Week 1: movng in

Week 1
Monday February 1st, 9am, from the feed room, typed (slowly) on the iPhone.

Il sitting on a bale of hay trying to stay warm. It's a little under 50 degrees but I've already adjusted to the warmth. This week I'll try to describe the life up to now.

I'm living in a house with Elizabeth and her other help Manuel and Georgette. I've got the den all to myself, with a sheet across the opening to the kitchen. Other than being the coldest part of the house it's really great, lots of space and a large bed. We get a food allowance from Elizabeth, and since I don't have a car down here I've stocked up on groceries. Maybe too much? We've got 7 more weeks so I guess we'll find out. Oh yeah and there's Payton, elizabeths year old Australian shepard who thinks he's the size of a jack russell. Friendly and not really concerned with personal space. Great situation, since were a 5 minute walk from the show grounds.

Show grounds are about 30 minutes outaide Ocala, Florida, at an old race training faciity. The training track is still used as a walk (or annoyingly as an exercise way) and amny of the rings are inside it. There are a few hunter rings and a few jumper rings, including a grand prix ring. Ive been in our stabling area most of the time so I haven't seen much of it.

We arrived tuesday evening and spent Wednesday, thursday and part of Friday setting up. By we, I mean Elizabeth, myself and one of the riders, Melanie. Set up meant moving some stall partitions to make four 10x10 stalls into 3 stall-and-a-third stalls to give some extra space to large horses, and making a better feed and tack room. Then we put up drapes, hooks, shelves, tack trunks, brush boxes, extension cords galore, fans, lights, set up shavings in stalls, and made multiple trips per day into home depo and wal mart for bungees, snaps, hooks and everyhing else under the sun. Pretty relaxed, overall. We changed things around sometimes when Elizabeth changed her mind but overall it was mostly as she envisioned.

10:30

Horses came in Friday with Manuel and Georgette. Or at least 5 of them: chique (Stella Cadente), freddie (Blues Brother), artie (Overachiever), Anton (Antolin) and Shine (Pin-Up). Lennon, galan and Lou (Triloussa) come about 6 today, so between tacking up we've been getting their stalls ready.

1pm, from the restaurant at my computer now, so maybe I can do a better job.

Duties:
I'm basically the most under groom, because I have the least experience working for elizabeth. We feed, do stalls and scrub buckets in the am, then horses start getting turned out. They get fully groomed including showsheening tails and boots. Horses get vacuumed daily and legs scrubbed after being ridden. Tack gets cleaned after the horses get ridden. Everything stays clean, and organized. Most horses are on special supplements. It's a real production. I expected this, so it's not so much of a surprise as a hope that I can anticipate or know when to ask if I would do things differently. They don't seem to mind me asking questions, and I'm allowed to make suggestions on design issues (such as when we were hanging the drapes and setting up the tack area). Elizabeth treats her help well, and her head groom Manuel has a lot of sway over her in terms of running and setting up the barn. I've learned to say "Manuel said" or "Elizabeth said" if I'm questioned or told conflicting orders.

Free time is sort of frequent now, in the evenings. Once the show starts (9 days) it'll be crazier. I was just told that I'm grooming for Anton (dubbed Wonton by Melanie), Lennon (who I have yet to meet) and helping Melanie with her horse Artie when she's at the ring. Anton's owner is 14 and does the hunters, and is only coming for the first 2 weeks. Lennon's owners aren't coming for a few weeks, and Melanie's here, so I probably won't be overrun and be able to help the other grooms with their horses. It will get crazier in a week though...