9th March 2016

Rebekah Rabbit’s heart has regulated and a decision will now have to be made as to what she does going forward. It maybe it was a one off and it may never happen again. Unless we run her again we will never know – but do we need to.

The rain last night was of biblical proportions, it is not the first time our lanes have turned to streams and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The additional drains I’ve had put in around the sand gallop coped with the water coming off the fields, they were certainly tested! It was welcome rain as far as Pinnacle Panda’s participation at the festival is concerned.

We had planned to work some horses this morning but the wind was too strong and we would have ended up killing them. All horses had quiet canters.

Frank went on a road trip, dropping a Sixites Icon filly to Ralph Beckett’s, a Champ Elyseese filly back to her owner in Hook and collected a filly from Fonthill Stud. Tomorrow the empty 2 stables will be filled with a 3-year-old Stowaway gelding and a 3-year-old Scorpion gelding getting prepped for Doncaster May Sales. The Stowaway is a smasher I have very high hopes for him, he has a Gold Cup pedigree and the physic to match.

The builders are still on site replacing all the water bowls in the yard, I originally put in typical metal water bowls but have never been happy with them. I hate the fact you can’t clean around the ball valve and also they don’t allow a horse to have a really good drink as they were too slow to fill with inadequate valves and only held 2.5 litres. I was paranoid that the horses were forgetting to go back for another drink once they had emptied them. All horses now have a water bowl holding 16 litres and they fill quicker than they can drink. Some people hate automatic drinkers as they say they have no idea how much a horse is drinking. My answer to that is look at their skin and their droppings. I’ve not been happy with the skin on a few of ours this year. I have wondered if it is the fact that we now have very hard water or that they are forgetting to go back for water. I’ve now eliminated one concern. All said and done the horses have all run well to date but if we can improve things all the better.

I've left the fire glove on the wood burner, I have now smoked the house out and am being screamed at - better go and see what all the nosie is about!