PART 6 - MY JOURNEY WITH MJ
I don’t think I fully understood how mentally difficult it could be watching everybody else move forward while you feel completely stuck until 2020. At the beginning of that year, things finally felt as though they were coming together for MJ and me. After everything we’d already been through, we’d started having some really lovely results and our confidence together was growing all the time.
In January 2020 we went to our first British Showjumping competition. MJ jumped an amazing jump-off in a large class and finished 3rd, winning her first prize money. I remember feeling unbelievably proud of her. It felt like all the hard work we’d put in together over the previous couple of years was finally starting to pay off. Then, while warming up for the second class that same day, she didn’t feel right. At the time I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was wrong, but I knew enough about her by then to know something wasn’t normal. I withdrew immediately.
A few days later the physio came out and said she suspected a tendon injury. We took MJ to Glasgow Vet School where the scans confirmed it. She would need full box rest and it was unlikely she’d do any meaningful work again that year. Oddly, I remember really clearly trying very hard to stay positive on the journey home. After losing Bailie so suddenly, part of me was simply grateful that I still had her. I told myself we’d use the time to strengthen our bond even more. I also tried to convince myself that because it was the year Covid arrived, we probably wouldn’t miss much anyway.
But the reality of rehabilitation with a fit Thoroughbred event horse was incredibly difficult.
MJ absolutely hated box rest. She would buck and bronc in the stable, kick holes in the walls and work herself into a frenzy. When we finally progressed to ten minutes of in-hand walking a day, it honestly felt like flying a kite. I was terrified she was going to explode and damage herself even further.
Eventually she was allowed short periods of hand grazing, and because we were all working from home during Covid, I was able to spend hours every day sitting with her in the field while she grazed. Looking back, I genuinely think those quiet hours together deepened our bond enormously.
But there were also two occasions where she massively spooked while hand grazing, got away from me and galloped flat out to the top of the field. Both times I remember standing there in absolute panic, convinced she was going to destroy all the progress we’d made.
Sadly, I think that’s exactly what happened.
After seven months of rehab, we returned to the vet school expecting to finally get the all clear on the tendon injury. Instead, they told me the tendon had healed… but she was now lame on the opposite foreleg with a suspensory injury. I genuinely felt sick. We went straight from one rehab programme directly into another.
To this day I strongly suspect she damaged the suspensory during one of the times she got loose while hand grazing, but of course there was no way of proving it. The difficult thing with rehab is that even when you follow every instruction perfectly, accidents still happen.
In total, MJ ended up having well over a year off consecutively.
That period changed me mentally far more than I realised at the time.
Everywhere I looked, other people seemed to be progressing. Moving up the levels. Competing every weekend. Posting photos from events and training sessions. Meanwhile my entire life revolved around counting walking minutes, managing rehab schedules and desperately trying to stop my horse injuring herself again.
And although I was genuinely happy for other people, it became harder and harder not to feel left behind. Looking back now, I can see how much pressure I was putting on myself because I felt we “should” be further ahead by then. But horses really do have a way of teaching you that progress is rarely linear. Sometimes survival itself is the achievement.
Ironically, some of the deepest parts of my relationship with MJ were probably built during those long, quiet rehab months where, from the outside, nothing exciting appeared to be happening at all.
Unfortunately though, rehab also brought another difficult side of the horse world into focus for me — judgement from people who only see tiny snippets of a situation and think they know the full story!
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