So much to say, it seems difficult to know where to start. From Becki Leggatt's initial idea in March,  we are now going great guns in creating interest in our new community. The community is aimed at getting a group of like minded people together.  In larger numbers we should be able to gain access to trainers and support that it would otherwise be difficult to sustain on a one to one basis.

Becki works for Mel Fordham and Rebecca Turner (East Sussex) who are racehorse owners, they have horses in training with Alan King (England) .  Mel is also a Horse Racing Photographer and won photographer of the year at the Derby awards last year. Their horses return home when having a holiday, recovering from injury or retiring from racing.  Alongside Rebecca, Becki's main priority is to re-school the horses to achieve in a second career . This can be an incredibly difficult job, particularly after a long period of time off recovering from injury sustained on the racetrack or in training.  Becki has also retrained her own ex-racehorses including 'Smiling Tiger' who is pictured below at his first ever event.

Smiling Tiger

I worked at the National Foaling Bank in Shropshire as a teenager, and have had contact working with horses on off over the years. Having shared a number of horses and been retrained myself over the last 3 years, Fred " Time to Push"  is my first horse, he just happens to be an ex racehorse and I purchased him in November 2011. 

Fred Time to Push

Fred was purchased  for his lovely flowing paces and most importantly temperament, to retrain for dressage, previously he raced in South Ireland ( yes I know he can't compete in ROR). To be honest I didn't know ROR existed until I purchased him I am sure I am not alone in that.

Both of us have both found that in the South East it is difficult to attract trainers with specific skills and interest in Thoroughbreds and Ex racehorses,  it's probably fair to say that otherwise excellent trainers often find their skills do not automatically transfer over as successfully when working with these types of horse in the early stages of re-training. Once trained however there tends not to be an issue. There are some great support groups out there e.g.  ROR and the helpline they run, as well as Moorcroft that re home retrained racehorses. However, for owners in the South East it can be just too far to travel to take part in their clinics and, it is too expensive for the organisations to run clinics local to us. Being quite forthright types we two Rebecca's ( it must be in the name ;) ) have decided to be proactive and decided to make it happen another way hence the community.

True to form the training consultants for the ROR ( Rowena and Fred Cooke at Equine Management Training) are being very supportive, thank you. Interestingly they have a book out in May available from Amazon which I will be reading. "Re-Educating Racehorses - A Life After Racing"


We have named the community RRR (Retrained Retired Racehorses) Southeast and created our facebook page a few weeks ago. Retired Racehorses in South East  . This has created much interest and we are busy trying to bring together all of the offers of help and ideas so they are not lost and can be shared. As I am the techy one, I am busy creating an interface people can use to refer to when looking for support and ideas, this is the facebook page created by Becki as our livestream so we can all communicate real-time,  any hot topics and features and ideas that come from here will be expanded on our blog,  before storing them on the new website which I am nearly there on. 


What do we want to focus on ?


Yes there are great opportunities for competing out there in the form of the ROR and TARA etc but how do we get to that stage ? 

It is the red bit in the middle we want help with and will focus on for our South East area. Once the horse is trained to a reasonable level then you are laughing, but if you do not get it right in the early stages then it is a hard journey, not as pleasant and possibly not always successful. BUT it doesn't have to be that way, these are beautiful intelligent horses and together supporting each other we are going to have fun learning, chatting, meeting and competing locally. Hurrah ! How ? by having access to the right trainers and a recommended support structure, guided by experts like the ROR and others with knowledge in the industry.

Just some of the progress so far :-

• Becki has been making huge progress in talking to key people in the racing community and we hope to provide a video interview of a jockey shortly. If we know and understand the horses background we stand a chance of moving forward to the next goal. 
• Chelwood Equestrian Training Centre in Nutley East Sussex has offered to run clinics for us. Becki went to see them recently and had a tour around. What an amazing place and perfect atmosphere for Retraining the Retired Racehorse!! Hopefully will be holding many clinics and demo's there in the near future. As a taster Fred and I are going along to the John Thelwall one day starter clinic - a confidence building clinic for first time competitors on the 21st of April. We have only been to one event together so far and are ideal candidates for John. Becki will be keeping a watchful eye and hopefully taking some photos to share.
• Judd Farm Nr Tunbridge Wells, Kent  has offered to run combined training, camps and shows for us. We aim to meet with them in the next week or two.
• North Weald Riding Club have also offered to hold ex racehorse classes next year and already has some ex racers as members. 
• There are other riding clubs that have these type of classes we will ask on facebook for everyone to let us know what they have and I will post them on an events calendar as a starter.
• Jim Boyle's Ex Racers have clinics with a fantastic trainer suggested by the ROR called TinTin.  Take a look at their facebook page. Fred will be having a one to one lesson with TinTin on May the 2nd and hope to chat with him and Pippa Boyle to see if they are interested in holding a clinic in our area. We will be able to see how Fred and I get on when we return back, share what we learnt and hopefully with some good news.
• We are bringing the start of a recommended products and suppliers page together that we will be hosting on the website. Here we will have Youtube interviews, information and links to these recommendations websites and contact details. Should prove useful. Any one you can recommend please email us.

Well that's all I have time for at the moment. 

If you have any news, ideas, requests  at all please put them on our facebook page and we will do our best to act on them and incorporate them .

Catch up soon 

Becky L

RRR-SouthEast@live.co.uk