Winter bug
Happy New Year to you all and sorry for being so rubbish at keeping this updated. We seem to be getting over the coughing finally and should start to have some runners again in the next couple of weeks.
It has been a nightmare, every time I think we are through the worst another would give a cough and it seems to be taking 4/5 weeks for each horse to get from start to finish and come out the other side. Even the pony has had it and poor Ella hasn't managed to ride him for 5 weeks, he has had to have a course of antibiotics, which I would never have done with a pony, I would have expected nature and rest to have healed him.
However we are on the other side and maybe this happened for a reason, the ground has been dreadful and maybe if we had been running horses in it we would still have been disappointed. I have to look on the positive because if I wasn't I would drive myself and everyone around me mad. I have a great life, beautiful daughter and partner, a lovely yard and great friends so really life is great and if the worst thing that happens is the horses get a bit of a bug, then so be it. It's not like we are the only yard who is going through this, all I have heard this year is other trainers saying the same thing.
We have run a few who were ok, Heroes or Ghosts ran well at Towcester before Christmas to finish 4th, I thought he was going to win but he just flattened out coming to the last, he is now having a mini break and will be back for the middle of Feb.
He's a Toff had a couple of runs in Juveniles at Newbury and is finally learning to gallop, jump and travel in a race, we know he needs better ground and is going to have a wind op on Monday, he is lovely, big, genuine horse who is only going to improve with time.
I am so glad to welcome back our Trace - aka Gregg Whitehead - to work with us for a few months, he was the first person I ever employed and he is back for a while from Aus to spend some time with his family. Gregg is one of my best friends and I am so grateful to have him working here even if its for a short time, he is brilliant at his job and takes so much pressure off of me. He is also a happy positive person, which is something that is getting rarer and rarer these days.
Greg, Ella and I went skiing last week to Obertauern in Austria, we normally go at the end of January but with the horses being on the back end of the illness we decided to go last minute and we had a lovely time. It snowed 5 days out of 7 but we were still able to ski fine and had much needed family time and some relaxation.
I am looking forwards to getting back in the lorry (never thought I would say those words!) and seeing a few running again, here's to a better 2018 all round.