Hi,
I am Charlotte Hordle, a 28 year old amateur eventer, I work full time as a Sales Representative for a temporary Air Conditioning and Heating Company. I live in the New Forest with my long suffering husband and our Springer Spaniel. I have two horses, Jester who is semi retired and JKS Topgun (Ollie as he is known to his friends) who is an 8 year old Scottish Sports Horse. My parents bought me Ollie as a 5 year old who had been broken about 9 weeks. He was going sweetly but was big and weak with a lot to learn! I have produced him myself to the level we are at now, and I am very proud of what a super horse he has turned into. I keep him at my parents yard which has direct access onto the New Forest, but unfortunately I don’t have an arena to use, so most of my training is done whilst out hacking. Ollie will sometimes go from one event to another without being in an arena!
In 2016 we started our BE journey and did four events on a ticket at 100 level. We soon realised that both me and Ollie had caught the eventing bug! Ollie however was struggling with making the time xc despite being plenty fit enough and I felt that something wasn’t quite right. We had him scoped at the end of the season and discovered that he had a paralysed larynx which was graded as a 4.5/5 in severity! This basically meant that his windpipe would only open to half capacity, hence why he was struggling to keep galloping! We decided to have him operated on, so in October 2016 he had a Tie Back and Hobday operation.
He recovered well from the operation and came back into work well with no obvious side effects. It was only once we began faster work with him that the coughing started! We were able to manage the coughing at home, however competitions were proving trickier with the coughing being much worse. We started the 2017 season with a couple of BE100 runs at Tweseldown and Aldon, however at Aldon he came 4th but after flying around the xc clear inside the time, he quickly deteriorated. Only 40 minutes after finishing the xc he was a quivering wreck with a temperature of 41.5degC and being treated by the event vet! We later discovered that he had a severe chest infection. A week later and his bloods came back completely clear and we started working him again. The coughing continued at a few more events, however we worked out a strict management plan to help reduce the coughing (I will go into more detail in my future blogs!). The new regime was working and the coughing was dramatically reduced which was great news!
After a bit of a blip after his first Novice, which we have since put down to the ground and his coughing, we dropped down to BE100 level again and planned a few more confidence giving runs before moving back up to Novice. We did a couple more novices with annoying blips on the xc however it did mean that I hadn’t got any Novice points which meant I had the opportunity to use my regional qualifications for the Mitsubishi Motors Cup at Badminton in May 2018… every cloud and all that! We had 4 regional qualifications and after missing out by one place at our first regional, we then qualified on our second attempt at Goring Heath, which was super exciting! We then moved back up to Novice for the end of the season and we are defiantly improving at this level despite our record not necessarily reflecting that! After becoming increasingly concerned about Ollies breathing/health over the season, I sought a second opinion to see if there was anything that could be done to help him. I felt absolutely awful when I discovered that he was aspirating food so badly that when he was scoped his wind pipe looked more like a sewer than anything else! This meant that he was constantly fighting infection as food was going right down into his lungs. This explained why he had been struggling towards the end of the xc on his last few runs. I had no doubt that something wasn’t right, however I had no idea it was as bad as it was! Ollie had felt fabulous all season, despite the coughing he was always bright eyed, fit and well… If only they could talk! We decided that there was no option but to have the tie back reversed to try and help him. He was operated on in November and touch wood, seems to be doing much better! He isn’t at full fitness yet but he isn’t coughing and all the signs say that he is greatly improved, so fingers and toes crossed.
The main aims for the 2018 season are most importantly to have a happy, healthy horse and then after that anything is a bonus! Obviously, our main focus will be Badminton and depending on how Ollie is coping with his breathing will depend on whether we then move back up to Novice or stay at 100. He is so talented it seems a shame to limit him to 100 but if he struggles to make the time, it won’t be fun for either of us, so it will totally depend on how he feels. We will also try to fit in some British Showjumping and dressage too, to keep us out of mischief!
We have our first dressage competition of the year this weekend so it will be great to be out competing again! I imagine Ollie will be very pleased to be partying again so whether I get any sense out of him remains to be seen….!
Until next time….
Charlotte Hordle xx
