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Post by Johanna India Eastman on Dec 27, 2012 2:52:24 GMT -8
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: f9f9f9; border: #6e90bd solid 10px; width: 399px; padding: 5 5 5 5px;]i set all my regrets on fire because i know i'll never take the time Morning workouts down at the track were long over, but Jo had been down at the race barn for longer than that, as usual, discussing Danny’s horses that she rode and their progress with him, and seeing to Erin… and the black mare was always a handful to work with and everything took twice as long to do with her. She had ended up working herself up into such a lather today that she had definitely needed a bath after they had done, and naturally she hated standing still long enough to have that done so it had been a fight to get her bathed and dried properly so that she wouldn’t get too cold in this weather, then rugged up and back into her stall. So by the time that she was done with all of that and was heading back up into the main barn, it was well into the morning and Jo wasn’t in the best of moods.
Reaching the main barn she headed straight for her horse’s stalls… Sharon, Mikka and Howie all lined up nicely next to each other in their stalls, whereas Arty was off in the stallion barn instead, of course, each with their heads hanging over their stall doors waiting for her… well, Howie wasn’t really hers, she was just retraining him for her ex brother in law until they found someone to buy him, so for now he was technically hers… stopping to give each of them a good scratch behind the ears before she did anything else. Riding them when she had come back from visiting her parents over Christmas had been fun… you would have thought that none of them had been ridden in a month with the way they had acted, even though it had only been a few days at the most.
Finishing greeting the horses, she headed towards the tack room, figuring that she would start with Howie today and get the gelding over and done with first, seeing as though he still had the energy of a racehorse most of the time, even though he had been retired for a while now, and the sooner she got him worked the easier her job would be… until she got to Mikka anyway, considering how the gelding liked to act. Sometimes he was worse than riding Arty, despite the fact that he was gelded and the other horse wasn’t.
Reaching the tack room, she collected his grooming kit and tack, hooking the bridle over one shoulder by the brow band to carry it, grooming kit in one hand and the other arm balancing the saddle somewhat awkwardly over it… wishing that she wasn’t so short, hence short limbed, so that doing this sort of thing was easier, but at least she had the strength in her arms from having to deal with racehorses on a daily basis to put up with it all. Reaching Howie’s stall, she deposited everything that she was carrying, getting the grey gelding out of the stall and cross tying him outside to get started on grooming him.
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Post by allyg on Dec 28, 2012 14:07:10 GMT -8
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: #f1f1f1] I am free, but I am flawed. I'm here in your heart. I was here from the start.
Strolling up the main barn, Sierra was happy to say that she was in a great mood today. Although it was quite early for her to come to ride, she woke up naturally a half hour ago, and decided she would go ride her gelding. The barn was deserted, with a couple vehicles in the parking lot. She passed her horse's stall, saying, "Hey there Wahooligan," silently laughing to herself at the nickname she had come up with when she first got him and he was a little nut.
Gathering a few carrots for her horse from the tack room, she then walked over to her horse's stall, opening the heavy stall door. He perked his ears and came over in curiosity, knowing she had a treat for him. She let him breath in her familiar scent before stroking his forehead and feeding him a carrot. He wasn't greedy, but gently took the vegetable from her outstretched palm. She loved the feeling of his lips picking up the orange food and giggled like a little girl, feeling at ease with herself and her horse. She truly loved her horse, and she knew Wahoo enjoyed her company as well.
She took his leather halter and lead rope off his hook, slipped it over his nose, and buckled his crownpiece. She held on to the maroon lead, giving him a loop of the rope so he could stretch his head down as she walked. She directed him to the cross ties right down the aisle to the left. She left Wahoo there, knowing he would be perfectly fine alone for a couple minutes as he always was. She strode to the tack room near her gelding’s stall and opened her locked locker. Grabbing a hunter green baby pad, her saddle, half pad, girth, martingale and bridle, and her small grooming tote that had some matching hunter green polos in it, she took the heavy load back to where the cross ties were.
