What Mary Has to Say! – April 2021

Dear all,

Here is an update:

Well it has been great to start eventing again. The sun shone at Tweseldown, the going was perfect, and my horses were very well behaved!! Both Seamus and Cyrus jumped double clears finishing 6th and 7th respectively. Portman was a different story with my lorry registering -4 degrees as we arrived…definitely too cold for eventing! I had faults in the showjumping but good D tests and XC rounds. Then it was another cold, but also wet day at Larkhill (gosh I can’t wait for summer to come!). Both Seamus and Cyrus were doing their first novice level event of the year. Cyrus was in the lead after the D and SJ, and then went beautifully XC, clear but with some time penalties. Seamus had 2 show jumps down (over exuberant, and losing concentration… he is a very good jumper really!!) I decided not to run him XC as he is entered for Bovington next Sat, so thought he would benefit from SJ schooling this week, and hopefully jump better next weekend, fingers crossed 🙂

Dobby is progressing well, with the BE90 Open at Bicton in 2 weeks time as his first BE event. He is jumping well at home and I’ve taken him SJ schooling to 2 different venues, plus XC schooling twice. He loves work, is naively brave, and has plenty of scope and power. Before the XC courses were allowed to open I used my imagination making spooky, cross country type fences in my arena….narrow fences with barrels, ditches using Marksway HorseHage, Burlybed and Baileys bags, plus pallets and sawn up telegraph poles for ‘rustic’ type fences.

On a very sad note, I had to have my beautiful homebred 5yr old grey mare Kizzy put down a couple of weeks ago. It was devastating, and such a waste of a beautiful, well bred talented horse. She started to become intermittently unlevel this year – x-rays revealed cysts within her navicular bone, which sadly are untreatable.

With the dry weather continuing I’ve finished rolling my fields (thanks to my Logic Ballast roller)…but we do need some rain and warm weather now to help the grass to grow.

I try not to swop the outside horses rugs too much, but with this strange weather being so warm when the sun is out during the day, and then temperatures dropping to below freezing at night, all my weights of Bucas rugs are being used.

I love a challenge and have started training for the London Marathon which is on Oct 3rd this year. I’m not really a runner but just felt I wanted to strike ‘run a marathon’ off my bucket list! I wanted to run for a children’s charity and have been accepted to run for the GOSH team – Great Ormond Street Hospital. I’ve set up a Justgiving page…. marykingmarathon… and would appreciate any support 🙂