A quiet couple of days, but..............

 ...we hope to have a couple of runners later in the week.

Snapping Turtle will be embarking on a chasing career this season, but we may just give him a season pipe opener over the timber and he's entered in the 2½ mile novice hurdle at Hexham on Friday. Speaking of which, Friday present Northern racegoers with a choice of venue with the second day of a rare 2-day NH fixture at Musselburgh and the afore-mentioned Hexham card.   
How nice of the race planners to come up with such variety......

Kelso have another weekend card on Saturday where the advanced going is soft. Not so sure if this will suit Mia Matriarch, but she is entered along with Charlie Bucket (in the long distance hurdle) and Nodda High Kid (who goes in the staying novice hurdle).
Despite having winning bumper form, Callum tells us Nodda High Kid gives him the feel of a horse who will be suited by 2½ miles plus, so we'll see.

Left to right - Charlie Bucket, Nodda High Kid and Mia Matriarch

Youngsters update

You may have noticed by looking through the profile of our horses in training that we have an unusually high proportion of unraced young stock this season. For one reason or another, we've lost some seasoned handicappers who have been consistently competitive over the last few years.

No worries though, we're very pleased with the bunch of unraced 3, 4 and 5 year olds but it would be unrealistic to expect each of then to be winning or even hitting the frame in the short term. The summer can be a quiet time at Dodlands - we've lacked a couple of flat runners in recent times, but Ryan has done a fantastic job in educating a couple of home bred National Hunt types in 'May' (Winged Love filly) and 'Achilles' (River Falls gelding).

We've taken these two onto the stage where they are working well upsides their more experienced stablemates each morning. But we'll now give each horse a break for a couple of months and bring them back in February to be prepared for a racecourse debut in the spring.

One to look forward to - 'Achilles'