Robinsons Blog

UPDATE:  As of 9:40 this morning (30th Jan), our phone lines are back on!  Our Call Centre team are now ready and waiting to hear from you.  We offer our sincere apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this failure, caused by a traffic accident in our local area.  

This being a technical matter, experience tells us that services may still take time to stabilise.  If you continue to experience any difficulties on any of our telephone lines, please contact customer.service@robinsons-uk.com and we’ll take the appropriate action.  Thanks for your patience.

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If you’ve been trying to call us this week, wondering why we haven’t picked up, don’t worry – we’re still here!

On Tuesday afternoon, a car crashed into one of those metal cabinets you often see by the side of the road, a telephone substation which just happened to contain the circuitry that carries all our telephone lines.

Despite repeated assurances that the service will be resumed, we are still unable to make or receive external calls from our Head Office and Call Centre in Bryn.  Furthermore, as we operate the lines to our stores from here, this outage also affects the lines at Ashton and at Cannock.

Please bear with us while we wait for service to return.  We are naturally as keen to return to normal connectivity as you are.  We appreciate that this situation has been caused by an accident but we are increasingly frustrated by the network operator’s continuing difficulties in returning the service to normal.  It would be churlish to name them, but let’s just say that we won’t be buying any train or airline tickets from them anytime soon!

I promise that we’ll do all we can to get make our phones available to take you call.  In the words of Blondie (now touring again, according to their website), I’ll leave you with these words for now: 

Oh why can’t we talk again
Oh why can’t we talk again
Oh why can’t we talk again
Don’t leave me hanging on the telephone
Don’t leave me hanging on the telephone

A horse with good conformation should be the aim of every person who intends to breed a foal. Breeding from a stallion or mare with anything more than minor faults in their conformation should be avoided. Correct conformation enables the horse to carry out the work required by humans with the least amount of stress on their bodies and joints. They will be less prone to lameness and give a more comfortable ride.

Assessing whether a horse has perfect conformation can be a difficult task, but it is in every horse lovers interest to be able to ascertain an overall impression of good conformation in a horse used for general riding activites.

Initially look at the horse as a ‘whole’, does he look like he has been built in proportion? There should be no one part of the horse’s body which looks too be greatly over or under sized in relation to any other. The horse should have an alert expression with bright, wide set eyes, the neck should be proportional to the body and a convex arch between the withers and poll. Look for a good, sloping shoulder as this will give the horse a longer, flowing stride, the horse should also have well defined shoulders which form a widening V down into the shoulder.

The chest area should be MEDIUM WIDTH allowing plenty of heart room and allowing the fore legs to be far enough apart to prevent brushing.The fore legs should run in a vertical, straight line from the top of the leg down to the foot, whether looked at from the front or the side. The horse should have a deep body, allowing plenty of room for the heart and lungs, the back should be of medium length to carry the rider’s weight comfortably and without strain. Well rounded quarters and broad hips provide power and allow the horse to move forward with good impulsion. The horse’s hind legs should be formed so it is possible to visualise a straight line running from the point of buttock, through the point of hock, down to the fetlock and the ground.

The forelegs should be straight from the top of the leg to the foot when looked at from the front, and also from the top of the leg to the fetlock when viewed from the side. The forearm should have well developed muscles, and be longer than the leg below the knee. The leg below the knee is preferably fairly short as this minimises the strain on the ligaments and tendons. The knees should be in proportion with the rest of the leg, they should be broad, flat and deep as this then gives enough room for the attachment of tendons and ligaments.

Cannon bones should be short and straight, this again allows room for tendons and ligaments meaning they are less liekly to become strained. The fetlock should appear flat rather than round, any lumps are usually a sign of work, age or brushing. Pasterns should be neither too long or too short; long, sloping pasterns give a springy ride but can be liable to strains. Short, upright pasterns tend to be strong but give a bumpy ride, this extra concussion can cause lameness.

With the horse’s hind legs it should be possible to draw an imaginary straight line from the point of buttock, through the point of hock down to the fetlock joint. The hocks should be fairly large in size, with a flat, clean point at the back of the joint. Any lumps or swellings are a sign of injury. Sickle shaped hocks have a more acute angle to the hocks.

