Archie

RR watching snippets of Day 4 Keeneland. An ARCH brings a $325,000 bid from Seth Hancock(typical of what occurs--read on), and here's Hip 620 by "Zamnidar" but in foal to ARCH that gets $350,000 from Vin Cox Bloodstock from New South Wales. I'd say "nice work Claiborne" where ARCH stands. Might there have been a relation between Seth Hancock's bid and the fact that he stands the stallion? Nevertheless, please excuse while RR takes a short break for more self congratulatory back patting as our new, presumably slipping through the crack, $3,500 yearling proudly carries ARCH who stands at Seth Hancock's Claiborne Farm for $25,000 as his broodmare sire on the catalogue page. Nice looking stallion though. Watching this sale you could run a mule through there today and get twenty grand. What do you do with a $250,000 mare? Sell her at Keeneland?

Training:

Art: We're in the transition with Art from riderless to tack work. We'll lose a bit of conditioning, but, got to be done. 11/6 Art trotted 1.5 miles in the paddock and was for the first time taken in to the pasture under tack. Such an agreeable fellow he's been from day one, and this continues. Through a nice and dry November these first stages of training are so much easier physically and psychologically. Nob is enjoying the whole deal at the moment even as we're keeping an eye out for the first blizzard.

Y: The yearling shoes arrived from Breeder's Supply in Lexington. To my disgust the shoes "Tony" described over the phone as the "exact ones they use at the Keeneland sale" turn out to be steel plates. Sorry Tony, I'm noting my own yearlings through the sales have always worn some sort of very thin aluminum shoe which stay on better on these small hoofs than thick queen's plates.

So, we improvise. $40 of too heavy to stay on steel plates in the garbage, and we beveled down the toe grab level with the webbing on a #5 level grip, adapted it to #4 size and applied to right hind with nary a protest from Y. Nice job of raising this youngster Eagle Valley Farm (home of Shore Breeze)! Definitely has had his feet handled! Took too long as the dark caught up with us, so skipped the groundwork, but he galloped riderless around the paddock a few times in his new shoe.