Glamour mare Mosheen has come through minor throat surgery in good order and could step straight back into her original spring campaign.
Trainer Robert Smerdon said Mosheen underwent “the most straightforward procedure in the book” at the Goulburn Valley Equine Hospital on Monday afternoon.
News of the problem shocked the racing world on Monday when it seemed one of the major spring stars might be out of action before striking a serious blow.
But Smerdon said on Tuesday she is expected to make a swift and complete recovery.
Mosheen had developed an epiglottic entrapment which was first noticed after she did slow work on Saturday morning ridden by assistant trainer Stuart Webb.
“Stuart came back and said she had made a noise that she hadn’t made before and she was very worked up and not herself,” Smerdon said.
Subsequent examination showed the epiglottis was trapped by a fold of skin in the mare’s throat, a condition that can usually be corrected relatively easily.
“The surgeon who did the procedure said it was a completely straightforward job and she should be as right as rain,” Smerdon said.
Mosheen had been due to trial at Cranbourne on Tuesday and resume racing in the Group Two Memsie Stakes (1400m) at Caulfield on September 1.
While she missed the trial, Smerdon is hopeful she can resume as planned.
“We were going to step off in the Memsie and that still isn’t out of the question,” he said.
Mosheen’s main aim this spring is the Cox Plate and her trainer’s sights are still firmly set on that goal, even if a new path is taken to the nation’s supreme weight-for-age race.
“We have plenty of time before the Cox Plate. We just work back from there and revise the plan if we have to,” Smerdon said.
Last spring Mosheen won the VRC Oaks but it was her four wins from five starts in the autumn that established her among the country’s highest echelon of racehorses.
