Horseandhound.co.uk - Full ArticleAnnie Joppe
10:55 - 23 August, 2017
Well, how to begin? Our European Endurance Championship adventure is now over and it’s back to drizzly old Cornwall (wouldn’t swap it for the world).
It was meant to be amazing, meant to be perfect and, above all, meant to be successful. Unfortunately for us it was none of these. We have had almost two years with 100% completion rate for all our horses at all distances and this time, the big one, our luck ran out.
In our wisdom (hindsight is a wonderful thing) we left to go to Brussels on the Sunday at the crack of dawn to stay the night near Dover with the ferry early on the Monday morning. This brought us to the venue at lunchtime on Monday giving us plenty of time to settle in, check out the route and plan; with the actual competition on the Thursday.
Packing and final prep of Fantom had gone seamlessly but the worries started on the journey. Fantom is normally very good at drinking in the trailer and eating on the way. However this time he didn’t drink at all and ate very little. At our overnight stop he seemed stressed and again refused to drink and ate very little, the pattern repeating itself on the ferry and on the road to Brussels.
On arrival he was very dehydrated, a situation that was rapidly remedied and he began to drink and eat well again. The whole venue was challenging being in a park in the city and space at a premium...
Read more at http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/blog/annie-joppes-endurance-blog-time-big-one-luck-ran-629804#xRy6YDOegqT7D8kl.99
