New Arrival

This little mare (Aggy) came to us at the end of last week, and probably just about in the nick of time. Her previous owner had struggled to keep her and the only place she had found was at a farm in a field full of cows. Of course, this meant that the cows pushed Aggy away from any food or hay, the ground was wet and poached and there was little cover from the rain. She is such a sweet horse and has already stopped retreating to the back of the box when anyone approaches and I think we saw a bit of contentment in her eyes as she rested in her box with a lovely deep warm straw bed as the rain came down in torrents outside.

Deano's JUST had to be in the picture!

A Saturday Morning with Greyhound Rescue

GRWE is the leading greyhound rescue charity in England and Wales independent of the greyhound racing industry. GRWE is dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and re-homing of abused and abandoned greyhounds and lurchers, and re-home around 800 dogs a year. Our work with rescued ex-racehorses is so similar that we decided to join forces on a few occasions to help each other raise awareness and funds.
We have a covered barn, used for exercising the horses in winter, and following a visit from Michelle to make sure that it was safe and suitable for the greyhounds, we were pleased to welcome them here on Saturday morning.
I had thought that the sudden influx of people, all with dogs on leads, sporting wide varieties of brightly coloured coats would put the horses in a bit of a twitch. Montendre is directly opposite the school and I was prepared to see his anxious, unhappy twisting face if he becomes upset by anything. Nothing could have been further from the truth; the horses all looked over their doors and continued munching on their hay. It was a great morning, and the covered barn worked really well for the dogs, some belted about and some just stood around, hoping that they could return to their warm beds! We are hoping that some of the rescued racehorses will return to parade on our Open Day! Don't forget - June 5th - it is our big one again this year and all being well and fingers crossed for the remainder of the season, Menorah and Khyber Kim will come and join our well loved parade of racehorses.

Ravastree at Newbury

Ravastree's First Run

Michael and I had a meeting at Oaksey House before we went off to Newbury. It is the first time that I have been inside and it is absolutely wonderful. We were shown the gyms and all the facilities and it was extremely impressive. The design is particularly interesting in that it does not carry the feeling of an 'institution'
Well done all at IJF!
We met up with Chris, Friend of Greatwood who bought Ravastree, there was something really exciting to see Ravastree in the parade ring in all our purple, he's not a particularly big horse and was a little overshadowed by Alan's other runner Pride in Battle who is big scopy chap (and won). Ravastree ran a good race and although he looked as if he was going backwards half way, he held on and despite a mistake at the 7th he came in 4th. We were all really thrilled, I did manage to have a word with Gavin James (official photographer for Newbury) who is an absolute star because he said he would send us a couple of pictures at some stage.

AT LAST!

Due to the vagaries of the publishing world, it just seems to have taken forever to reach this point, but I am delighted to report that all being well 'the book' will go to print on March 3rd. So I am now in a position to start popping little bits and pieces into the blog.
Some time ago, a friend of Greatwood arrived in the office, dropped an extremely welcome and generous cheque on the desk and announced he had a plan and 'would we like it?'. It turned out that he'd nursed a long time ambition to own a racehorse in training. We happened to have been invited to Alan King's Owners Day and asked if Chris could come along. Alan and he went to the sales in the evening at Cheltenham during the Open and with that he bought a now 5 yr old gelding called Ravastree and is running him as a Greatwood horse, in my old colours ( which are, of course, purple)
Alan has entered him into quite a hot race at Newbury tomorrow, look out for him in the 2.05... Michael and I are going, I'm hoping that Robbie will come along as well, and I'll let you know how he gets on!