Horses R. Trouble

Brief break for lighter stuff while RR considers weighty questions "how far and fast" when our conventional trainers finally get 'em to the track. The blog is onto the crucial stuff now on training and injury prevention in the coming posts.

John Not Of The Swift's blog today looks back at 2007 posts, and has inspired me to post this one here for future reference when we're standing in the winners circle, KY Derby perhaps, with the still unnamed Y. I was considering this last evening after training, that d_mm, horses are trouble.

Here was the scene of our paddock track yesterday morning, and, yes, that's ice in those cups. By yesterday afternoon in 45 degree temps, though I failed to photograph, this same area was a complete molten deep muddy mess when I arrived for training.

Yesterday's training in the mud documented for posterity:

1. as usual put some feed in the buckets to get 'em to walk in from the pastures.
2. RR through the mud to close both paddock gates.
4. Knock on neighbor door to rouse #1 assistant--age 16., yes, he's available. "Right now" he asks. Yes Chaz. Right now.
5. I walk 1/3 mile of fence, deep crusty snow, of Astride paddock. Is all fence standing after ice storm. Yes is. We're good to go riderless in deep grass (inoperable tractor) and crunchy snow.
6. 1/3 mile run back to the paddocks with Chas. The horses have escaped. They're 1/3 of mile down the way.
7. Run out to halter the two youngsters..
8. Lead 'em both through deep mud back to the gate, tennis shoes and socks soaked to the bone now.
9. We lead Art and Y to Astride Paddock. Whoops. They refuse to step over fallen limbs from ice storm. We finally manuer ourselves through the limbs that cover Chas's yard and arrive at Astride without incident--first time there for Y.
19. Chaz plants himself where he can chase 'em back to me, and I'm running full speed back and forth over deep grass and crunchy snow chasing Art and Y, who do get in a good fast riderless w/o. Nice fast twitch work, and I'm glad of the last two days pasture romps in bad weather that allowed this today.
12. Chas back in his house now doing whatever he does. I catch 'em, finally, halter , back through the branches to the paddock through the mud, release from the halters, and we're done. Pitch black at 5:40 p.m. Nob the rider, in these conditions, on strike.

Then there's this:
Everything plugged in and we're about ready for the moment of truth when I turn on the power switch and see if will actually boot. Enlarge you'll see the two 150G Raptor hard drives at lower right in a Silverstone TJ07 case. Floppy drive was plugged in next, keyboard, mouse, and monitor attached, and we're about to put the old Windows XP in the CD, download Vista later. I'll be unsurprised if the thing just blows up, but, on the off chance it works, RR will be blogging from a faster machine. I'll tidy up those cables if the thing actually boots.