Hi everyone,
I’m Christopher Elliott and this is the first of my blogs for eventful life. I was very kindly asked by Debbie Higgs (thanks Debbie) to write this blog to give an insight in the veterinary side of eventing.
So here it goes…
Like a lot of riders, my year starts out by sitting down in front of the calendar with pen in hand and planning which events I’ll be vetting at. Now that’s the easy and fun part, the tricky thing is making sure that I can fit all of my eventing commitments around my weekend roster at work. This usually involves a lot of begging and pleading, changing of shifts, a lot of “please” and “thank you” but above all else making sure my schedule is written on the communal work roster well before anyone else… But thankfully my bosses are very understanding and kindly give me the time off. It’s often at this stage that I look at my diary and think – “Gee, that’s looking pretty hectic” for example here is my weekend schedule for the 8 weekends of February and March
Wallaby Hill
Wedding in Adelaide
SIEC
On-call at Randwick
Wedding in Adelaide
Wallaby Hill
On-call at Randwick
On-call at Randwick
And check out my schedule for August, September, October…
Yes that’s right, it does read Rio Test event, Tamworth, Burghley, Europeans at Blair Castle and Canberra.
After getting my schedule sorted comes the expensive part – booking flights and accommodation. It’s quite exciting booking flights all over the world, but it’s certainly not cheap. It’s a good thing that I love what I do…
My next job for the start of the year is to dust off my Emergency Eventing Bag. From Monday to Friday I absolutely love being busy, but when it comes to vetting at an event, the quieter I am the better. No one wants to see me with my emergency bag. Thankfully it’s extremely rare that I have to use it, but at the start of the year I check that everything is in place just so that if I do need it it’s all ready to go.
I do really like my emergency bag – it appeals to my inner OCD as it’s got heaps of compartments that I can obsessively organise and arrange, it’s a practical size – it carries absolutely everything I would need in an emergency on cross country, it looks professional, but I do think one of the main reasons I like this bag so much is that it appeals to the my inner child – it’s big, red and shiny. And we all know that red is the fastest colour – and that’s very important in an emergency 
In all seriousness, accidents on cross country do happen and as a vet out on course it’s vital that we have everything that we need to safely and effectively treat all possible eventualities. It’s also very important that the medication and materials that we need are easily and readily accessible – hence the emergency bag.
My red-is-the-fastest-colour emergency vet bag
Just like any rider and horse combination at the start of the season it comes a time when all the preparation has been done and the only thing left is to head out to your first event; and for me that was Wallaby Hill CNC on the 7th and 8th of Feb.
I absolutely love vetting at Wallaby Hill (despite the drive down from Sydney starting at 5am each day) it’s a well-run event that is always enjoyable to be a part of. The CNC cross country course is relatively easy to manage from a veterinary point of view – with one vet at the stables you can get away with only one out on cross country as all areas are easily accessible in lovely Landcruiser (big shout out to my bosses at REC – thanks for the upgrade!) and the going is always so good we rarely have troubles (knock on wood). Apart from a couple of minor abrasions out on XC the grand sum of veterinary work I did for the whole weekend was administer a dose of anti-inflamatories for a horse with very mild colic. A nice quiet weekend – just how you like your vets to be!
Alex Townsend at Wallaby Hill
Two weekends later I was back out on Cross Country – this time at SIEC for the Randwick Equine Centre Summer Eventing Classic. This was the third year that we have sponsored this event and it’s really nice to be able to give something back to the eventing community. This event is certainly a highlight for me each year as I really enjoy being a part of everyone’s success thought out the weekend and I get a real kick out of presenting a rug with our clinic name on it. Sometimes as a veterinarian you can get caught up with a lot of doom and gloom - we often only see horses and clients when there is something wrong - it’s very rare that a client calls you come and look at their beautiful lovely healthy horse. As such it’s really nice to out and about and see horses at their very best, doing a sport that they love and seeing the enjoyment that those horses give to their rider. It’s certainly one of the main reason I like vetting at events so much.
My colleague Dr Rachel Salz and Shane Rose winner of the CNC 3star at SIEC (above) and Tim Boland on the way down the hill towards the water complex at SIEC (below)
And then three weeks later I find myself back at Wallaby Hill, this time for the Extravaganza. This event reminds me so much of being back the UK (makes me really miss it). It’s a great fun day and I especially love the Team Eventing concept. It’s cool to see the three Olympic disciplines joining forces as one team. I really think this would be an absolute hit at an intentional FEI level. It would bring supporters of the three disciplines together and maybe expose them to a sport they haven’t fully appreciated before. And everyone loves cheering on their national team. Just imagine it at a World Games, the teams would be amazing!
Australia: Mary Hanna, Stuart Tinney and Edwina
Britain: Charlotte D, Fantastic Mr Fox and Scott Brash
Germany: Isabelle Werth, Michael Jung and Ludger Beerbaum
USA: Kathleen Raine, Boyd Martin and Bezzie Madden
Netherlands: Adelinde Cornelissen, Tim Lips and Jeroen Dubbeldam
New Zealand: Mark Todd, Mark Todd and Mark Todd
Well that’s it for blog number 1,
Stay tuned for next time when I will try to give you an insight into the veterinary aspect of planning for Cross Country day.
