On the road to recovery... hopefully!

As my last blog post was at Christmas (which seems so, so long ago - even though it was only a month!), I thought I'd just pop in to say a quick hello and update on my mardy mare.

She's now a month into her treatment for Gastric Ulcers, and it's been a bit of an up-and-down month. She goes from being much improved and seeming a lot happier about being touched and handled, to downright nasty and back to square one. While the improved Emmie is a welcome sight, the fact that some days she is still unhappy is obviously quite concerning. It may be that it's a learned habit now, it may be that her stomach still hurts, or she may well just always have that 'grumpy mare' side to her.

She is going to have her stomach scoped again next week, so I'll have a better idea then! I'm hoping we get good news and can plough ahead and start to plan getting her out to do some dressage. I'm holding off starting to do any jumping (although we're doing loads of polework, which is fun!) until I'm more certain how she's recovering, but I'm itching to get back out with her as she is going really well on the flat! I'm not sure at what point we will be back out eventing as I'm going with the flow and see how she gets on as her workload increases. However, I've (lightly!) pencilled in the Shelford UA in May as our first ODE, which gives us plenty of time to get fit.

We have managed to do some "water schooling" anyway - and by that I mean I came across a hacking route that was about a foot and a half under water and decided to continue anyway! Thankfully it's started to dry up round here now and I'm definitely welcoming the longer days - finishing work while it's still light is a nice change!