Fukkit Remind Me Why Am I Here Again Prod Jahrahmf
The Yearling Whisperer
The search phrase that apparently brought someone to this weblog terminal week was, "What is Karen Briggs doing now?"
I tin can take a hint.
It'southward possible, of course, that the searcher was badly seeking info on my doppelgänger Karen Briggs, a jazz violinist of colour who toured with (yeek) Yanni. Or perhaps Karen Briggs, the British judo champion who won numerous European championships in the 1990s. All three of us were born in 1963, which probably multiplies the potential for Google to scramble us, and who knows how many others — my own occasional self-Googling, undertaken in a at present-by and large-futile attempt to keep a lid on my copyrighted material, besides turns up an uber-religious American military wife whose interests include crochet and semi-automatic weapons, the drug addict girl of British actor Johnny Briggs (of Coronation Street fame), and a math professor at the University of Northern Georgia, and that's only the first couple of search engine pages. If you desire to find me as opposed to them, the all-time approach is to add the word "horse" to my proper noun, et voila.
Last week, yous could also have found me down at the back end of the backstretch of Toronto's Woodbine racetrack, in the barns adjoining the sales pavilion, where I was working the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society's almanac yearling sale. It's a one time-a-year opportunity to put a little extra cash in one'southward pocket, if one doesn't mind 16 hr days that get-go at three:30 in the morning, existence barked at and condescended to, and being bashed against the walls by huge, hulking, terrified, and often testosterone-addled yearling Thoroughbreds. By which I mean, it's not for anybody.
This was not my first rodeo — I'd worked the sale previously for the well-regarded Park Stud, before I made a random, semi-complimentary remark most former Woodbine Entertainment Group CEO, David Willmot, which evidently rendered me persona non grata with the boss lady. Teach me to say nice things nearly people. Never mind — I hated their forest-light-green-and-pinkish polo shirts anyway. Terrible colours on me.
This twelvemonth, I'd been recruited, via the Interwebz, by a smaller functioning called Willow Ridge Farm, which had 12 youngsters entered in the sale, one-half of whom they'd raised themselves, and half of whom they had prepped and were selling on behalf of other owners. Five had been deemed worthy, by virtue of their pedigrees and conformation, of being included in Tuesday's Select Sale, while the other vii entered the auction band the following evening in the Open Sale session. (Select Auction yearlings generally fetch higher prices, though that's not always the case — two of Willow Ridge's Open up entries went for just about equally much as the two Select yearlings they'd pinned their hopes on.)
The drill with working a yearling sale is this: the horses ship in to the sales facility several days ahead of the actual auction. Buyers, some serious, some tire-kickers, catalogues in hand (the catalogues having been published weeks in accelerate, which means the yearlings have been entered into the sale months ago), cruise up and downwardly the shedrows behind the sales pavilion during those preview days and ask to view the babies whose pedigrees they like. Farms consigning yearlings by and large hire on extra easily to help bear witness those yearlings to their best advantage. The job description includes:
* enough confidence in horse-handling that you are not intimidated by surprisingly large, totally spun baby horses with raging hormones and tenuous (if whatever) manners
* the ability to muck a straw-bedded stall with ruthless efficiency in the pitch black of pre-dawn, onto a tarp which you then elevate the length of the shedrow and tie up in a keen bow (which, depending on the age of the tarp and how torn the corners are, tin exist an art class in itself)
* an extensive knowledge of making horses pretty with hot towels, brushes, scissors, hoofpicks, sponges, peroxide, and plenty silicon hairspray to lube an unabridged Pride parade
* really long artillery, with which to gently but insistently insert Chifney bits (brass rings with halter clips, used for actress control) into the mouths 
of the afore-mentioned, neck-craning, spun babies, often dozens of times per day (a coincidental indifference towards having your thumbs chomped helps here also)
* a tolerant stomach which can function on greasy peameal sandwiches and bad tea for five days straight
* steel-toed boots and quick reflexes, the better non to get stepped on, kicked, bitten, squished, dragged, or otherwise humiliated
* a talent for cleaning up tolerably well — the standard uniform for showing yearlings being a polo shirt representing the farm or agency, and stupidly impractical khaki pants, which yous change into after y'all've done all the earlier-dawn dirty work (this was not the first time I've used a mane comb to pull the tangles out of my own hair)
* the ability to run on three hours' slumber for extended periods of time and stay polite about it
* and of grade, the proverbial patience of the saints.
