A dressage rider and trainer who was temporarily partly paralysed after he suffered a stroke at a competition said he had not known how much love and support there was around him, as friends, and people he has never met, raised nearly £10,000 to keep his business afloat.
Kent-based Alex Wyatt was competing at Beechwood Equestrian Centre in Essex on 1 June and had just dismounted when he found his left side was paralysed. He praised the show organisers’ quick actions as he was in hospital within half an hour, but he then faced a lengthy stay, without knowing how he was going to feed his horses or pay his staff.
“As an experience, I hope I never, ever go through it again; I hope people never go through it,” he told H&H. “It’s been an experience, and hopefully that’s that.”
Alex said he had fallen off a horse two days beforehand, and although he did not think he had hit his head, and had no headache, an MRI showed the bleed on his brain was older than expected.
“So if you had to find out it was caused by something, I’d rather that than be wondering why it happened,” he said, adding that it is hoped he will make a full recovery.
“I was able to stand up on day four,” he said. “They were absolutely brilliant at Chelmsford hospital. I asked Zoe my physio how quickly she’d had someone walking and she said ‘Day four and that was you, so that was amazing’. My hand and arm didn’t start working until two weeks in; I’d said as long as I could walk, I’d be fine but my hand and arm weren’t working at all. That wasn’t a good morning, I had a bit of a breakdown with it all thinking it was never going to work, then at lunchtime, it started to function.”
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Alex is now back home and has sat on a horse; he was aiming to hack out an older one this week, as his life starts getting back to normal. He said that at first, he had not realised quite how severe a stroke was, or the impact it would have.
“My immediate panic was, what on earth’s going to happen with my yard; how am I going to pay my member of staff, how am I going to feed all the horses?” he said. “It was ‘How am I going to be able to come back from this; is there going to be anything to come back to?’”
Alex said he was initially “adamantly” against a friend’s idea of a JustGiving page but people were contacting him to say they wanted to help.
“So I spoke to Jo again, and she set up the page, and the generosity of people I cannot believe,” he said. “There are people I know, but not that well, who have supported it; it’s incredible how generous people can be. Tara Naylor, who works for me, has been phenomenal, she took everything on and sorted it out. To know that what’s been raised will keep the yard going, and that Tara could do what she’s done, meant I was able not to worry as much.”
Alex has been keeping everyone updated on Facebook, and he has also had huge support in terms of messages from others.
“And the reason I contacted H&H was based on a couple of comments about how everybody had suddenly come together for somebody that they may not know very well, or did know very well, or didn’t even know at all,” he said. “But actually, as a community, why don’t we support each other all the time? It can be quite isolating in this community and you don’t feel like people have got each other’s backs. But what I’ve seen over the last five weeks – I didn’t know I had that much love and support. It’s just been wonderful.”
Rallying round
Alex said the mental side of what had happened was almost harder to deal with than the physical issues, but he paid tribute to the friends who rallied round to be there for him.
“I needed the support that was there, more than I realised,” he said. “I knew I had good friends but they’ve been literally driving to the house and picking me up and taking me out. And particularly there’s the financial side of having a stables. There’s no way I could be at this stage of recovery, mentally or physically, without that support.
“And maybe there needs to be a bit more of a network of support within the community. It’s difficult because there’s so much stuff online that’s so negative, and [this life] can be very lonely. I think we we need to look at it as an industry and try to find a way of supporting rather than the negative press all the time. If we support each other, maybe we can reduce the negativity, and also, of course, help the horse.”
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
