Clarke McKenzie Sponsored Rider Penny Castle has been kept very busy over the last few months. With the sale of Gym Star One last year, Penny has been looking for the right new horse to take forward. The search is now over and Penny tells us she is delighted with her new horse, Magnus Spero.

The average horse lives to be approximately 20 years of age, although many ponies and a few horses live for 30 years. Older horses and ponies need a little extra care to ensure that they remain healthy and happy.

We’re so excited by the new range of CMK Silver jump and all purpose saddles, that we are giving one away! One lucky person will take home their choice of saddle from the CMK Silver range, worth $2799!  How fantastic would that be! How do you enter? Two ways, you can either come into the [...]

Every horse, and rider for that matter, gets tired, sore and bruised muscles, ligaments, tendons due to the rigors of exercising and competing. Training and competing during the summer months potentially adds more stress to the soft tissues due to the hardness of the ground.

Congratulations to June Prize Pack Winner, Courtney Goodwin. Courtney is from Casebrook in Christchurch and tells us the win couldn’t have come at a better time as she is in her 3rd year uni student and new gear is a real luxury right now!  Plus how nice to put a smile on the face of [...]

Brent evented competitively as a youngster, but let it go in his 20′s. He hunted and whipped for Brackenfield Hunt until partner Julie steered him back into eventing about six years ago. Brent says it was like he’s never been away from it. His big 17.1 TB mount is aptly named SE Big (SE after their farm, Striding Edge). Big is a careful show jumper and working on strengthening his dressage phase with coach Penny Castle.

Clarke McKenzie’s newest Sponsored Rider is dressage super-talent Penny Castle. Penny’s many accomplishments include New Zealand Eventing’s Dressage Coach, selected for 2012 High Performance Dressage Squad, ESNZ high performance dressage coach, Sparc Scholarship recipient for performance coaching as well as being a sought after coach for eventers and dressage riders throughout New Zealand.

Penny has had an amazing season on Gymstar One and has been riding in a CMK Platinum dressage saddle. With the sale of Gymstar One, Penny is now focused on finding her next super-star mount. Join us here for updates from Penny as we follow along with her on her journey to the top.

Mud Fever, also known as greasy heel or dermatophilosis, is a skin infection caused by Dermatophilous congolensis – a micro-organism that is best described as a cross between a bacteria and a fungus. The organism is a normal inhabitant of the skin of horses. For an infection to occur, two predisposing factors must be present:

Echinacea is probably one of the most commonly used medicinal herbs and the name will be familiar to most readers. A quick check via a common search engine on the internet gave me 1,460,000 results for its use with horses with the preparations being a mix of dried herb powdered and mixed with feed to [...]