Retirement Livery

In 2013 Amy needed to retire her 4 year old due to a serious injury, sadly there were only two options, retirement with risk of adverse reactions or PTS. After lengthy discussions with vets the mutual decision was retirement but with care. Blackjack needed daily monitoring to begin with, mainly to ensure his leg didn’t hook up with time. Amy wanted to give Blackjack the best quality of life for as long as he could sustain it. Blackjack couldn’t be stabled so 24/7 living out retired was the only option but there were issues with the standard of care of these types of liveries. The problem was every retirement home she visited only offered options that meant he needed to be in a large herd, ‘turned away’ where he would need to fend for himself. Then there were concerns with not being allowed to feed, visit or change his rug! His injury was so severe there wasn’t a possibility of a ‘no care’ retirement and all this led to the start of Cross Trees Livery, where the horses requirements are the absolute priority. Moving on 10 years and Blackjack is living his best life with our retired friends! After 2 years he became sound, and another three years we were cantering again. Although he is still retired, with the odd plod out here and there. I owe my whole quest for further knowledge and growing experience to Blackjack for showing me there is another way, the horse way. Each of our staff have a passion for horses, not competing, riding or travelling, they thrive off seeing a shiny coat, seeing a horse recover after an injury or giving them their loving cuddle to make them feel safe. That’s why we’re special, we care. We do this because every day we feel lucky that we can give our retired horses the best for as long as they have and we welcome and encourage all our owners to enjoy spending time with them, whenever they want.