The nights are drawing out, the weather is getting brighter and fields are slowly drying out!

Dean has had a good start to the year, with Vesteggarrds Manuell, after a well deserved break over Christmas, coming back on top form. He had been winning and placed at all his outings, and is hoping to collect his qualifiers for Regionals.

One of our full livery horses, Arosage Demitris (stable name Manny), has his first age classes in dressage this month.

Manny is a British warmblood gelding who I had the pleasure of taking his dam, Demi, a GSB thoroughbred, for warmblood grading in 2005, on behalf of owners Sandy and Tony Ware from West Wales.

At the time, Manny was a white-papered colt by Demonstrator (Hannovarian), and by taking his dam forward and getting her graded, his papers were upgraded to pink in retrospect, by the British Warmblood Society. In 2006, Manny was second in his age class in hand at the BWBS summer show, taking best British two-year-old.

Then, last year, Dean and I backed him, and once again he was placed second and best British-bred horse in his age class at the Warmblood Show, where he was also branded - thus advertising the fact that Britain is breeding some top class young horses.

Manny is working well at home and under the careful eye of Matt Frost, Dean's trainer, and hopefully, in our next write-up, we will have lots of exciting news as we have high hopes for this one. As he was the first one the owners bred, they are excited with him just starting his new career.

Unfortunately, I had a bad accident and after spending nearly two weeks in hospital I am finally out, and confined to doing book work, computers and looking at other potential sponsors in the office!

Both Dean and I are looking forward to starting to produce some of our own stud horses this spring.

The first to back will be one of our home-bred fillies, Meacham Fatal Attraction (stable name Bunny).

For those of you who have seen the film, she is absolutely no psychopath! In fact, she has a super temperament.

Bunny's sire is Fulton, a Danish warmblood by Freuhling, who was the sire of Norbert Koof's Fire ll - the Volvo World Cup Champion in 1984. Fulton has produced numerous champions in the UK - both in hand and under saddle in the world of show jumping, dressage and eventing, and throws his excellent workable temperament to his offspring.

Bunny's dam, Meacham Unique, was bred from my mother's mare, a grading champion, using frozen semen from a Grade A Selle Francais Stallion called Uskada De Malais.

The tradition in British warmblood breeding is that the foal's name should begin with the first letter of the stallion's name, thus Unique was not only named by using the letter U, but also that she was the only mare covered in the UK by this stallion.

It is Meacham Unique's eighth foal - and Dean's and my first! It's a big responsibility, awaiting the patter of tiny hooves, but my mother has told me that foaling to Unique is a matter of a slight distraction from tucking into her hay net (more about the sire of the foal that's due when it pops out, so as not to tempt providence).

At this time of year, you are all preparing for the exciting year ahead, getting calendars out as the bigger county show entries will need to be in soon.

So it's all horses back in work, strapping and changing rugs in between.

We don't do any showing really, apart from the British Warmblood Show in August, which we normally have quite a few to take to, and the county shows that I would have liked to have done have a question mark over the weather regarding whether I will be back competing or not. Fingers and toes crossed!