Joey. Mixed start to New Year
Well, the New Year certainly came in with a bang at the Ramsden household in the worst possible way. Sadly, we lost our old friend and comrade and a special part of our family in Annie, who is one of our three Jack Russell’s.
Annie certainly had an extremely good innings, just falling short of reaching the ripe old age of 17. She passed away early Wednesday evening. She was an extremely special part of our family as one can well imagine after being around for so long. She will leave a huge hole in our hearts, cars, beds and minds. Having read this morning’s newspapers, one can only feel she has gone to a better place but she will be sorely missed by all of us, our friends and funnily enough, our staff here at the stables. The grooms have grown to love the dogs, having seen them around for so long and having to obviously dodge them on their horses. Thank you, Annie, for 16+ fantastic years.
Wednesday’s racing was no better with everything that could go wrong, going wrong, this along with some fairly incompetent riding. One has heard of Keystone cops: well, I feel we managed to employ Keystone Jockeys yesterday. They certainly managed to add to the black mood for which I must thank them. The less said, the better.
Anyway, today is another lovely day here in the Cape. We are on our way to gallop our Queen’s Plate runners and I am looking forward to this. We are going to try something new with a couple of them and see how it pans out. One never stops learning in racing and the day one stops trying, one is dead in the water. I will try and report back tomorrow as to how this all went.
Thursday is also declarations and again, and it was annoying to see a mistake in yesterday race card where Gin Rummy was carded to run in blinkers – and subsequently had to run in blinkers – when no one had declared blinkers on her.
The National Racing Bureau has admitted their error but it does not help us now. People often think it is your fault when such an amateurish mistake has been made and not corrected.
However, when one does not actually declare something, then one does not go through the race card to check if it is there. Usually one gets a text to say that one’s runners are declared first time up to run in blinkers.
Sadly, the National Racing Bureau were having far too much fun and enjoying their New Year’s celebrations for us to actually have received any texts. Today is not a day in particular that I wish to be fighting with anyone or to get annoyed so I shall make Colonel Avo don pads and arm guards and go into bat heavily for me.
