What a Day

I am on night duty tonight, because we have had just one of those days, fortunately at the moment it hasn't ended in a tragedy. I try and grab Sunday's off, which usually works but nevertheless I remain on call. Sue got hold of me this morning to say that Warren Knight was completely immobile in the field. Some of the horses in one particular field were being bothered by the flies and there had obviously been some sort of fracas resulting in a few injuries.
Having looked at Warren, it was clear that we needed a vet. Warren was in extreme pain and unable to bear weight on his right hind leg. We treated Warren for his pain whilst we waited for the vet to arrive. Our vet, was already out on another call, so poor Lucy stood with Warren for an age to keep the rest of the horses away from him, and Coudy, Dan and Sue dashed around with fly sheets and fly spray for the rest of the horses until such time the vet arrived.
One look at Warren confirmed our worst fears; there was no way that we could get him into the yard without some sort of transport...which we don't have. I telephoned Nickie at Marlborough Horse Transport and she kindly agreed to come over to try and get Warren down to the yard, but she was at a show with her son and it would take a bit of a while to get to us. We then waited for Nickie, and greeted her with relief when she arrived. Warren was still uncomfortable but his pain was being managed. I hopped in the lorry and up we went to the field. I suggested to Nickie that it would be best to turn the lorry in an entrance so that we could try and load Warren facing the right way to the yard so that it would be the least possible movement for him.
Blow me down, the lorry got stuck in a rut, and we had to ask our neighbouring farmer to come out and tow the lorry out. We then had to wait for Gerald to come. In the meantime, Lucy was still holding Warren...this whole excercise took up about three hours.
One of worst fears when eventually the lorry was finally in a position to load Warren, was the very real possibility that he would be too unsound to manage the ramp, however with another load of painkiller we managed to load him without too much trouble and then we set about x-raying him.
It had been our initial fear that following an x-ray it would be clear that Warren had fractured his hock, but despite many pictures, and that Mike had managed to send over the pictures for a second opinion this could not be confirmed.
Warren is now in for the night, he is comfortable, and it does look now as if he will recover.
Sadly, I missed a day with the family to celebrate Michael's birthday; what with one thing and another we were waiting around for about six hours, but hey ho that's horse's for you!
I have just come in again from looking at him, thankfully he appears to be alot better and is dozing....lucky old him.

The Weather

I hadn't realised until I started writing this blog quite regularly, how pretty much everything revolves around the weather! So....I shall begin by writing about it once again.
As feared, the weather last week was horrendous, we did manage to unearth enough rugs to keep all the horses dry, but even so, we kept the old horses in for a couple of nights because it was so ghastly. We are on top of a hill so I do think that we get the worst of it. The days were dark with the wind and the rain driving across the fields. Monty, Eddy and Runner were particularly thrilled to come in out of it all, and there was a general feeling of contentment in the sanctuary barn as they gazed out at the pouring rain.
Anyway, we have taken the bull by the horns this morning and dared the rain to continue by removing the rugs. Apparently, it is going to be much better this week, which wouldn't be hard......
Richard came along to do a vetting for some of the newer horses, it was jolly good for our work experience girls because he very patiently went through the things to look for in general conformation, which will, no doubt, be useful for them when they go back to college.

Bad Backs (continued)

Following on from our vet's visit last week, Richard had arranged to meet Polly, a chartered physio at Greatwood yesterday morning. He had decided to sedate Bunkhouse and Insheen to relax them sufficiently in order that Polly could work on them to try and release areas which had seized up. Polly spent a particularly long time on Bunkhouse, he was pretty sore all over, particularly through his neck and poll area. It was Sue's holiday and Becky's day off, but they were both sufficiently interested in the procedure to tip up for the morning. After Polly had manipulated them, Richard then injected cortisone into Bunkhouse's poll and sacroiliac, he also injected along Insheen's back. Hopefully, this treatment will help them. They are both on box rest for a couple of days and then they will have a few weeks off before we bring them into work again.
We had been a little anxious about Mighty Minnie, she had been going on and off lame but we also wanted an update about her eyes. We had looked at her eyes six or so months ago and had detected a cataract upon her right eye, and a little cloudiness on her left eye, however subject to regular check ups this shouldn't have affected the ability to rehome her. We were, therefore, staggered when Richard's examination of her right eye confirmed our worst fears. Her sight had deterioriated to such an extent that she has very limited vision. We are all pretty devastated, not least because she is such a sweet good mare.
I am off later on this morning to go and have a look at a couple of yards which may suit as satellite yards, but my first quest is to see if we have rugs for those horses which feel the cold (we have sent a load off to be mended), so I hope that we will find enough. Apparently, the next few days are going to be pretty dreadful, the horses have been ok so far, but certainly the old boys will need them, and we will need to get New Seeker, Titch and Chewie in out of the storm. New Seeker hates wet weather and just hangs about feeling cold and miserable and none of see much point in letting that happen.

