You may be wondering who is behind the Lucky Stirrups name and who the tail in the photos belongs to!

My name is Belinda, and the horse in the photographs is Cyrill Henry my hansom ex-racehorse.  We live in Cornwall enjoying the Cornish countryside.  I have ridden and been around horses as long as I can remember, and have always looked for ways to make sure my horses live happily and naturally.  

As well as myself and Cyrill, my two sisters and their horses are also part of the business, I'd like to also include my friends and their horses who have helped and encouraged me to develop the Scratchpad further and make it available to other horse owners in the UK.

I hope eventually to find other products that help us with those everyday problems we have with our horses, and run the business full time, perhaps with a nice little office down at the field... in the meantime my goal is to get as many scratchpads to horses with an itch as possible. 

The idea was developed from me trying to find something to cure Cyrill's problem of rubbing his tail, mane, head, sides and scratching himself, his worst problem was his tail, he was literally rubbing it away.  I tried various creams, rugs, brushing but nothing really seemed to help. 

As I thought about it more and more I thought to myself if I have an itch you scratch it with something that is just right to scratch but not hurt... could I find something that worked for horses? 

So I started putting all sorts of things on his favourite scratching places to see if they worked, some things were good but not practical, others practical but useless!  And then finally I came across Astroturf, I got some samples, a variety of the types of this product they do and trialled them, and to my utter astonishment Cyrill's scratches disappeared, hair started growing on his tail, and it started to thicken and grow longer. 

It took a while to catch him scratching on it but when I did it was a real joy to see him enjoying a good scratch.  After a couple of months there was a real difference in his tail, and 2 years on I am trimming his tail as its too long and about a third thicker, plus the hair at the top of his tail is long and so it can be plaited.

If you have any questions or want a chat about your own horse, don't hesitate to contact me, otherwise I wish you and your horse all the best and thank you for visiting our website.