20th September 2016

20th May 2016

My blog has taken a back seat recently so having just got back from a week's holiday with my family it's time to put that right.

A lot has happened since my last blog, as usual with racing there have been highs and lows, the highest point being Mountainside winning after a long journey  to Perth which took 7 hours. The lowest point was losing a really nice un-raced mare called Zanianka, she broke her leg in routine exercise and had to be put down. It was a terrible day, and although this was a complete one off incident, as a racing professional I can imagine some people may think I don't get attached to horses. It is days that that when I wish that were true but the truth is that as a trainer I work with these horses every day, get to know them so well I can't help but become attached and to lose one in these circumstances is something I will never get used to. Also I felt awful for her owners who had been eagerly awaiting her racecourse debut.

The second weekend of September saw our annual owners day, around 120 people came along to see the horses parade at the yard followed by lunch and a few drinks in a cow shed which had  been transformed for the day with a marquee inside!

Here are a couple of pictures from the day,

Below: Harry with our colt foal out of Zefooha by Haafhd 

Below: Someone not too impressed with the parade!!

Below: This little lad (Fergus Russell) was the lucky winner of the 'guess the weight of Miss Conway' competition with his spot on estimate of 514kg which won him a 10% share of her for one year.

So unfortunately I have returned to a few of the horses suffering from a cough, we have decided to give them a week or so on the easy which is why you will notice we might not have many runners in the next couple of weeks. In these situations the only way to take a step forward is to take a step back first. Although it's frustrating, I am not too concerned about it these things happen and I'm sure we will be back on track very soon.

 Our small team of summer jumpers have more than done their job winning 10 already this season  I now can't wait for the start of the jump season proper as we have a really nice team of winter horses as well.