Methodically, she groomed him down, with first the hoof pick, then curry comb, hard brush, soft brush, mane brush, and lastly she took the hard brush and brushed out the shavings from his tail. She rolled the polos onto his legs, but only the hind. Placing the baby pad over his back, she gave him a pat. The half pad was next, the Mattes sheepskin-lined she was so proud of. Sierra rarely bought anything new. No, she knew how to bargain and find the best deals. There was a secondhand tack shop back in New York, and she had bought the usually $250 half pad for a mere $50. Granted, it wasn’t brand new, but she has had the usable half pad for more than three years. Next was the saddle, a Crosby with no knee rolls. She wasn’t a fan of knee rolls, and she thought her saddle was comfy enough. She undid the cross ties, placing the martingale over his muscular neck. She usually just left him undone from now because she bridled him soon after and he wouldn’t move. If one thing was true, it was that Wahoo was the sweetest and most kind horse on the ground. He was so laidback and tolerated anything.
After putting his bridle on, she walked him out near the entrance. She saw with surprise that there was another girl tacking up her horse. She waved when she got her attention and called out, “Hey there!” The horse was beautiful, a grey gelding. He looked to be a Thoroughbred like her boy. Glancing at the girl, she noticed she seemed to be around the same age as herself. She smiled at her, and realized she hadn’t seen her around, but then again, she hadn’t met may people since coming to Crossfire.
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[/justify] [/div] tags: irish. muse: meiko words: 640 lyrics: atlas hands by benjamin francis leftwich
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Post by --IRISH on Jan 2, 2013 13:52:11 GMT -8
Getting to this ASAP, just had a lot of family stuff going on because relatives are in town who we only see every second year or so, sorry for the wait! |
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Post by Johanna India Eastman on Jan 8, 2013 2:50:35 GMT -8
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: f9f9f9; border: #6e90bd solid 10px; width: 399px; padding: 5 5 5 5px;]i set all my regrets on fire because i know i'll never take the time Howie pretty much went into lazy mode once he saw the curry comb being pulled out of the grooming kit… and she found herself glad, not for the first time, that he wasn’t as hyped up as some of the horses that she had taken off the track before him. Yes, he was still prone to more high strung moments on occasion but as far as it went he had been pretty easy to handle on the ground so far, but she guessed that probably had something to do with the fact that she knew that Ash and Jason didn’t really let the horses they trained get away with a lot in the barn.
She got through most of the grooming that the gelding needed with minimal fuss… thankfully he hadn’t been particularly dirty coat wise, which made her job easier… aside from the occasional jump because he had heard a noise down the aisle that had startled him, but at least he hadn’t exactly been doing them to misbehave on purpose. Cleaning out his feet proved to be a little trickier, however, he definitely didn’t like that as much as he enjoyed being brushed, and it took her a bit longer to be done with it before she could actually get to tacking him up. Eventually it happened anyway, and she could straighten up, stretching out her back a little from being bent over – not that she really had all that far to bend down to get to his feet, considering her height – before going to collect his saddle and saddle pad from where she had left them.
Tacking him up didn’t take long either, and soon she was putting on his bridle, having to take a few moments to coax him into keeping his head down low enough that she could actually reach it… and she had been so intent on getting it sorted out that she hadn’t really noticed the approach of another person and horse, or at least only vaguely from hearing them walking up the aisle but she hadn’t thought much of it, at least until she heard a voice which she assumed was addressing her, since there was nobody else around at the time.
“Hey,” she answered, turning her head to look at the other woman, giving her a friendly smile in return as she did up the buckle on Howie’s bridle, stepping back to set her grooming kit inside his now empty stall now for safe keeping, since she didn’t want to have to keep walking to and from the tack room to get it every time she had to groom one of her other horses before she rode them after this, glancing back at the other female as she went to untether Howie.
“New around here?” she asked… well, she hadn’t seen her before, and considering she spent most of her time at Crossfire she was generally pretty good at recognising faces that she had seen around the place before.
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