STAR FERRY...........

FINALLY GETS TO STEP UP TO A BETTER DISTANCE........

in what would seem a weak maiden at Toowoomba.

Iam sure that Susie must have had a huge L on her forehead when she awoke on Saturday morning (15th January, 2005). No, not L = Learner, but L = Loser. How many horses do you know of personally who are jumping out of their skin, and ready to race and then get stung by something in the sandroll???

If you work around horses, you will know that normally, the saying goes something like this, “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong…”, or perhaps something a little more directed, “an accident waiting to happen?”

Does this seem familiar to anyone who might have a thoroughbred? Hmmmm.

All was fine with young Susie after her role until Matty Morris (her Jock for that night and her looker-after-her person) brought her out to give her a bath for her trip out to Toowoomba that afternoon.

And there it was. A huge welt behind her ear, growing by the minute! AAAAArgh. Greg, not one to dillydally around with something like that called the vet who gave her antihistamine shot.

Let me rewind time and go through the events of Saturday morning.

I awake very early Saturday, excited about seeing my girl run in a mile race, which is still way too short for her.

7.00am Greg the trainer rings. Have I seen the odds in the local paper? No I haven’t at that
stage, but would call him back once I had become human enough to get up.

7.30am Another call… I see it’s from Greg and I think to myself, “What the????” Greg’s first
word’s to me are, “You are not going to be happy about this”.

Oooh……


AAAArgh!!!!!!!

My first thought is AAAARGH!!!!…. She has broken her leg getting into the float and it then escalates to “After eating her breakfast, she has developed serious colic.” My hopes of having a happy Saturday morning, quickly running down the drain. And then Greg tells me about the insect in the sandroll.… and believe it or not, I was relieved because there are at least one million things that can go wrong with a horse that is due to race.

Can you picture this? A huge sand roll, full of the best sand that horses just love to roll in and play in. Can you imagine how many grains of sand that it would have taken to actually fill the sand roll for thoroughbreds to play and roll in. My mind cant come to terms with the amount of sand that it would of taken to fill up Greg’s sandroll. Yet, Susie managed to find the one area of the sandroll and the exact grain of sand that had an insect in it.

Go Figure.



Believe it or not there are hundreds of thousands of millions of things that can go wrong with a horse standing in a paddock, quietly eating the grass, minding its own business. You think they are safe….. but HAH!!! ARE YOU WRONG OR WHAT??

Anyway, I digress. So poor old Susie girl had a huge lumpy thing behind her ear that was very sore to the touch and was growing steadily. Iam glad that my Susie girl, however, remembered that she still had her trusty feedbin and hay to keep her energy levels up in times of sickness.

By Monday all was well with the girl, and now we face the problem of finding a 1600m maiden for her within the 21st Century. No, Iam being facetious now. We need to find a race for her within the next week or so as we still need to keep her up to the mark where she was with her fitness and still be able to step up her distance and, ideally, we want to do that by the end of this preparation. I guess we need to know where her line is….. 1600m, 1800m, 2000m, 2400m or even 3200m.


It’s taken me nearly an hour to get all this down. Not because I can’t type, but because I keep getting interrupted and have to remember where I was going with this diatribe. Lancey and Bessie Merle are asleep on my feet here in the study. Evan is out in the lounge room doing the form for tomorrow and Iam starting to…………..

**yawn**

Let me write down a few things that I will have to speak about next time:-

1. Chops goes back into work
2. Vicky finds happiness with Peter and Ange
3. Weaning time approaches at Massie Lodge.

No, I don’t really think that Susie is a loser. She’s my girl. :-)


Helen.