Saturday, 26 March 2011

Haunted House and Leon enjoying the spring sunshine




It seems as though we have another quirky character on our hands with Leon, who up until now seemed relatively straightforward but just suffering from various ailments associated with being in training since a two year old. One by one we have ironed all those problems out and knew he was pretty straight before his race at Southwell. The going suited him perfectly and there was only eight other runners in his race - we actually quite fancied that he might run a really good race as there was no excuse for him not to - off they set and he was having a lovely time, ears pricked, lying in second place and pulling Will's arms out as he was so keen, he loved the box hurdles which he was attacking with gusto, the field got to the bend before the home straight and suddenly Leon decided that he had done enough, thank you, and completely lost interest, Will gave him a couple of cracks with the whip and then he decided that he definitely didn't like racing at all and virtually pulled himself up. He wasn't even blowing and still full of himself, when we got him back to the stables we got the racecourse vet to scope him as in some cases horse can bleed internally and it stops them in their tracks - his scope was completely clean and the vet also checked his wind to see if he had a problem there. He didn't. The vet said that it seems that the problem lies between his ears (his brain!) so it would appear that Leon is just being a little monkey. Grrrr! The obvious thing to do with him now is slap a pair of blinkers on him, but that is a short term solution. Somehow we have got to get him to love racing again. A horse with his breeding (his mother is half sister to Sir Percy) and that was rated 100 on the flat should be able to win a 0-100 hurdle race standing on his head. We love a challenge and luckily the horse's connections are very keen for us to play with him as long as we like to see if we can sweeten him up and get him to forget the bad memories he obviously has of his past racing experiences where he had some very hard races. He loves his hunting, and if only someone had blown a hunting horn as he was going around the race track, things would have been very different! He is going for a race course gallop on Tuesday morning at Towcester to see if he will stay more than two miles as he might enjoy the longer trip where he gets a chance to settle and breath properly.
Dream is running tomorrow all being well. The ground should suit her as it is top of the ground but there is still a question mark over her wind which will be answered tomorrow.
I spent the day gardening, even without any rain everything is growing fast and the lawn needed mowing and the beds weeding. It really is a beautiful time of year.