22/01/23

The yard is a hive of activity now with every stable full up ahead of the new season. 
All the horses are back in work after their winter holidays so we have plenty of work to do to get them fit again in time for the turf campaign.
The team have done very well for their holiday with the young horses strengthening up and the older horses coming back in with a bit of a belly on them.

One problem we had last year was with Lady Clemmie walking the stable constantly and this had the knock on affect of her worrying and losing weight. One solution was to pair her up with a sheep in her stable to keep her relaxed so we have given it a go and so far, so good! A friend kindly lent us Mary the sheep and the pair seem to have got along fine and Clemmie seems very relaxed too so hopefully this is a solution going forward and we can see the best of Clemmie on the racecourse this year.

We still have a small team of horses who are running through the winter and hopefully we can nick a winner or two with them before the rest get going.
Engrave is one who I think will win soon but a lack of races at her favoured Chelmsford has counted against her recently. I don't know what it is but she doesn't seem to run as well at other tracks despite no obvious reason. Hopefully she can buck that trend this week as we might head to Newcastle on Wednesday with her. I noticed the race had very few entries just before the entries were closing so I put her in and I'm glad I did because it doesn't look the strongest of races. She'll have to overcome her Chelmsford voodoo but the layout of Newcastle should suit her and she is handicapped to win now.

The other runner for the week comes on Saturday with Stintino Sunset at Lingfield. She finished fifth last time but was only beaten a length in a very tight finish when the race wasn't run to suit her. She is ready to win when things go her way so hopefully that will be soon.