Winter has arrived

It has been absolutely amazing that the horses have been able to stay out in the fields almost up until the end of November. We brought in the old boys a week or so ago but it has been so mild and sunny we decided to leave the younger ones out a little longer. In the end the decision to bring them all in was slightly taken out of our hands; the mares bust out of their field, sprinted across the front of the school and generally created mayhem. They are all in now and are obviously as pleased as punch especially when it is now pouring with rain and blowing a gale!

Ravastree ran in the 1.50 on the Saturday of the Hennessy weekend, he was in a competitive field, jumped almost faultlessly (although made a mistake over the water jump) and came a very credible fourth. His first time over jumps since he arrived in England and everybody was thrilled to bits. He came home safe and was mooching around in the field on Sunday!

The sun shines on the The Greatwood Hurdle

Despite lurching from one crisis to another; we couldn't find a minibus to take the children, young people and teachers for the best turned out, Toyboy wasn't up to date with vaccinations so only two out of the three amigos could go, and then Millfields lorry broke down in Bristol - our day turned out to be excellent. It didn't matter that we just had two little ponies (instead of five) for quite alot of children to polish up for the best turned out prize. Aaron and Poncho loved all the attention and the prize was given to both sets of teams, Mick Fitzgerald was good enough to undertake the judging. The Greatwood Hurdle was a good race with Harry Derham (who took part in our Charity Race last year) winning on the Paul Nichols Brampour.
The highlight for our fundraising was the Charity Sweepstake, masterminded by the awesome Sarah Oliver of AJA - we had a full house of jockeys and they raised a remarkable sum of over 30,000! The sun shone all day and it was just a fantastic day for everyone - This day for Greatwood wouldn't happen without the extraordinary generosity of Nigel and Penny Bunter - we owe them a great debt of thanks

The Greatwood Hurdle

Tomorrow is the biggest day in our calendar, the card for the Hurdle is as strong as ever and it will be an exciting race. We would love it if Nigel won with Kumbeshwar! - we have a trade stand, ponies from Millfield & Greatwood will be dolled up to the nines by students who have completed our Greatwood Horse Power Course and we must thank Cheltenham, Amateur Jockeys Assoc for supporting us with the Charity Sweepstake - thank you to the FAB 12 Jockeys who are all riding to support us at 4.10 tomorrow

Red and Tish RIP

Red and Tish died on the 27th October, just a fortnight ago today.
Red had been suffering with painful arthritis in his knees which was manageable with painkillers but in the end his kidneys began to fail. Tish, had been poorly on and off, since our Open Day in June. He finally succumbed to a particularly aggressive bout of laminitis (he had also recently been diagnosed with Cushings Disease).
These two boys loved each other as much as I loved them and sadly, the decision had to be taken to let them go together. We had looked after Red for nearly 20 years, 10of which he had spent with Tish. Red was ours before we became a Registered Charity, he has seen us go through so much and I miss seeing him and his little mate who could be seen sometimes peeping out from under Red's belly and I miss going in to see them after a long hard day, and I even miss feeding them their breakfast each morning.
I guess it will get better and I will get used to them not being here but at the moment, it just seems the end of an era.