Just watched a great game of Rugby between France and Wales - France won by 5 points - It was a ferocious game with both sides putting their bodies on the line and although France deserved to win, Wales were unlucky not to score a try in the last few minutes. It was such a lovely spring like day today. About time we saw the sun. Everything has started to grow and dry out. We have made rather a mess of the paddocks during the wet winter so Doug was out there on his quad, fertilising, re-seeding and harrowing. I thought I would get in first before he is too busy doing other people's paddocks..
We took Red, Frog and Dove to the uphill gallop this morning. Dove went up first time full of enthusiasm but then decided she didn't want to go up again. Ben Case's lot were milling around the bottom of the gallop and she got a bit worked up, although that is no excuse and I think she is just taking the mickey now. She went up eventually, catching the Case string up, but it just adds more pressure on us now for the start of a race as she cannot afford to do that then. Very disappointing as we thought we had sorted that problem out. I am still reluctant to get really hard on her as we have tried that before and it didn't work. Having said that, maybe she thinks I'm a soft touch and Doug should get back on with spurs. Red went really well and isn't lame at all now. However, her recovery rate was still not good (110 bpm) so it will be a couple of weeks before she will be ready to race. Frog, went really well, and although she had a high of 190 bpm her recovery rate is coming down nicely (94 bpm)
Because Dove had mis-behaved she went out again with Dream on a hack. We started to trot and Georgia was concerned about how high Dream's HR was. We gave her time to recover and then trotted again and it shot up to over 200 bpm. This was in comparison to Dove's that was 46 bpm. She is obviously still very unwell and although she felt fine to ride and is eating really well her virus is obviously kicking in. Dream and Georgia went back as it wasn't worth the risk and I took Dove for a really long hack making her trot the whole way - it was her punishment as she hates trotting. We would have entered Dream for racing next weekend but will leave it a couple of weeks now until we know she is right. Annoyingly, we didn't put a HR monitor on Dream the day before she raced because we only have three monitors and four horses went out, as Dream was only doing light work we didn't think it was necessary but it would have been very interesting to see what her readings were and it would probably have saved us the journey down to Whitwick Manor and a P (pulled up) besides her name.
With the spring like weather things have been pretty busy with Equine Fitness - Girth Heart Monitors have been going all over the world including Australia, America, Sweden, Poland and Ireland. The Irish girths have gone to a chap called Con Manane who specialises in buying and selling two year olds. He uses the HM on a treadmill and decides from his results which one's are worth keeping and which one's should be sold on. The more people who collect data with regards to heart rates in horses the more invaluable the information will become to all trainers. It is amazing how 'traditional' most English trainers are though and how reluctant they are to embrace any 'new' ideas.
