What a beautiful morning – frosty but not too cold with brilliant sunshine – absolutely stunning and no better place to be than on the gallops here.
Much better weather than yesterday morning where the whole team had to ride out in torrential rain. It then cleared late morning enabling us to turn all the horses out in the field and fog the yard with disinfectant which is something we aim to do at least once a fortnight throughout the whole yard. We bring all the banks of the stables into the middle and all the walls are disinfected. This is so important as we prefer our horses to have deep thick beds (we all love a comfy bed after all!) but bugs can easily live in the banks if not thoroughly cleaned regularly so this enables us to keep on top of it all. If it’s torrential rain though we don’t turn them out as it’s not much fun even though they are well rugged up.
Cut & Run on Sunday at Leicester stopped quickly and lost her action so I feared the worst as I ran down the track. Thankfully she was sound but a post race examination during routine testing found she had an irregular heartbeat so our vet has been in to fully check her out and, having spoken to Zara we’ve decided to give her the winter holiday we’d planned sometime now. It could have been much worse and the Vet said that she may never be affected by it again but we’ll monitor her when she is back in and give her an ECG before she runs again.
One runner today at Southwell with Ben Buie who was 2nd on his racecourse debut at Ascot recently and will hope to build on that run today under Harry Stock taking 5lbs off his back. It’s a warm little bumper though with at least three other very nicely bred individuals in it but he seems to have come on from the Ascot run and we’ll be disappointed if he’s not well in the mix. He’s a lovely stamp of a horse and we are thrilled that we have just finalised a partnership for his 3 year old half brother, by Yeats, that we also think a lot of too. He’s now owned by a great bunch of people and they will no doubt be watching Ben Buie with interest today as his half brother won’t be making his debut for a few months.
Yesterday was the deadline for the Lycetts Team Champion Award for 2019 and the Team have worked hard towards this years Nomination. Earlier this year we made the final four on the shortlist for the yards with under 40 horses and were awarded with the highest accolade of 3 stars which we are very proud of. The whole process has been created to showcase the yards who have a strong team ethos.