Off Season Training

November and December arrives with central standard time, cold weather, the old year closing out, and the first baby steps to a possible May 1 Amart start at 4f maiden at Eureka to kick off the 2008 campaign. Those would be the "exalted plans" as last evening we take the first baby steps with Nob finally getting a sustained trot with Amart. The interesting riding technique that achieved this small success will be posted tomorrow.

It's a nice time of year. Pressure of race training with schedules to meet, jocks to find, and the constant concern over break down and injury has lifted, and we're into the relative pleasure of watching rapid daily progress while the weather holds. Personally I do have the sadness of watching the old generation with all the effort and years of good stories drift into the background. The oldsters are all still there. Got a call yesterday from Archie, Missouri with the new owner of Acesmash rhapsodizing over how much her kids like the new horse. I'd posted earlier, bunch of well cared for animals at that farm, and so its good to see Ace will continue a decent life. Blew one with the talented Ace, and sworn to avoid doing that again!

Wind and Al of course are still around, helping me train, they're more sedate now then they were as youngsters. Showing a few whiskers. It's passage of time, and it gets to you if you think about it.

They say though it's hard to get old with a good two year old in the barn. Art is back to Preston Burch stuff. Light galloping and tack work last night, riderless breezing and tack tonight. Had the first riderless training session for the yearling yesterday and violated everything i posted about handling him yesterday. It went extraordinarily poorly as the young fellow failed to understand at all that he was to "gallop". I'll try to be smarter tonight and help him along instead of forcing the issue!