Hello everybody and welcome back to my podcast, Esme's Country Life. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about how my little pony duke is now out with the big boys. We're also going to be talking about my meeting with the RSPCA, all about horse welfare and how we can make life better for our horses. And also I'm going to be talking about how last weekend I had the first stop of my book tour.

So yes, the book tour has begun and what it was like talking to lots of people on stage.

Anyway, before we begin, I just want to say a huge thank you to this sponsor of the podcast, Red Post.

Red Post is an equestrian and country store based in the UK, but they also ship all over the world.

And right now, we have a

big congratulations to Red Post because they actually won retailer of the year at the Bita Awards.

If you know what beta is, it is the British Equestrian Trade Association. I'm pretty sure. There we go.

The dyslexia was dyslexia. Lots of letters anyway.

But yeah, huge congratulations to Red Post for doing so well. But also, exciting news.

Red Post are also sponsoring the Fox Hunter class at Hoyes or Horse the Year Show that I'm actually

going to be there this year as well. So lots of exciting news for Red Post. Also, if you're looking for any equestrian or country attire, they are the

place to go to, especially as we are soon going into autumn and winter. So if you need some new

stuff, go and check it out at redpost equestrian.co.com.com. Anyway, let's get into today's podcast episode. First off, I thought

we would do a little update on the horses and how they've been doing because the other day,

Duke went out with the big boys, which is very very exciting. So if you didn't know,

Duke is my little rescue pony from

World Horse Welfare. He used to be out with my retired pony Mickey. Sadly, we lost Mickey back in

December. So, Duke, he's been like next door to the horses, but he hasn't been out with the big boys.

And that's for two different reasons. Number one, Duke is a lot smaller and we didn't want him to get bullied basically by the others.

It's when you introduce a horse into a herd, it's something that you do very gradually and that's kind of what we were doing.

So they are now in a herd of three which is lovely, but also one of the other reasons is if you didn't know, Duke, his breed, we think is some sort of Welshie, so he's a native pony,

and the thing about native ponies is they get fat very, very easily.

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