Five tips for handling Christmas as a horse owner

1. Take stock of your feed room supplies and make sure you have enough to tide you over until after the New Year. Ditto for hay/haylage and bedding. There's enough to do without worrying about when the feed shop opens again. 

2. Being a horse owner on Christmas day is one of the times when you get your reward. When you're sick of food and relatives you can sneak off to give them a cuddle and take any frustration out on the muck heap. It's also a good opportunity to divide and conquer - if gran usually gets sidelines by noisy children, wrap her up and take her with you to the yard where you can both get some peace and catch up properly.

3. Prioritise. Horses don't care if their browband is diamante, so if money's tight, the best present you can give them is to make sure they have all the essentials, food, water, a careful check over every day, shoes etc. 

4. Make hay while the sun shines. Soon you will be surrounded by people telling you they'd really like to lose weight after too much Christmas indulgence. Get ready to smile, place a pitchfork in their hands and cheerily shove them in the direction of the stables. Their weight loss is your labour gain.

5. Ask for practical gifts. There's always someone who doesn't know what to get you so perhaps you could signpost them towards certain unsexy items that make life bearable. Think waterproof trousers, decent torches and heavy duty gloves. A scented candle won't keep you warm in bleakest January.