THERE is no mistaking the chesnut with the broad blaze and near hind stocking amongst the group of horses working in the front paddock at Whip N Spur Farm. The Cruising stallion, bred by Edward and Catherine Doyle out of their champion speed mare Flex, is on his second work session of the day with groom Michelle Negra.

Home Schooling: “For two, three years now, he works twice a day. I worked him this morning, a little jump school as he rarely jumps at home. He knows what to do by now! Then we have miles of trails up in the hills so he goes off on trail rides. He loves heading out there. It’s like the [horse] trailer, if you get on him, head out to the back of the barn and you just let the reins loose, he’ll take you right to the gate and he just parks there so he can head up to the trail.

“I try really hard to keep the horses fresh when they come home from the shows and give them a lot of variety and to do things they really enjoy but at the same time they’re working their bodies. Like climbing up the trails on this hill, it’s a workout for them and they don’t know it”.

Al Fresco: “He’s out every day, so long as the weather is okay, he loves his turn outs and we’re fortunate to have these irrigated grass paddocks so they’re green all year round or otherwise they’re dried up by June and July and we have green grass throughout the summer which is nice for the horses.”

Road Trips: “He loves travelling, if we parked the trailer out here and if we opened up the back and brought him out of the barn loose, I’d guarantee he would run onto that trailer. He never uses the ramp, you walk him up there but he just jumps up there, he loves going to horse shows. He loves road trips, he never minds the travelling, drinks like a fish and he’s super hardy.”

Food For Thought: “For most of his career, he ate grass hay and sweet feed, like Omelene, it’s a Purina product and then in the last years we’ve switched him to a new product that Purina came up with. It’s called Ultium which is a pelleted grain mixture which you can feed the horse less bulk but the same amount of nutrients. It’s great for an older horse that tends to put on weight easy like Flexible. Last year he’d jump super in a Grand Prix qualifier and then was cooked for the final. I just assumed it was age catching up. Purina is one of our sponsors, they flew me and a bunch of other professionals to their development farm south of St Louis. It was a great tour and I really learned a lot about nutrition, it wasn’t just about ‘Purina, Purina, Purina’, it was about horsemanship and good feed and training programmes. The one thing I got out of the trip was their latest product called Super Sport. One of its main objectives was to decrease recovery time for high performance horse athletes - racehorses, show jumpers, eventing horses – they get fatigued because they exert themselves to such a high level. I said I might as well try that, it sounds likes just what we need so the next show we went to at Sacramento, he was second in the World Cup qualifier and won the Grand Prix. Since then, he’s turned 19 but he gets two good classes now at a show.”