16th December 2019

Typical Monday morning canters again. We will be backing off many horses for the time being as the current ground conditions will only be agreeable to a handful of ours. There doesn’t appear to be much let up and any showers will just keep it where it is for the moment. 

I’m delighted to report that another 500 pounds went to Katharine House Hospice today, thank you to all those who have continued to sign up to my thoughts page. I’m pleased to hear that some of you are getting plenty of enjoyment and a few pounds too. 

We have set about sorting the drainage for the sand gallop once and for all. The drains that went in with it can’t cope, the additional lot of drains we added eased it a little but it still isn’t good enough.  

I listened to Annamarie Phelps (chair BHA) on Luck on Sunday yesterday evening. I was mightily impressed by her, not only is she clearly a very intelligent lady she seems to have a very good grasp on the problems we as an industry are faced with. Talking about them and overcoming the issues are two totally different things. I feel we have a very good chance with her heading it up. Throwing stones at each other isn’t going to help any of us but time is the essence and if we are still where we are in twelve months I will be disappointed. However, I don’t support the decision to increase owner’s administration fees given. They choose to base themselves in Holborn when I’m sure there is much cheaper office space available countrywide and they seem happy using expensive consultants to circulate mindless questionnaires that I can’t believe tell them or others anything we don’t already know. 

Christmas quizzes seem to be the order of the time of year: 

Which horses do the the two sets of ears belong to?