after the freeze..

Although half a dozen horses worked on the extremely wet all-weather yesterday I am conscious that most of them have done little else for the past few weeks, so they went for a hack in the forestry prior to some gentle cantering on the grass. It is important to keep them fresh and interested, it's been a tough time for the horses as well as the staff and I feel it would be easy to sicken them with too much strong work on the hill. 

Of course the extremely wet all-weather is now somewhat wetter follwing the best part of 50mm of rain in the past 48 hours, quite extraordinary and there are floods everywhere but at least it seems to be eradicating the last of the ice and snow - a fine, bright and breezy day now though.  Quite a busy Sunday morning doing a little schooling here and Lucy away schooling for a trainer in Northumberland, most of the horses had their usual Sunday hour on the walker.  We are set to ride out 20 horses tomorrow which I think is as busy as we've ever been, will probably find something wrong with one of them tonight so it might be back to 19 (or 18, 17....)
This week we plan to run Native Coll at Newcastle on Wednesday and we might run Forcefield in the replacement fixture at Kelso on Friday, then we are hoping the point-to-point season will kick off at Alnwick next Sunday where we hope to have 2 or 3 runners
Isla Pearl Fisher and Isla Patriot have both come out of their races at Musselburgh well, they will be ridden again tomorrow, some great pictures form John Grossick,

"Surf," Amy and Paddy