Things in Kentucky are continuing to go well. The weather has been pretty interesting. One day it’s cold and snowing. Then the next day the sun comes out and the snow melts. Next it starts to rain and then it decides to snow again.

The last two weeks we’ve been taking a farrier course at the Kentucky Horeshoeing School. It’s been really great. We’ve learned all about the internal anatomy of the hoof, shoeing principals, how the hoof and lower limb interact on different racing surfaces, trimming feet, and many other aspects of the equine hoof. It was an invaluable experience to learn all of these things in such detail and I know it will benefit me greatly in the future when I’m training. During these past two weeks we also had the opportunity to go out to Old Friends. Michael Blowen has done a great job with this facility and his obvious love of horses has really made the life of the horses in his care much better. It was great to get to see horses like Gulch, Commentator, Black Tie Affair, Jade Hunter, and Kudos.

This week we will be starting our work rotations at the Darley farms. It will be nice to finally get my hands on horses again and I’m looking forward to start doing manual labor again.

Vacation / First Week in Kentucky

Sorry, it’s been so long that I’ve put up a new post. I was on vacation with my family over the holidays in Palm Springs, Ca. I really enjoyed spending time with my little brother, my parents, and especially my grandparents. Though I’ve been enjoying my travels it was great to be with the family again and see some of the people that have played key roles in my life while I was growing up. It was also nice to take the family with me to opening day at Santa Anita to watch the races. They seemed to have a lot of fun and they made a bit of money too. I ran into a lot of my friends and mentors during my visit to Santa Anita and it was nice to see all of them. I wish I had more time to sit down and catch up with each of them. I was very happy to see that all of them were doing very well.

I arrived here in Kentucky on January 4^th. Though I was greeted very warmly by the other members of the course and the Darley staff, the weather decided to greet me in the opposite manner. It’s been snowing here since the day that I arrived. I don’t think I’ve ever spent so many consecutive days in long underwear as I have here. However, it is gorgeous and I’m really loving Kentucky. Being a California boy, spending Christmas in shorts and a t-shirt, I’m enjoying the snow and some of the Kentuckians are finding it humorous how much I’m liking the cold weather.

Last week we went to all the Darley farms here in Kentucky and it was amazing to see them all and learn about the history of these operations. My favorite Darley farm had to be Stonerside, it was picturesque with all the snow and has proven to be great horse land. This week we have been attending the Keeneland January Mixed Sale and thus far it’s been a humbling experience. Many of the horses I liked made the amount that I thought they would but there were a few that I really liked that made far less than I had figured. I must have missed something on them, haha. I guess I still have a long way to go. We’ve also been to many stallion shows in our free time. We’ve visited Pin Oak, Lane’s End, Vinery, Ashford, WinStar, and Hill N’ Dale. It was great to see Zensational and Pioneerof the Nile again right before they start their new careers. Hopefully we’ll have the chance to go to more stallion shows and that I’ll continue learning about yearling evaluations over the rest of the week.