Toward the end of 2017 I ran a limited promotion for an Awesome Autumn shoot, and Alysia was one of the lovely ladies who contacted me to take part in helping me test out a new part of my customer experience. Unfortunately Skittle came up lame shortly after we started discussing the session, so we made the decision to postpone until he was back to his normal bouncing self.
Despite the week running up to our shoot being a bit of a washout (to put it lightly!) by the time Saturday came around, we were blessed with a beautiful day.
I arrived at Alysia’s yard, and very quickly fell in love – we were spoilt for choice with plenty of locations to use, including the most perfect corridor of trees. The facilities were fantastic, with a lunge pen, outdoor manege, and stables all nestled in a big airy barn. Alysia, like myself with Rio, made the decision to move a little further away to benefit from extra facilities, and has been here for over 3 years now.
I had so much fun, we were joined by Alysia’s partner Marc, as well as brother Mark & nephew Jack, and their dogs – Alysia made a special request for some portraits of Billy as he’s made it well into his later years now. He did a fabulous job, and gamely followed us out to the shoot location, further than he had been out for some time! Everyone did a fantastic job of posing, we had ears forward, group shots, happy smiles and lots of laughs to boot. Jack drove uncle Marc’s van back to the yard when we were finished in the woods, with Billy resting up in the cab, and we headed up to get some final images in the barn.
Skittle’s hunting days are now over, but will continue to enjoy his hacking with Alysia, and I hope to see them both out on the dressage circuit soon! Marc however has been banned from riding – a while ago he went down to get Skittle in from the field, and decided that he would hop on bareback. They came back into the yard at speed (but I’m impressed he stayed on!) and resulted in a visit from the physio for Skittle! Oops!
Thank you so much to you all for having me, it was an absolute pleasure.