Rose Dobbin looks for positives despite suspected bug restricting runners

Rose Dobbin, whose last winner came when Attention Please struck at Musselburgh on December 10, is determined to keep positive despite enduring an enforced quiet spell, which will result in a lack of runners from her yard this month.

Based in Northumberland, Dobbin, whose husband Tony won the Grand National on Lord Gyllene in 1997, had her last runner at Catterick on New Year's Day and has no upcoming entries as she seeks to get to the bottom of the problem.

"We don't exactly know what's going on and haven't had the results from the tests, but we've had some murky-looking scopes," she said, speaking from Spain where she was enjoying a mini-break.

"We're not shutting down entirely, but we're giving the horses a quiet time because we suspect we've got a bug and we won't have any runners for a couple of weeks.

"We had a disappointing Christmas period and think they're not right, so will back off them and hopefully start firing again in the spring."

Dobbin, who began training in 2009, added: "To the naked eye a couple of the horses didn't look great, so I'm hoping we will get something conclusive.

"In our first couple of years we had months when we were out of form and we found it hard to put our finger on the problem, so that's why I'm not absolutely expecting to put our finger on it this time. I think sometimes you just have to sit and suffer and let the horses get over it."

The ill-health of the stable comes at a particularly unfortunate time for the trainer, who had by far her best career campaign last season with 25 winners and £203,226 pocketed in prize-money.

She continued: "It's obviously annoying because we had a great season last term followed by a good summer and we expected to roll on into the autumn with a nice string of horses, but the with ground being quick we didn't have many runners anyway and we just didn't get going.

"It went from quiet to bad as they started running disappointingly. We just didn't get any momentum and on top of that we've probably got a bit of a bug.

"It is frustrating, but you've got to be philosophical, at the end of the day we've still got some nice young horses. You can't tear your hair out too much and the owners have been lovely, really understanding. You've just got to be patient.

"My husband would be the person to be kicking the cat because he's more fiery and competitive!"

Dobbin, who had spells working for Nicky Henderson and James Fanshawe, enjoyed a memorable week in February 2016 when winning a Grade 2 hurdle with Jonniesofa and landing the Eider with Rocking Blues, and is hoping more good days will not be far away.

Outlining some of her brighter prospects, she said: "I think Slanelough and Some Reign haven't run as well as they should have, nor has Bako De La Saulaie and you'd have to hope there's a lot more to come from them – then there's Coole Hall, who'd also run poorly.

"The Hollow Chap and Do Not Disturb are nice young types who have disappointed, but we've plenty of horses to look forward to, whether for this season or next.

"We've got a nice new owner called Salvo Giannini, who has horses with Philip Hobbs as well, and he's said, 'Look at Hobbsy last year and how he's come back'."