The consignors and agents at the sale have a lot at stake — for many of them, the proceeds from the annual yearling sale represent their whole year's earnings, or virtually then. (At that place are 2 other sales, a Winter Mixed Sale closer to Xmas which offers weanlings, broodmares, stallions, and horses of racing historic period, and another in the spring for 2-twelvemonth-olds in training, merely for most the yearlings are the money-makers.) Therefore, they are stressed-out, even more and then because the racing industry in Ontario took such a kick in the teeth from the provincial government back in 2012 and the last few sales accept been, frankly, bloodbaths. Hence, they are demanding, curt-tempered, and likewise not paying anywhere near what they used to for the labours of the extra hands. One time upon a fourth dimension, or so I've been led to believe, $250 a day was the usual rate, with bonuses given to the handlers of whatsoever horse who sold for a particularly adept toll. Hotel rooms shut to the track were mostly offered as well (non that that has ever been useful to me — since I have horses of my own at dwelling house to care for, also, I've e'er had to do the threescore minute drive back and along). This yr, I was lucky to become $xv an hour, and the number of hours I expected to work, versus what I was actually offered, worked out to about half the earnings I was hoping for. Only in my current state of employment beggars cannot be choosers.
One of the toughest things for me personally at the yearling auction is the condescension. I accept more than 40 years of experience handling horses. Erstwhile ones, young ones, baby ones, studdy ones, rude ones, unsafe ones. I feel fairly confident in maxim that I know my shit. Now, I get that the Thoroughbred racing globe is just slightly off-heart from the world of performance horses, showing and eventing, and I get that anybody has their own preferred way of doing things, from how to spray the Showsheen into a tail to how to attach a leadshank. But I have played in the Thoroughbred sandbox as well as the Standardbred (ahem, not that that gets me whatsoever respect with the TB racing folks, but that's another stupid story). And I daresay I've fabricated more horses pretty for show than the average backstretch worker. And then being treated as if I'm a newbie who doesn't take a clue … it chaps my donkey, a bit. Why should I carp wearing khakis that are only going to become filthy, if you're going to hide me in the back of the shedrow and not permit me show the horses? But hey. For the infinite of v days I tin can bite my tongue and find another tangle-less tail to comb out. Again. Even though the poor beleaguered baby horse is just begging to be LEFT Solitary FOR 5 MINUTES FOR THE Honey OF GAWD.
The affair nearly the yearling sale is that I really, actually feel sorry for the poor baby horses, so my priority is making their lives just a little bit less hellish, if I tin can, for the menses of time that they are trapped in a stall in an unfamiliar environment, being poked and prodded and stressed to the max even before they enter the actual sales pavilion, which is noisy and crowded and a whole 'nuther level of utterly terrifying, ulcer-inducing hell for them. In that location are deep and abiding levels of stupid hither in the way Thoroughbred yearlings are traditionally shown and sold, levels that make me think there must exist a better way. A couple of months ago, these poor kids were minding their own business in grassy fields somewhere. Other than having been taught to pb and (sometimes) pick upward their feet politely for the farrier, the demands made on them had been minimal, post-weaning. Then all of a sudden they go whisked into the barn, confined for long periods of time, groomed and grained and transformed from semi-wild yaklings into some semblance of presentable … and afterwards a few weeks of that, they're all blimp into trailers (most invariably for the first fourth dimension ever) and hauled into an urban environment where low-flying planes howl overhead about every ninety seconds (Woodbine being about a infinitesimal and a one-half from Toronto'south 
Pearson International Airport and right on the flight path for take-off and landing). Tragically, it only gets weirder and scarier for them later they leave the sales befouled, mail service-auction. They'll movement to somewhere new, with a whole host of unfamiliar people, and most will shortly begin their grooming in earnest: girths and bits and someone on their backs well earlier they've turned two.
I am emphatically non one of those horsepeople who bemoans the cruelty of the racing industry. I'm well enlightened of the economical necessity of things existence done the way they are, that the performance horse industry in Ontario simply exists in what health it does considering the racing industry is there to ballast it, and that the majority of people involved in racing are empathetic horsepeople who love their animals and want to do correct past them. Furthermore, racing is a fantastic proving ground for the horses I myself want to buy and compete. If they accept survived the track with legs and brains intact, they are wonderful prospects for what I want to do.
Only still. For a yearling, it'due south a lot.
