The Summer seems to be fast approaching and all the competitions are in full swing. What a change from last year when we were all biding our time and hoping against hope that foot and mouth kept away from these parts.

I am having mixed fortunes. Having started the season with four horses - I am now down to one. The big grey horse who started very promisingly this Spring has strained a suspensory ligament and my little bay horse, Uncle Sam has tweaked a superficial flexor tendon. Quite how these animals can do this when they are basically wrapped up in cotton wool - defeats me. However, such is life and suffice to say that the flag is being flown by the last remaining campaigner - Flyaway's Mathere who is doing brilliantly and has qualified for the Elementary, Medium and Advanced Medium Regionals this Summer.

It has taken me some time to lock into his brain and understand how he ticks, but we seem to be on the right wavelength now and he is beginning to trust me more in the arena. He is one of those horses who basically lacks confidence but tries to overcome this by being overtly obtuse at times. He is a lovely horse with great elegance and I am sure when he has matured will be a star. He finds the sometimes troublesome changes very easy and I have never really drilled them at all - the first time he did them in earnest was on Monday at Hustbourne and bless him they all came off and he won with a really good percentage. Now all we have left to achieve is the music qualifiers.

People often ask me how do you start with putting a music test together? Well, I normally sit down and write a test out on paper and make sure that:

• a) it fulfils all requirements I.e. all movements, correct overall time, correct arena size etc.
• b) it has a symmetrical pattern which can be understood by someone trying to decipher what you are doing.

Go and ride the test and get someone to time you - making a note of when you change from one pace to another. It is useful if you can also get another friend to video the test for you so that you can use if when you put the music together.

Go through all your CDs, tapes etc and all those of your immediate friends, neighbours, and anybody that you can think of. Try and find suitable bits of music that will fit your horse's paces - one for each. Try and get suitable moods of music too - i.e. not too airy fairy for a cobby type and not too heavy for an elegant type. A rough guide is if you get a metronome - trot should be around the area of 152 - walk abour 108 and canter 96. You won't be far wrong if you go by those speeds, although obviously ponies will be faster and very large moving horses can be slower.

Put the relevant amount of music on to the tape for each pace and make sure that for the final piece you time it from the end otherwise you will finish in the middle of a track which never sounds good. It is not difficult but time consuming and I have to say that modern equipment is not that helpful as it is all automatic and you have no control over the fading in and out as you have on the old steam driven stuff that I have!

For big competitions they are now requiring everything to be on mini-disc and I took a sharp intake of breath in Comet the other day when I saw just how much said mini-disc recorders cost.........

It is really fun riding to music and if you want any further help give me a should and I will do what I can to be of assistance. Meanwhile I have put in a photo of Flyaway's Mathere or Mattie to his friends!.

Happy tape making!!