"It Never Stopped Raining..."

The weather is the story here in KCMo. The quote is from Woody Stephens when he was training Devil's Bag for the Derby, Aqueduct, 1984. Eight out of the last eleven here have been rain days, and hardly a small amount. Since April 24 Accuweather reports six inches of rain dropped on Kansas City. The Missouri River which flows though the middle of town right by the downtown airport is nearing flood stage.

I wonder how they calculate rainfall because my feed buckets contained six inches of water just from Sunday. If two inches on the Accuweather gage equal six inches in the buckets, I'd say we got two feet since April 24. It all stops Wednesday, for two weeks at least.

Through my days of serious training I always worked the horses right through the weather when we could. Many times of course we're at the track and they close it for rain. For the last five years though, as the horses aged my former determination has flagged quite a bit, the training less serious, and I prefer to save the pastures than gallop in the rain. Unfortunately this wet pattern has lasted most of the last three years, and training wise, it's been a bummer.

But, for this year with the arrival of young Art the motivation is returning, and though I've let things ride through this weather primarily due to Art's hoof problems, in fact we've reached "dam the torpedoes" time with the older horses to race them this year and we're getting darn close if we're going to race Art this year at all.

So, Friday and Saturday the horses were trotted a couple of miles. We rested yesterday in driving rain. Tonight, rain or shine we'll commence multiple hill gallops through deep grass with the oldsters and I'll start to train Art to the double lunge line with the Astride till the running paddocks dry.