Is the long road to recovery nearing end?

It’s been a busy month! I kicked off August down in Buckinghamshire at the National side saddle show. It was my first time there and it was absolutley amazing! I thoroughly enjoyed myself and am really glad I went. I had planned to take Gerry with me obviously so the decision to go along without him was a hard one, but it turned out to be worth it, I had a great time and was able to suss out the venue and set up, so next year I know what I’m doing, hopefully Gerry is fit and well to make the long journey down there in 2020!

We got some better news for Gerry when I got home, we were able to increase his daily walks to 10 minutes a day. His leg has been improving and the swelling is much less. The vet did say it might never fully go away, but we will see what happens. So off we went for our 10 minute walks, I expected him to be dragging me for grass all the time but to be fair to him he was really well behaved and we had some nice walks together in the evening sunshine! Mid-month I had a week long family holiday to a lovely Scottish family resort that we head to every year. It was great to catch up with the family and see my little nieces and nephew. One of my nieces has followed in my footsteps with a passion for horses, so she got to go for a walk hack on holiday on a cute little pony called Missy! Sadly her twin sister is highly allergic to horses so isn’t able to join in the fun – its such a shame, she got her nails painted in the spa instead!

I treated myself to a wee trailer upgrade this month. Gerry has a nice shiny silver Ifor Williams 511 to travel in now! My 510 was great and I loved it, but it was a little on the old side and I just decided it was time to upgrade! It’s always nice to have something new, will be even better when I can get Gerry out in it! The trailer is serviced and ready to go when you are Gerry… no pressure: get that leg healed!! My 510 went off to a fab new home, a family with 2 young girls, so glad they will get the use of it like I did, I had so many great adventures with that box.

Gerry managed to keep up his long running streak of injuries and got a new wee cut on his leg, there was a big swelling and I’ll be honest, I did panic!…the vet came out and gave him some antibiotics in case of infection, but she wasn’t too worried about it otherwise, after realising I was trying to feed him drugs – Gerry refused to eat his dinner.. thankfully its easily disguised in Honeychop with garlic: secret weapon!! He was none the wiser once I’d masked it with the honeychop.  #Winning! 2 days later his leg looked completely normal again, thank goodness.

We end August as I do every year, at Blair Castle International Horse Trials, my favourite weekend of the year! Thursday I was grooming for my good friend Fiona and her lovely coloured hunter Liberty. We set off from the yard at 4am, sadly breaking down twice on the way to the show, requiring police assistance on lights and sirens as we were in the  middle lane of 3, in a 4 month old car that decided the hazards weren’t even going to come on! Needless to say that was the most stressful journey EVER! However – somehow, we had left early enough and made it to the show in time for both of Fiona’s classes! Miracle springs to mind.. A few further technical hitches along the way including loose shoes we made it through the hotly contested hunter classes and were ready to head home again. We got a technician out to the show to check out the car before we headed home again, and thankfully we made it back home safely without hitch. I had a lie in on Friday to recover and spent the morning with Gerry, we went off for a hack, he’s up to 15-20 minutes walking per day now and seems to be (touch wood) doing well! I think he’s enjoying having stuff to do again, as am I. Early Saturday morning mum and I headed back down to Blair for the rest of the weekend. It was lovely weather and we got to watch so many amazing riders and friends doing well in the eventing, show jumping and other competitions. On Sunday morning I assisted stewarding in the side saddle ring, I had a great time and met some lovely new side saddle riders and got some good tips from the judge on what she was looking for. I spent some time at the show chatting to the lovely ladies on the BETA stand, you could fill in a questionnaire and win a goody bag containing Honeychop! They also had a bag of samples and money off vouchers on their stand, its because Honeychop are BETA NOPS members, you might have seen their logo on your bag of Honeychop..you can read more about this and what it means here : http://www.beta-uk.org/pages/feed-safety/beta-nops-scheme.php

So hopefully Gerry will continue to get better and we can soon start to add some trot work to his rehab plan. Its 9 weeks since he did his check ligament, and the vets thought 12 for full healing, so fingers crossed we are nearly there. 19 weeks he’s been off in total – the whole summer! I’m so glad that we have a beautiful indoor school at out yard, there are also plenty of venues near us with indoor schools and indoor competition, so we should still be able to get out and train and maybe do a spot of dressage over the winter all going well.

Looking forward to getting down to Honeychop in November again and helping on the stand at Your Horse LIVE – its always a great show! Maybe we’ll win another tradestand award?! Lets wait and see..

Until next month

Grace & Gerry x