Yard Visits

The last few weeks have been really good, the stables are pretty much finished and looking great, some of the horses are back in and walking with some more to come next week and a couple still to buy.

I would love to be at the store sales but I don't have owners with that kind of money looking at the mo, I have to buy cleverly and try to find value, which I normally do.

Two weeks ago we had some of the #TheseGirlsCan racing club to see Daffodil, he did a small injury at the beginning of January and I decided to give him loads of time to make sure we got him right. Luckily he seems brilliant at the mo and is cantering everyday quietly in the school.

We are aiming to have him back running by September and the rest has done nothing but improve him physically and mentally. He went out in the paddock this morning for the first time and I was a little scared...However he seemed fine after showing us some moves, some of which just reinforced my belief he is an athlete! There are still some shares available for 6 months so get in touch if you fancy a bit of fun!

Its amazing after a couple of weeks of miserable rain, how utterly mental the horses are when they get back out in the paddock, you can see why it's said that Thoroughbreds are so accident prone, exhibit a...

Yup you've got it, its Jack aka The Big Yin, I actually had palpitations... Here he is with Sagazza showing us some synchronised trotting, which was a little bit tamer (that was after 10 mins of the wall of death round the paddock).

The weekend just gone we had Debbie Mathews and some of her Go Racing Green Community for a visit. I am really supportive of what Debbie is doing for the racing community, I think it is so important to recognise that everyone is different and all of us have things that make us uncomfortable or anxious in some way (we are human after all!) I love that there is a group that encourages people who are struggling and who want to go racing, to have someone to fight their corner. Racecourses can be very overwhelming, especially when they are crowded and busy, I struggle in big crowds but I can escape the be with the horse or the lorry and it's nice to see more racecourses getting on board with having somewhere for the general public to escape to.

The guys that came were awesome and we galloped a couple for them, thanks to James Davies for his time too, then showed them round the yard and finished with some bacon rolls at The Queens pub. I love showing people round and giving them as much of an insight as I can about behind the scenes of a racing yard. As I have said before, we as an industry need to encourage people to go on yard visits, learn about all the hard work the staff put into getting a horse fit and well to the track, I also think it's important to show all the nitty gritty things that can go wrong, how we deal with them and at all times the care of the horse is the most important aspect of our jobs.

So Last week I wrote on my Fb page about a horse that we have was found to have food intolerances, he was diagnosed by using Kinesiology and whilst I remain sceptical, I do believe that there is something in it, I have certainly had good results before. Tim Thompson Jones used to be a jockey and a trainer and now goes all over the place doing kinesiology on horses who have various issues. Ken is now on a wheat free diet and to be fair we have seen an improvement in his work. He was scoped on Monday for another issue (he seems to now have rhinitis and has a very inflamed nostril) and we found that there was no blood or mucus in his airway, bearing in mind he had been a sick horse for a year and a half, an amazing result. On Saturday he did the hardest gallop for a long time and went better than he had ever gone.

I have been thinking a lot about food intolerances and having given up eating bread all the time a year ago and lost a lot of weight, I thought there must be a lot of horses who are sensitive to different things in the feed. Tim recons the biggest thing he finds is Barley, closely followed by maize.

I stupidly still have bread at weekends when I fancy it and this weekend I od'd on it, I had toast Saturday am, bacon roll mid morning, a hog roast at Ella's school festival and then avocado on toast on Sunday morning. Well the whole of Sunday I was in agony with my back and arthritic toe, to the point I was unable to sit/stand/lie to get away from the pain.

Amazingly I used to live with this pain for a long time, I had completely forgotten how inflammatory wheat is for my system and the arthritis that I have came back with a vengeance. It really made me think about what we put in our bodies and what we are giving to the horses. Its amazing to think that everywhere we look people are talking about Gastric Ulcers in horses, not to mention behavioural issues...Horses are grazing animals, designed to eat for 18 hours a day, usually scrubby grass and for us to be feeding them massive amounts of cereals, surely this is the reason that is contributing to a broad spectrum of their issues??

What's the answer? Well i'm not sure but I am researching a diet that is as much fibre based as possible with the energy coming from oils as opposed to starch based cereals. I shall let you know how I get on...