farmer / villager who had him stabled just outside of Warsaw in Poland. Despite not being on a German, Dutch or Belgian passport as most sought after European horses are Ohio is on a Polish passport. We ignored the fact that he was registered on a Polish passport and kept an open mind as we have had much experience in the past with Polish warmbloods and had found most of them to  be brave, scopey horses with good heads. If they are good enough for the daughter of a princess, Zara Phillips then they are good enough for Victoria of Just Ridng right?? When we looked at his documents we noticed that actually he has quite good breeding which is what attracted us to him further.

Document Posted here below for anyone interested in breeding I know that loads of you are, so as you can see he has Oldenburg from his father and Kon Polski from his mum.

We didn't pay a lot of money for Ohio as he was practically unbroken, on a Polish passport and required complete investment in terms of training, nutrition and time so negotiation was in our favour, beside the fact that no one wanted him. Ohio has been such a pleasure to work with Herbert the chap who rides and trains him on a daily basis has done a fantastic job but also so fortunate to have a horse who is so willing to please and so brave.

We are now 2 years on with Ohio and he is producing many clear rounds at  1.20m and this weekend as I mentioned above he competed in his first 1.25m final. He is showing scope for 1.30m for next year he may even go to 1.40m we don't want to get to far ahead of ourselves but all I can say is we truly feel that we have found a diamond in the rough with Ohio... "Not bad for a horse that no one really wanted.. hehe" :-)

Again if you are a young aspiring horse rider and like the look of our young star, "Ohio" let us know and we will send you a photo of him for your wall.

MARKS MOMENT

O.K so Mark has been hassling me to contribute to the blog and so I agreed this time around, so without further ado this is Mark's moment.

Hello everyone. Sorry but this my first short article isn't going to be a funny or amusing, I'm just not in a funny or amusing mood this week. Perhaps next week. :-)

Firstly let me kick off this short article by saying that myself and I think I can speak on behalf of Just Riding are absolutely appalled at the latest terrorists incidents in London and Manchester. All of our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of and anyone involved in these terrible incidents. We are speaking at Just Riding about perhaps organising something to give to the fund which is raising money for those who have been injured or worse by these incidents, more to follow on this.

I wanted to talk about social media etiquette and bullying on social media or cyber bullying as it is called. For some reason and it escapes me as to why but we equestrians are so bloody horrible to one another. As part of my job I am constantly on facebook creating and adding posts to try and promote Just Riding and increase sales and if I had a pound for every anti something post or rant directed at a person or company I saw on social media I might even not have to work anymore. When someone makes a decision to take to social media and destroy someone or their business they should take a moment to think about the consequences of their actions and try to balance up the cause and effect of their actions before they do it.

Whilst I agree that social media can be useful in the event that someone is scamming others and word needs to be spread to avoid further victims. But if you saw the girl two boxes down skip a muck out that day or even twice that week.  Does everyone and their friends, and their friends, friends and all of their friends need to know about it? do they really?

At Just Riding we have a stance as an absolute anti bullying organisation, our staff, suppliers, friends even our fellow retailers are all treated with respect and integrity. Victoria created the "Think Twice" campaign on social media to try and make people think twice before they trash another human being or their business on social media. If you agree please download the T2 banner below right here and share it on your social media. We have to start treating people with consideration and respect people, if we completely lose that what do we have left.

Thanks for listening.

#T2

https://www.facebook.com/safety/bullying/

PRODUCT LAUNCHES AND OTHER JR BUSINESS

I don't usually include any product related stuff in my posts but I want to start adding something related to new and trending products as after all that is what we do here at JRHQ, we sell equestrian products.

This year has seen a huge surge in sales of the Equine Body Bandage which is now being copied by a few companies and produced in China, we are pleased to confirm that we sell the original body bandage made 100% in Italy. Yes, there is a massive difference in quality between the Love Horses Original Body Bandage (Spur Guard) and the versions which are being made in China.

Animo Italia released their new saddle pads last month and I have to say they look absolutely amazing, in terms of quality and appearance they just look so nice. But then again this is Animo we are talking about and so we have come to expect this level of quality from this Italian industry leader.

Our own equestrian arch peak caps have been really popular already this summer, I believe we sold twice that of last years style already. The additional investment we made in terms of style and quality of the product seems to have really paid off.

Finally the big talking point on social media at the moment is our FREE GLOBAL SHIPPING on weekends. We will be running this offer for the duration June and possibly July and so far it has proven very successful with many of our clients taking advantage of the savings. We think this offer is probably our most awesome to date! what do you think?

NEW ARRIVALS IN JUST RIDING

This last month saw the departure of 2 of our staff which was a real shame as we have a family vibe at Just Riding and it was like losing 2 members of the family. Anna who worked on web administration and also Ola who worked in dispatch left the company. One to pursue a career and the other to concentrate on her impending exams.

However, after much interviewing I am so pleased to announce the arrival of Conrad and Kinga. Conrad will be filling the gap in web administration and Kinga will  be working in dispatch but also helping a bit with social media. Kinga also rides horses which is obviously awesome for us Conrad is not a horse rider but never say never, right?

Updates to previous posts -

We never did get our fur trees back and so we are looking at buying some more to replace the 30 that were stolen.

We still don't have a roof on the stable but we are meeting with banks today to try and secure some assistance to get it on and refurbished before we lose the warm weather. If we can't get it done and lose the warm weather we will almost certainly lose the whole building to the harshness of the winter which simply cannot happen.

Crystal and Equador are still really fat, we are working on that with balanced nutrition from HOCOR feeds and supplements. 

Most of you know that we try to source and stock the very best clothing and equipment from around the world, HOCOR is no exception. The product is unique in that unlike ALL of the top supplements on the market they use a patented form of natural yeast which yields particularly high amounts of high quality protein and amino acids. We can not recommend this professional supplement enough. 

If you expect your horse to trot, canter, gallop, jump or perform in any sport he is by definition an athlete, athletes require supplements to be able to maintain health and performance.

We were super excited to receive our marketing packs from HOCOR this week which included branded saddle pads and ears.