Bad Backs & Dreary Weather

I have been with Richard our vet this morning. We had had some concerns over a few horses and our worst worries were confirmed, yet more cases of kissing spine....we did talk about it and it may be that owing to mobile x-ray units we are capable of diagnosing the problem easier. Anyway, sadly poor old Warren Knight has it so badly that it is untreatable, so now he will be off to the sanctuary. It is a shame because he had been going so well until the work made him sore. Insheen has a milder case and we will inject his back with cortisone, we never got round to properly x-raying Red Willie because we spotted a bit of shading in his eye, we looked at it further and realised that he has a fairly sizeable cataract on the eye (3/5) which has appeared within the last 6 months.......making it very probable that it will continue to deteriorate. Better news for Bunkhouse, we x-rayed his neck and poll and could see a small amount of damage which we can then treat, and he too has bones along his back which are touching and painful, but again, he can be treated with cortisone.
So a bit depressing really, the weather doesn't help, Laura, Head of Special Needs had organised a number of groups of children to visit, I am sure her life would have been alot easier if she had been able to go out into the sunshine instead of these continual heavy downpours!

Jodie Kidd Gala Evening

We consider ourselves to be very fortunate that Jodie Kidd nominated Greatwood as one of her four chosen charities to benefit from The Jodie Kidd Foundation. To this end, Janet and I whizzed down to Goodwood to attend the Jodie Kidd Foundation Gala Evening. For the last couple of years, Jodie has organised a celebrity golf day followed by dinner and auction. It was a splendid evening, and although the auctioneer had to work quite hard to achieve the bids, I think that it raised quite alot of money and everyone enjoyed themselves. It is very good of Jodie to put so much time and effort into raising money for 'her' charities, and it certainly makes an immeasurable difference to us. Thank you Jodie.
It has been a bit of a hectic time all round. We went to Nigel and Penny Bunter's Barbury Castle Horse Trials the day before, and took a table for lunch. This is always a splendid event, well organised and well attended with an incredible line up of top event horses taking part. It was great to catch up with so many locals who wish to support Nigel and Penny and enjoy the terrific spectacle.
Michael and I were approached recently by Harper Collins who wish to publish a book about Greatwood and how it all started. We have spent quite a while going through alot of archive material, (that in itself was a bit of a mammoth task, involving delving through loads of boxes which were housed in a pretty grotty shed). Anyway, miraculously we appear to have pretty much located everything we need. This is a bit of a miracle because we once employed someone to help us file everything, and to our consternation realised that her filing involved lots of black rubbish bags, all of which were aimed for the bin.
Other than this, everything has been fairly quiet, although we are rather hoping that our work with the horses and special needs children will be featured in the Sunday Times today. The horses themselves have been doddling along. We have several in work which we hope will be rehomed before too long, and as for the rest, they are enjoying a peaceful and restful time in the fields. I think that they are a bit relieved that it isn't quite so hot but we could do with a bit more sun now.

Memories of Devon

Michael and I have just returned from a trip to Devon and Cornwall, part business and part the sad business of the funeral of a dear old friend. We had a bit of time to spare when we were in Devon and went to have a look at the place where the charity more or less began.......now so many years ago.
Our old house is almost unrecognisable; the wing that was semi-derelict has now been done up, and all the old barns where I used to squeeze in any number of horses have now been converted into holiday cottages. We met an erstwhile neighbour after the funeral and she reminded me of her horror when she used to have to drive past our house. The narrow Devon road used to be full of goats, sheep, and hens...........
It did seem funny to remember those days, when horses used to copy the goats and clamber up the Devon banks to nibble on the ripe blackberries, and we used to herd the horses up the roads to get into the fields.
Our horses are doing well and now are covered in not only fly sheets but also Sue's unique fly spray concoction (which smells disgusting). The A&E wing is getting horribly full, Whiskey had a swelling on his hock and had to be brought in for box rest (which means that we had to bring in Georgina and Marshall) and then Seek the Faith tweaked his hock following a fit of exuberance after a shower of rain.
We took in a new horse Tua, he is a good sort, but has been lame so Richard our vet is coming in tomorrow to have a good look at him.

Greatwood Open Day

It's over!! and more or less without a hitch.
Dan & Coudy with TP and Forgery were remarkable, everyone really enjoyed their show, Dan as the wicked Knight Mordred was booed and there were great cheers when Coudy as Sir Galahad won the fight.
It was a bit nerve wracking at one stage because Forgery nearly boiled over and I was watching Robbie (Gaylord) to see if he was going to pull Forgery out, Dan did really well to sit on him particularly because it was such a hot day and the armour was so heavy. Mikey as Mincealot fought Mordred with great aplomb and all in all it was a raging success. It has been suggested that we should do something at Lambourn Open Day next year..........we'll see.
Bob Hogg was terrific with his dogs, although, sadly, I didn't get much of a chance to watch his show and the finale with our neighbour Graham just finished it all off brilliantly.
We were a bit fed up that perhaps it was not quite so busy as we had hoped, and I think it has made us all certain that we should have an Open Day every three years as opposed to every year. It is such alot of work and is totally exhausting! We loved seeing some of the old champions again, it was good of their owners to give up their time. Strong Flow won the Best Turned Out.
Ian, the carer of Beacon Flight came along to deliver the Best Turned out Prize and whilst he was here he remarked that he would really love another big horse, he spotted Maharbal and it was love at first sight.
Ian is just the most lovely man, and although Sue shed a tear when Marble left us on Monday, this lovely kind horse couldn't have a better home.
We have another horse coming in to day..........will write about him in the next post.