So as most of you know I have just made the journey to the US of A. I have been lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to bring horses over and train with Boyd and Silva Martin. The two horses that I have brought are Guido Hatzis, my 2* horse, and Lamondale Bisou, a 6yo WB x TB that we bred. The plan is to also send Lamondale Florinia, a beautiful 4yo mare we bred over in a few months and maybe later Guido’s first baby Lamondale Gautier who is a 3yo.
The last few months of being in Australia have been fantastic as well as very weird, making all the necessary changes for while I am gone. I am so fortunate to have such a great team of people behind me who will keep the rest of the horses in work, these people being Jenny Bennett (my long-time coach and friend) who is taking on all the young horses we have bred, and also Shaun Dillon who has TS Fantasia and Kinnordy Rubino out and competing. These months also involved a huge amount of work organising all my warmest gear for the states, packing everything for the horses, seeing friends and of course a lot of alcohol consumption!
Guido Hatzis and Lamondale Bisou flew out on Saturday the 7th March. Their flight took 30 hours!! Going from Sydney to Shanghai, Anchorage and then finally to New York. It was quite a strange feeling being at home without them and waking up in the middle of the night tracking their flights on the internet! We got the call on Monday morning telling us that the horses had arrived safely and were heading into quarantine. That call was a huge relief!
As the 10th March was looming (my departure date) I was beginning to dread saying goodbye to my family and friends, my dog Juicy and all the horses at home. And as expected this day proved to be one of the hardest. My dad, mum, two brothers (Hugh and Doug) and four close friends (Jen, Rachi, Jo and Dave) came to see me off at the airport. A lot of tears were had, and of course so much excitement for my upcoming adventure!
I arrived into Philadelphia 24 hours later, it was about 4 degrees, snow everywhere and to top it off, raining! Not exactly my ideal weather but something I’m definitely going to have to get used to!! My three 23kg bags of jackets are definitely going to come in handy, much to the amusement of my family at my lack of culling clothes!
Luckily Boyd and Silva have given me their place in Cochranville to stay in until they arrive home. Boyd is still training out of their Aiken facility as the snow up here makes it quite difficult to ride in! Then of course there’s the problem of the snow melting and the place becoming wet and muddy which we are experiencing today. Going to be an interesting couple of weeks riding until the place dries out!
The horses arrived late last night from quarantine and look as though they have done the trip really well! I took them both for a hack today and that proved to be quite interesting as neither of them have seen snow before! Not that Guido is the bravest horse on a good day!!! Boyd also asked me to hack out one of his young horses. He is closely related to Kootamotoo being Fair Fiona’s (Kootie’s full sister) son. Over the next week the horses will spend a lot of time hacking out around the roads here, then they will start their preparation for our first competition being Fair Hill in April. The following weekend I will be going to Rolex to cheer Boyd on!
It’s going to be an exciting month and hopefully by the time I do my next blog I will be reporting on how the horses went at their first competition!
Until then, miss you all x
