Agreed that she does a good job on the horses she backs, but it’s weird that all her horses always seem to have something wrong with them….. She had Robyn at the vets a few months ago, because there was something wrong with him, seems to be every horse she has (of her own) there is apparently something wrong with them, a bit weird.
I'm a bit on the fence with this. It does seem a bit odd that quite a few of hers have problems, but I'm sure there's plenty of other horses she works with that don't. I do feel that with horses if you start looking for issues, you'll always find something. As an owner of a 24yo TB (with excellent feet by the way - they're not as uncommon as you'd think with a good diet and good farrier!) who raced for 8 years, I knew that when issues have cropped up in the 10 years I've had him, scanning legs always showed up an awful lot of damage/potential damage that wasn't necessarily causing an issue at this point in time, but most likely would later down the line, so if he's had niggles, I've just given him plenty of rest at grass and seen how he recovers, then brought him back slowly. Unfortunately for Miri, with any client horse, she's probably got restrictions (such as 'turn around time', financial implications and her own, very high, standards of horse care) when working with horses. So if she thinks there are issues, I don't think it's within her to ignore them - and luckily she has the owners/insurance policies that enable her to investigate and potentially find reasons why the horse isn't progressing as intended. I think there's unfortunately an awful lot of not necessarily well bred (with confirmation/career longevity in mind) horses and ponies around, so as I said before, if you're looking for problems - you'll find them!
Then don't get me started on the really common methods of dealing with some niggles in the leisure horse world, like using steroid injections, stem cell treatment, daily bute just to keep a horse comfortable - I think in many cases it only temporarily puts a plaster on a niggle and dangles a carrot for owners (such as LOTB) making them feel the horse will be totally fixed and gives a bit of a placebo effect so the owner is more likely to over do it - rather then a vet being quite blunt and giving a more realistic long term projection i.e. light hacking only, retired to field. Too many horses out there simply not capable of what an owner wants, who then get some level of treatment, are fine for a little while, then crash when the rehab plan isn't followed/it was never going to work long term anyway. Having been on a fair few livery yards in my time, I've seen the same cycle repeat over and over, and let's just say I'm really glad I've been lucky enough to rent a little place of my own for my old codger so I don't see what seems to have become 'the norm' in the horsey world.