17 reasons we love spring

The clocks have gone back and we’ve traded an hour’s sleep for sixty precious minutes of daylight

1. Driving home from a competition and knowing you’ll be able to unload in some form of daylight.

2. No more playing jumper roulette every time you ride. Will you be too hot? Too cold? Wave goodbye to your thick coat, we’re wearing tops and gilets for the foreseeable and happier for it.

3. Mucking out before work is much more enjoyable to a backing track of the dawn chorus.

4. Particularly this year, the excitement of planning some outings with your horse – even for a hack somewhere new. Dreamy.

5. Time to do what you want – no more choosing between riding and chores before the light fades. Those evenings are just getting longer and longer.

6. Less mud – stuck to your horse, fetlock deep on the bridleway, splattered over your tack. Spring means some drier days and hurrah for that.

7. Cross-country schooling. We’ve never been so excited to wear a body protector.

8. Not worrying if a ride has left your horse a bit sweaty – because it’s warm enough to wash him off without risking hypothermia (or at least disapproving looks from other liveries).

9. Cantering around the fields without worrying that you’re inadvertently ploughing them as you go.

10. Watching your horse have his first rugless roll (sure, you’ll regret it later, but it’s totally worth it for the joy on his face).

11. Clinics are go! Winter 20/21 has been one to forget, but spring means clinics are back on the agenda and we’re so ready to try something new with a top trainer.

12. Blossom in the hedges and bluebells in the woods – hacking never felt so good.

13. You forgot to change your boots after riding before taking your horse to the field. In winter? Disaster. In spring? Still not ideal, but definitely not such a crisis.

14. Bank holidays – spring has more than its fair share and that means bonus days spent at the yard.

15. Setting up some showjumps or dressage boards in the paddock – a sure sign of hope and looking much more possible once spring’s here!

16. Thinking ahead to the summer season – hello, competition schedules.

17. Just how happy your horse feels on that first really warm, sunny ride. Vitamin D does us all some good, it seems.