Racetrack Photos

Elmer and Janice, who own the barn I board at, also run a stable for Thoroughbred racehorses. Last summer, to help out and to earn some extra show money, I worked as a groom at the racetrack. It was a very educational experience, in all possible ways, good and bad. I found I could get into the daily rhythm (up at six or seven o'clock, depending on how hot it was, bike to the track, start mucking, and finish with untacking and hot walking if I'm lucky). Race days were exctiting, getting the horses bathed and all spiffed up for their one- or two-minute sprint that night. The satin hoods and jockey silks reminded me of boxing.

On the down side, thirty horses in a racing stable is a lot of work, sometimes with seemingly little reward.

I also started taking photos. I'd like to make them into a book about last summer but haven't had time to sit down with them yet, so I thought I would post a few on my blog. The photo above is the first time I sat down to photograph at the last turn heading for home. I got this amazing picture of the horses all stretched out, dirt flying... and spent the rest of the summer trying to get another one like it. Better luck this year I guess! You can see some of the other track photos I posted on my website.

In other news -- I'm looking forward to returning to Scottsdale with Results on February 14, for the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show. I'll have a good camera this time so I'm hoping I'll get some photos I can use for the News. Watch for photos and updates on this blog and the Canadian Arabian News' Facebook page.

Endings & Beginnings

Well two big things happened this week - I sold Kasey, and the first issue of the Canadian Arabian News went to the printers. While my horse(less) situation will have to be remedied eventually, there's no break from work! Several important projects have been on hold during the big push to get the magazine out - a couple of client websites (non-horse) and the new issue of Sport Pony Magazine.

Selling Kasey was not a difficult decision but it did take a while for the right person to come along. When I bought him as a five-year-old, he wasn't halter-broke – and while he was quite friendly and calm at Kelly Acres, where he grew up, the five-hour haul to Edmonton (where I was living at the time) turned out to be very traumatizing, even though he came with a buddy from back home. It literally took three months before he stopped shying away from the people brining him his hay twice a day, poor guy! I had never owned a cob before. Though I'm used to hot horses in the Arab/TB sense, this 'calm on the surface but explosive underneath' temperament was something new - you learn very quickly to pay close attention to his breathing, since lots of times the fact that he was holding his breath was the only clue that something was wrong!

About this time I came across the new 'clicker-training' methods and decided to try them out. Using the clicker, I taught him to pick up his feet for a reward. The very first session went very well and he caught on right away to picking up both front feet. In fact, he learned it so quickly that to this day, he will pick up a front foot and wave it in the air when he wants a treat. He learned it so fast and so persistently I was a little leery to try and clicker-train him for anything else... (Apologies to real clicker-trainers, I know there are methods around this but I never got to them!)

About the time I started riding him, I realized I would have a lot of fun training him but we just didn't physically fit together well enough to be serious competition material. In fact, my long legs and his round barrel are pretty much as good a mis-match as you can find... which is why I'm so happy his new rider Lorna is a little bit shorter and fits him to a T, both in the saddle and personality-wise. In fact, I would say his tendencies to be a one-woman horse have already transferred over to her. I'm a little bit sad but I'll get over it - I don't think he could have found a better home for himself.

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In other news, I gave two presentations on the internet and web marketing at the Alberta Horse Breeders' and Owners' conference last weekend (Jan 11-13). Hopefully they managed to get some useful information out there. I'm curious to see the feedback and am hoping conference organizers will be able to give me some comments they received... stay tuned.

The best presentation at the conference was Mr. Jim Babckock, owner of Smart Chic Olena. Though I don't really follow Quarter Horse lines myself, I've always remembered a profile that Horse & Rider did in the 1990's about Reminic (right), another one of the Babcock stallions. He seemed like a really neat horse. And, for a Quarter Horse, he has *huge* ears that stand straight up, which seem to give him a lot of personality :)

Mr. Babcock's biggest point was that, not only do you have to have a business plan that will make you money in the horse business, you have to create opportunities for those that follow your bloodlines to make money as well. As an example, he talked about a prominent stallion whose stud fee remained at about $1000 even though he was hugely popular. People with sons of the stallion had a hard time selling their stud services, because why would you breed to a son when you could have the main guy himself? So, he explained, with Smart Chick Olena's stud fee set at an amazing $25,000, he makes room for the smaller breeders who want to invest in Smart Chick Olena's sons. He's also got a very interesting mare lease program going that "guarantees to make money" (how often do you hear that in this business??) that you can check out on his website. Smart guy.

I Killed My Smart Mouse

Two days before I left on Christmas holidays this year, I made a discovery. In the bedroom of my rented house, there is a cable cord. Not being one to watch TV in bed, this cord has sat curled round the back of the closet for the past two years. The other end exits the bedroom through a neat little round hole in the wall... I had never questioned where this hole might lead. Until, that is, a few little opportune visitors made their way into the garage, through the hole and into my kitchen. I have never seen the inside of this garage; our entrepreneurial landlord rents it out to a different tenant in a long-standing boat storage agreement. Now I had mice.

First things first - remove the source of the problem. A steel wool plug in the hole took care of that. Next, remove the mice. Being a 'live and let live' kind of person, and not having any luck the first night with my carefully laid snap traps (they ate the peanut butter right out of the trap), I purchased a Tin Cat - a nice little tin box that they can run into but not out of. I caught two large mice. A week later I caught four smaller mice. Was that the end of it? For a while, I was pretty sure we were in the clear. Then, when working late one night, I could have sworn I heard the pitter-patter of little feet.

By this time, I'm pretty paranoid, folks. I can hear a mouse in the bush at forty yards. So I started leaving little bits of teaser bait outside of ol' Tin Cat. The teaser would disappear, but no mouse. Slowly it dawnd on me - either I had a smart mouse, or Adam was messing with my head.

I bought a second Tin Cat and set it up in a different area of the house. Same story, empty traps, three nights in a row. This one, he was clever. He wasn't falling for some silly trap door. Tonight I decided I had to get serious. I wanted my kitchen back. I haven't been able to cook for days, for fear I'd missed dousing some mousey surface in Lysol. I set... the snap trap. This time I didn't use peanut butter - Darlene from the barn advised using raisins. "If you squish it in there really good," she said, "they can't just lick it off. They have to get in there and pull on it. Then it's a nice, quick snap to the back of the head and it's over."

I have to say, I was kind of rooting for the mouse. But, though the little guy was smart, he wasn't infallible. It only took about thirty minutes for the end to come.

I am also reminded that things could have been worse - Mom has been dealing with uninvited skunk guests. And unlike the pigeons, you can't just pull the .22 out of the back of the closet and scare them off...