Hello and welcome to my latest blog. In just a few days time I will be jetting off to sunny Bali on my honeymoon leaving my wonderful sister in charge of the ponies!

I got married on 12 June, Bramham weekend, just down the road from Bramham park – purposefully picked because the weather on Bramham week is always glorious… but not this year! It rained, quite a lot. Nevertheless it was the most perfect day that we will never forget. Despite my new surname, we will still, of course, be Team Taylor!

Getting married has taken up quite a lot of my time this month, so we haven’t been out competing as much as normal. However, as you will see from my video blog, this month has definitely been a case of quality not quantity and our success at Hickstead, coupled of course with a wedding, has made June 2016 one to remember!

I am looking forward to this weekend where Taking the Biscuit (Patchy Pony) will be going to North of England County to compete in the Senior Showing Olympia Direct Route Showing Qualifier. I’m hoping she goes well and is competitive, but with an Olympia ticket at stake it will certainly be well attended with some strong competition, so whilst I am confident we are as well prepared as can be, it’s all down to the judge on the day.

If you remember in my last blog, Oakley had been scoped and found to have several gastric ulcers. He was treated and seemed to improve, but developed some fairly acute headshaking symptoms. A nose net and fly fringe eased symptoms and although he was far from perfect I thought we were making some progress. I was looking forward to tentatively looking on Equo and planning some shows when I returned from Bali.

Unfortunately, on rescoping this week there was bad news from the vet. The treatment has cleared up the previous ulcers, however in just three weeks he has developed more grade three ulcers and some grade twos in different places. We have been maintaining him and his routine meticulously so this is a terrible blow and we now need to start a long process of finding out why they have reappeared in such a short space of time, with very little work. Then we need to address the headshaking. Oakley’s future is now uncertain, and it may be a while before we see him out competing again, but we will try everything we possibly can to get this lovely, if troubled, young horse on the right path.

Matilda, my foal, is now seven weeks old and continues to grow and strengthen all the time. Mum Classy looks absolutely fantastic too. I am looking at doing some mare and foal classes with them and we now have a show name picked, ready for when she is registered. She gives the best cuddles but has now discovered she has teeth and likes to give a quick nip before running off – almost certainly laughing on the way!

Rather excitingly, there is another potential new arrival at Team Taylor! We have been looking for a top class Mountain and Moorland pony for flat and Working Hunter show classes for a long time, and although we have been close to finding it a few times, it has, so far, eluded us.

Just last month a beautiful young pony was supposed to arrive only for the owners to change their minds less than 24 hours before we picked him up… very frustrating! I wont go into details just yet because I don’t want to tempt fate, but I will say our potential new arrival is hopefully the Welsh Section C we really wanted!

All may be a little quiet on the Team Taylor front for the next couple of weeks but I look forward to updating everybody when I return, hopefully very relaxed and ready for action!

Team Taylor

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