9th May 2014

Over the last few weeks we've been turning horses out on their summer holidays. Quite a few have gone back to their owners, whilst the others have gone over to the Stud. We’ll be sending quite a few to the sales at the end of this month, as we try to upgrade the quality we have here at Folly House.

We have already been recruiting for next season, and our latest buy is a horse called Detroit Blues. He is a smashing looking 4 year old chestnut gelding by Tobougg out of a Swain mare who was the half-sister to Kalu who won a grade 3 over 1m1 on the flat. She was also a half-sister to leading stayers Double Trigger and Double Eclipse. Detroit Blues has all the attributes to make up into a seriously smart racehorse - he won his sole Irish schooling bumper with an impressive turn of foot as his pedigree would suggest, and he won his only Irish Point at the grade 1 pointing track of Dromahane, where he showed admirable stamina.  I’m chuffed to have him in the yard….

We'll continue to have a handful of summer jumpers, but now we will start the annual steam cleaning of the boxes, the painting and general tidying up of the yard. I’d say we won’t have as many summer jumpers as previous seasons, purely due to the fact that we seem to have more ‘winter jumping types’ now….fingers crossed that is a good sign of where Folly House is heading!