What people say.

Rang at ten past two with a colic. Huw answered on the third ring, told me exactly what to do, and was in the yard in forty minutes in his pyjama top. She had a painkiller and was eating by breakfast. He rang at eight to check.

Two other opinions said back. Siân blocked him up the leg over a long morning and found it in the hock, and showed me on the X-ray on the yard. She wrote a rehab plan with dates and he is hunting again. No one had ever written it down.

It was not what I wanted to hear about a mare I had fallen in love with, but it was what I needed. She told me what she had found and what it meant for jumping, and left me to choose. I walked away, and bought one she liked better.

They put her dates on the board. So when I rang at 1am with a leg back, Siân knew who it was before I had finished the sentence, and she talked me through walking her until she arrived. Mare and filly both fine.

My old boy had been dropping food for months and I thought it was just his age. Huw found a loose molar and took it out. He put on 30 kg by the summer. I should have rung a year earlier.

Very good vets, but when they are on another call, you wait, and with only two of them it can be a while. Once I waited nearly two hours for a cut leg, and it would have been nice to have that said on the phone at the start. They were honest about it afterwards.