Major update...Mournful Milton Keynes, hock injections and horses horses horses!

I'm so sorry about lack of posting lately, I have been crazy busy. So first up, I took Squirel to Milton Keynes on Saturday 22nd. We stayed over again as we had

Rather early times, with dressage at 8.06am and no time to course walk in between.

He was a different horse this time! He had company and was as relaxed and chilled as could be. I was quite excited walking the course – it was far more technical than anything else we've tried. For example, fence 4 was a big upright rail to a step down, 2 strides to an angled log. Later on was a huge step up with a ditch infront, right hand turn to a skinny triple brush, and the water was a hefty skinny box fence, through the water then a massive corner coming out!

I felt it would really test us as a combination but I felt ready.

Saturday dawned rather miserable despite going to sleep with bright blue skies, but hey ho. Squirrel warmed up lovely for the dressage although I was struggling to maintain his straightness. I felt he did a nice test, took a while to get going in the first medium canter, and both my transitions to and from walk were shocking. However I felt the extended walk and canter transitions on the centre line were far better.

I was gutted to have a score of 38, in a fairly averagely marked section, but hey ho thats life! The comments on the sheet were very fair, although I felt calling all his mediums “Modest” was a little harsh.

On to the show jumping! Squirrel warmed up okay...but he wasn't really taking me into the fences. As I was third in I didn't have masses of time. Rode round to the first, and he wasn't taking me forwards so I did the worst thing and buried him. He stopped. I thought okay, fair enough, I keep doing that so had that coming.

I turned round and started really riding and he rewarded me by jumping very nicely round to number 6 which was the treble. He jumped in, went to put 2 strides in then stopped. At this point I retired.

I was very worried. His hock injections were up for renewal fairly soon, so I called the vet as soon as he was untacked. However being over paranoid, I was very concerned for whatever reason, he would need to be retired.

Thankfully, the vet came on Monday. Flexion tests showed he was sore behind, particularly on the right hock which was the worst orginally. So we decided to reinject with steroids and also Tildren this time to try and prevent needing the injections repeated every 3 months. This was done on Wednesday, so he is currently having a few days off, then a few days walking, but we'll be all set to go to our next event at Upton on the 10^th!

So hopefully that's sorted.

Tuesday was the morning of Alfie's revetting. I had convinced myself he would fail, so although I was nervous, I wasn't particularly upset when the vet called and told me he failed again. This time he was lame after both front flexions.

So the search was back on! I was feeling really very fed up by now. I just wanted a damn horse! I contacted Dawn from Sports Horses Continental, who told me she had just had a load of 4 year olds imported. They were pretty much unbacked, had been sat on a couple of times but still needed all the groundwork put in place really.

So it was time to set off on another hench 400 mile round journey! We arrived in the pouring rain, and she took us out to the fields. She suggested I picked the ones I liked the best, to see jump and move. I was like a kid in a sweetshop! They were all stunning, extremely high quality animals.

I picked a grey mare by Cachus and a bay mare. The grey came over as soon as she saw me and followed me around, and the bay just looked like a really nice stamp of a horse, and stood out to me.

I watched them move and it was soon all too clear who it would be. The grey mare just floated above the ground with serious power and extention. Jumping was incredible, so neat, scopey and tidy, both infront and behind. Just in a league of her own. Although she still seems a little shell-shocked from the massive change in her life and the 36 hour journey it took to bring her here, she was very inquistive and curious about me. Everytime I went to look at another horse she huffed and glared, clearly very offended!

So I am very excited to announce she passed the vet with flying colours and will be being delivered late on next week! She doesn't have a name yet – neither stable nor passported so thats up to me! At the moment I'm thinking Spellbound Lexicon, Lexi as the stable name, although I am open to suggestions.

I am very excited about her, she has absolutely all the talent I will ever need, and I really hope I can produce her well enough to do her justice.