Hocks out behind can indicate that the horse is a good jumper but they will struggle to gallop or perform dressage well. Straight hocks will often give a horse the ability to perform dressage well but there is less leverage for jumping. Some horses with straight hocks can suffer from a slipped stifle especially at a young age.

The hind quarters when viewed from behind should give the appearance of being rounded with plenty of mucle providing power. If the hind legs are placed too far apart the horse may be limited in its length of stride, in rare cases this can lead to increased concussion and ringbone. Hind limbs that are close together can be underdeveloped, making them weak and prone to strains, the closeness can also cause brushing injuries.

Bowed hocks have the points of hock wide apart, the toes are turned out and the foot is likely to screw as it comes into contact with the ground. This conformation can lead to bone spavins, bog spavins ot thoroughpin. A horse with cow hocks is often a good jumper but is liable to brush, the points of hock come close together, and the toes are turned out.

When assessing conformation it is essential to judge the horse as a whole and develop an ‘eye for a horse’. Try to look at many different types and breeds of horse to compare the variations. Remember there is no such thing as perfect conformation, but you should avoid any serious deviations from the ‘norm’ as they can lead to excess strain and injury.

Happy New Year! We’re all hearing how difficult a year 2009 will be for consumers and businesses alike and I have to say that we’re a little concerned about it all.

We’re concerned that you may think we’re suffering from the ‘credit crunch’ like everyone else. In fact, this is year of optimism for us, especially as this year, we celebrate 25 years in Mail Order.

That’s right. In 1984, we took the first steps into distance-selling, primarily to the once-a-year customers we’d meet at the many shows we were exhibiting at back then. Over that time, like most mail order companies, we’ve made plenty of mistakes – some of them horrendous. Importantly, we learned from our successes and failures and here we are, a quarter of a century later, still the largest in the country at what we do.

I heard an interview this morning with Sir Stuart Rose, the Executive Chairman of Marks and Spencer – a man who always seems to say what I’m thinking and he was doing the usual PR that’s required when disappointing results are announced to the City. During the interview, he sought to reassure those concerned about the future of M&S. He said “We’ve been going for 125 years. We’re still here, we’re still breathing and we’ll be here tomorrow”.

Once again, he’d said what I was thinking. That’s exactly how I would describe Robinsons. We’ll be here tomorrow – even if some of our competitors may not be. In uncertain times like these, that’s not a bad way to describe yourself. Then, another thought occurred to me. He’d said that M&S, arguably the most respected name on the High Street, are 125 years old this year – fully 17 years younger than us! I checked it out on the internet and it’s true!

When the economy is buoyant, you wonder if anyone cares about the age and stability of the companies they deal with. In truth they probably don’t – and why should they? As customers, we are told we are the ‘King’, making all the choices in our own interest, concerned largely with price, quality, service and image. As a company who seeks your custom, we must treat you thus or bear the consequences of disappointing you. For many, that is the depth of the relationship and generally, we all accept that status quo.

In financially darker times, particularly those with longer memories may perhaps give a little more thought to the credibility of those to whom they choose to give their money. Now it’s perhaps a little churlish to portray a company with a £9bn turnover like M&S as comparative ‘Johnny-come-lately’ types, so I won’t do that. What it does invite you to think, however, is that we’ve both lasted through recessions, depressions, World Wars and everything else that the 20th Century has inflicted on the world.

Such heritage doesn’t give us any magical powers and it doesn’t guarantee that we’ll fare any better than anyone else – as we’ve seen with Woolworths recently. What I believe it does give us is the credibility to reassure the customer who is deciding where to buy the item they want. In Mail Order in particular, trust is a huge part of the decision-making process. We appreciate that you’re in effect paying for items that we’re promising to send to you at some point.

If you’re fortunate to be young enough not to remember the last recession, please bear this in mind. It’s much easier to keep your promises in the good times. When things are not so good, the companies under the greatest pressure tend to be those who break their promises most. In this and other industries, be careful who you pay to keep their promises this year.

I look forward to wishing you a Happy New Year in 2010. Believe me, that’s another promise we will keep…