Laura Tollit MRCVS sees Hack Up bring her horse back to ODE

After years of ill health Hack Up Bespoke makes 2014 the year Conx returns to ODE

I have had Concord, or ‘Conx’ as he is affectionately known, on loan for the last 8.5 years. When he came to me as a 12 year old he had had quite a hard life full of hunting and eventing to BE novice with visible wear and tear to his legs.  I had several years of fun competing on RC teams and at PN eventing. Although he would do a polite dressage test he always took a little while to loosen up, judges would comment on his movement and we would nearly always have a pole of 2 down in the show jumping despite working really hard at home!! In 2008 he damaged his deep digital flexor tendon resulting in 9 months in the stable and a long slog bringing him back into work, although sound and very happy to be back jumping again something just wasn’t quite right, many thought I should just retire him..... the following year he was diagnosed with grade 4 gastric ulcers, treated with gastroguard and management changes put in place. After his injury he was started on a joint supplement – generally whatever the feed shop had on offer at the time as I never saw any difference in his movement or way of going but it made me feel like I was doing the right thing! For the next couple of years we ticked along going to the odd local show and jumping the occasional small class and I battled to keep the weight on over the winter. At the beginning of 2013 a friend said she had spoke to Alex on his tradestand at a local competition and she liked what she heard so I thought maybe I should contact him to. The rest is history as they say.... Conx was started on a bespoke joint supplement containing  GLHCL, Boswellia Serrata, MSM and Turmeric and the results were noticeable fairly quickly, he would take a lot less warming up and was a lot more forward and  willing to work on the flat. Last season he made a comeback to ODEs, having his best dressage scores since I have had him and consistently jumping those elusive double clears at 90cm-1m classes, which I thought was pretty amazing as he was then 20 years old and we had worked so hard in previous years and failed to achieve this! Alex had also advised that I used Zeolite alongside the joint supplement, I’m sure this has also made a huge difference to stomach health, he is far less girthy, and much more perky and happy to work, and I am feeding a quarter of the feed I was last winter and I have a fat horse at this time of year for the first time ever!