United States Eventing Association

Entry 1 | Entry 2

The year so far has been one of the best winters I have had from a training and learning standpoint! From starting in Wellington, to our training sessions with Mark and of course all of Phillip's continued help with all of my horses and me!

Even still, the best laid plans can go awry. We have had an unfortunate ending to our preparations to compete at Badminton this spring: Joey has a minor strain of a medial splint bone and the ligaments that attach it to the cannon bone. It is a minor injury and he only needs to walk for a few weeks, but it is most certainly not in Joey's best interest to fly to England this week. This is just bad timing, but I still believe all things happen for a reason. He is happy and walking and now we are home on 'his' farm, so he even has his stall and paddock back!

It was a very stressful couple of weeks trying to diagnose what was wrong and then make a decision, a very big decision. I have to send a huge thank you to Dr. Kevin Keane who has been with me all the way through this! Even when he couldn't be there physically, he was very kind to deal with my million text messages and phone calls giving updates every few hours. Dr. Keane will also be seeing Joey through the rehab to get him back on his game!

I also would like to thank Dr. Linda Hickey of Aiken Equine who has been very accommodating with farm calls every other day to keep taking X-rays for me! And ultimately, Dr. John Peroni at the University of Georgia who was able to make a diagnosis for me and very kindly helped me to make the final decision not to travel to England. He too handled my many questions very well! These are just a few of the wonderful people who have been helping me through this. You can imagine how nervous I have been for two weeks of X-rays and scans, just not knowing what was wrong with my boy...I certainly was not sleeping much!

In the end, Joey will be fine and so will I and with any luck, we can have our shot at Badminton next year!

Good luck to everyone at Badminton and Rolex! We will be cheering you on!

Cheers,

Kristin