Even the culture of showing the babies is a bit stupid. The more pop yearlings in the catalogue might be dragged out of their stalls to be shown to potential buyers dozens of times a day. Granted, they simply have to walk up and downward and stand quietly for inspection (the odds of either actually happening varying wildly depending on the filly or filly, what other stupid things might be happening in the vicinity at the time — like, say, an sick-timed garbage truck dumping its load 50 metres away — and the patience of the handler), but there's this culture that says if you've requested to see a equus caballus, you lot go to stare it on your ain, and anyone else who might be interested has to wait his or her turn. What harm it does to examine the horse at the same fourth dimension as someone else who's presumably making his/her own notes in his/her own catalogue, I can't imagine, but it is somehow of import to put the horse through more than stress in order to cater to this fuckery. It's even worse when you're asked to "bear witness all" — which for me this year, meant dragging all 12 yearlings out of their stalls in social club of their assigned hip numbers (and encarmine rapidly, too, doesn't practice to proceed the customer waiting), and then potentially doing it all over again 3 minutes subsequently I'd finished. Seems to me y'all could schedule shows of all the horses y'all're offering at particular times, similar, you lot know, a tour at the Ontario Science Center: viewings at 12:30, 3:00, and 5:30, and information technology'due south bear witness upwards then, or be SOL. Not that the ideas of a lowly stall-mucker are likely to be given any currency.
Some of the yearlings handle information technology remarkably well. Some, not and then much. The horses Willow Ridge had raised themselves were, for the most office, well-behaved, though a couple of the colts were typically testosterone-riddled, nippy and rude and 1 would be unwise to turn one's back on either of them. Par for the course. One filly was sunshine and roses one infinitesimal, an ears-pinned banshee when she'd had enough of humanity; she was the 1 who crowded me up against the wall and tried to drill me in the caput, simply as I say, not my kickoff rodeo and I got out from under her, amateur that she was. Another elegant niggling chestnut filly I'd been warned about, turned out to be a sweetheart as long every bit y'all did everything in slow motion with her … a tertiary, nighttime bay with chrome, just wanted to be cuddled and reassured, and out of the 12 was the 1 I'd have wanted to take home with me.
The consigned horses who came from elsewhere were all over the map, too. There was a filly who'd received practically no treatment, but enough of sedatives, most of her life up till that point. Sadly, she had to remain on chemical assistance during her time at the sale because she started to cook downwardly in withdrawal otherwise; I hope whoever bought her gives her some reanimation in a field to get make clean earlier her didactics begins. On the other end of the spectrum was a big, burly filly who conspicuously had been beautifully brought up. He had lovely manners for his age, wasn't ambitious in the slightest, took everything in footstep, and was rapidly nicknamed "the Dude". He might not exist able to run his way out of a wet paper bag, but he'll brand an outstanding riding equus caballus for someone anytime.
Photo by Dave Landry.
Some youngsters acquire fast in the pre-sale and sale environment, becoming more and more comfortable with the routine as the days laissez passer, and easier to handle. Others go, well, fried. By the time the actual sale rolls around, the professionals take over to get them in the sales ring. I found out a few years agone that there are actually professional handlers who do naught but go from auction to sale, beingness hired to grapple with yearlings in the sales ring and make it look easy. I had no thought, until and so, that this was a matter, and I'm not enthusiastic plenty about life on the road to do it myself, but if you like hotel rooms and being jerked around, then I gather you tin can make decent coin doing it …
In the end, a couple of Willow Ridge'due south horses sold for the kind of money they'd been hoping for, a few went for disappointingly less, two were pleasant surprises, and 3 who had reserves placed on them didn't sell at all. Overall, still, the auction was up about 50% from last year, which is outstanding news for the industry, even if no-one exactly feels similar it tin trust the provincial authorities's electric current short-term commitment to the Ontario breeding program. In one case you've had the rug pulled out from you in one case, it's rather difficult to expect the footing to remain stable ever again …
As for me? Helped a couple of the new owners load their purchases onto trailers, wished all of the babies good homes and good luck and tried not to recollect likewise hard about the alternative — even after five days, I get invested (though it's difficult to follow their careers when none of them 
have names yet). Pocketed my cheque, and staggered dwelling to wash the khakis and slumber for a day and a one-half. And I'll probably practice it once more next year, because I'k told it'south kinda like childbirth: if you really remembered what it was similar, you lot'd never do it again, but a year from now the exhaustion and the abuse will have faded from my memory. It's possible.
Source: https://ridexc.wordpress.com/tag/toronto/
Post a Comment for "Fukkit Remind Me Why Am I Here Again Prod Jahrahmf"