Owners' visit

Yesterday at 09.30 we had the pleasure of owners visiting the yard to see their horses school.  We were delighted to welcome the husband of Bridget O’Flynn, who owns Outside The Box and Penelope Bridel, owner of Headly’s Bridge with her daughter Jo to the yard.  We also had Luke Kilgarriff, amateur jockey, schooling Headly’s Bridge.  Luke was having his first school for over six months as he has been recovering from an operation to stop his shoulder dislocating.  He was certainly thrown in at the deep end, as we must have jumped 30 odd jumps of various shapes and size.

                By way of introduction, Luke first joined me when I was at my old yard as our conditional jockey.  From there he went on to be a conditional with Carl Llewellyn and has since decided to return to being an amateur jockey after taking the decision to re-train as a teacher.  A bright lad, recently getting 2 A*s at A level and 2 As, he has a place this autumn at Bath University to undertake his teaching studies.  Luke has rejoined Simon Earle Racing as a freelance work-rider and will be with us for hopefully four days a week.  For all those point-to-point trainers looking for an amateur, it is worth noting that Luke is light and can easily do 10 stone…

                Now back to the horses – I was very pleased with the way things went as Outside The Box was having his first school at home for us and Headly hasn’t schooled for a while.  I am very proud of the fact that we have had over 70 runners without a faller.  I have taken a lot from having had tuition from the likes of Yogi Breisner, Andrew Nicholson and a few other eventing people; coupled with my experiences when I was a jockey of riding inadequately schooled horses which was usually felt by me many times, quite painfully, on the racecourse!

                I like to see the riders sit still and ask nothing of the horse at a jump and let the horse make his own mistakes so they can learn from the mistakes themselves.  I hate having a horse that is waiting for the jockey to tell it what to do at a jump; firstly because often the jockey has to make a split second decision going into the jump and after all, he is human and could get it wrong; by which time the horse has probably worked out that it was going to do something different and then it is in two minds or becomes confused by the instruction, and falls.  Plus, let’s give the horse more credit; it doesn’t need our help for it to jump and can do it all itself quite naturally!

Headly's Bridge being schooled by Luke

Outside The Box being schooled by Simon

                Yesterday was a great day for us – not just seeing the horses jump well or sometimes not so well, making the errors they need to, here at home and learning from them; but also to see owners together – comparing their horses and telling the stories of the racecourse, where they bought their horses from and what draws them to racing.  Over a cup of coffee back at our house, we all thoroughly enjoyed the planning of the races in the coming weeks.  Having an open, relaxed environment for the owners is so important.  I love hearing their views and including them in the progress of their horses from arrival to race-day.  For those owners that wish to come and see their horses, you are as always welcome any time (including friends and family) and for those potential owners – do come along and see how we do things, we are happy to show you around.  If you have a horse that has jumping problems then we would be more than happy to help.