Pictures n Happenings

Various pictures and goings-on.

Last Sunday, while Rick was at work bringing everything back online after Irene, Anne and I ventured out into Fair Hill to find that it looked like a hurricane hit it.  Not only were there leaves and branches everywhere, some driven into the ground like javelins, but there were a number of places where fallen trees completely blocked the trails.  We could squeeze through, but there was no hope for horses.  I hope to ride in the morning, so perhaps I'll see if the clean-up has begun.

This was the first one we came across, making the trail impassable to any horse:

 Beyond it is a stream crossing that has concrete stepping stones for crossing on foot.  They are huge (concrete-filled tires by the look of it) and have to be heavy.  When we got there, we found that one had decided to wander off by itself.  Anne crossed via a tree fallen over the stream that can be seen in the distance of the photo.  Instead, I sloshed through the swollen stream in very non-waterproof shoes.

 Fast forward to Saturday (yesterday).  I spent the morning on another track visit, and took the pictures for the listing of Our Next Slew:

This was the absolute last barn that we went to out of 30-some; beyond it was nothing but the quarantine barn.  I got to take a small break during the rounds to head into one of the observation platforms used by the trainers to watch the horses on the track.  I saw a lot of horses cantering, a few walking and trotting, and one galloping by at the rail.  Considering that the platform is right on the edge of the track, it was impressive to see that horse thunder by, the jockey staying perfectly still as the horse ran his heart out below him.  At another point, there was a great to-do as some of the horses started to freak out on the hot walker.  I think that one horse wanted to bite at an itch on its chest, because it kept rearing up and trying to nip at itself as it was up there.  Its head was kept too high to reach otherwise.  Of course, the repeatedly rearing horse set off its hot walker mate, who also started rearing, and they both got the horses tied to the neighboring hot walker in a tizzy.  We got to see some of the grooms rush out to take some of the horses off.

Later that day Rick and one of his co-workers (who used to ride in CO before being shipped to Taiwan by Rick's company and then to Delaware) had lessons on Gene.  We are trying out a new instructor as Denise is currently swamped with shows.  So, enter Suzanne, who is Dawn's instructor and comes highly recommended.

I feel that right now I need to concentrate with my relationship with Nuts out on trail, so I declined the chance for a lesson this time.

Suzanne is all about getting the rider correct so that they can work as one with the horse and not get in its way.  She said it's like becoming one big nervous system instead of two competing ones.

Tomorrow I hope to ride in the morning, and then in the afternoon the boys are having a trim.  The hurricane cancelled our trim last week.  Even though our guys are supposed to be on a 4-week schedule in summer, somehow that kept getting pushed out to 5 weeks this year.