An unfamiliar loud engine sounded in the driveway and Andrea looked up to see a shipping
van pulling into the driveway. Pushing back from her desk, she quickly headed out to meet it
in the circular drive. On her way she spotted Sarah and another groom, Abby, chatting while
the cleaned halters. “Hey, you guys wanna do some real work for a change?” They laughed and
tossed the halters on the bench. "Sure. I heard you bought some rejects for us to play
with."
“They’re not rejects, they just weren’t ones I’d originally planned on,”
Andrea’s tone got defensive. Behind her back Sarah winked at Abby. “Rejects.” But the two
grooms headed out into the bright sunlight. Scott and Johnny were headed towards the trailer
too, from the training barn where they’d been making final preperations for the horses
racing tomorrow. The loud engine cut off and Andrea could hear a high-pitched whinny coming
from the trailer. Without waiting for the driver to come around, Andrea and Abby moved in
and started to lower the ramp. Scott jumped to help them lower the heavy ramp, eager to look
at his new charges.
"So, I know you got the Wood filly you’d looked at when we all
were up there for the auction, but who’s this Golden Romance you came home with?" Andrea
beamed. "She’s three, unraced, but she’s got decent bloodlines. Sire’s Romeo and dam’s
Klondike Gold. So that makes her a full sib to Eskimo Kisses and she’s related to Casanova,
so she should have some promise. I just hope she has time to find her niche on the track, I
don’t know how well she’ll do as a four year-old."
The trailer door swung open and
and solid chestnut filly backed up into the butt bar. “I’m guessing this is Romance?”
Andrea slipped into the narrow walk space and unclipped the filly, exchanging the safety
trailer tie for a leadrope. Grabbing the filly’s halter to steady her, she checked the name
plate. “Nope, this one is Kapu.”
"The Wood filly? Haven’t seen the old man throw
many chestnuts. Her dam musta been homozygous." "Actually, I don’t think so… I think
Wildflower was black, too. Guess that just makes her the golden sheep." Scott rolled his
eyes, but took the filly’s lead himself as she backed off the trailer, prancing as she tried
to look everything over. Johnny moved forward to help unwrap the filly’s shipping wraps,
ignoring his age in favor of seeing the filly’s legs first hand. Satisfied, he moved on to
check over Romance, who was standing patiently at the end of her lead while Sarah fussed over
her. The filly stretched down to eat some grass, satisfied with her new home.
"Well,
she’s just a wild one, isn’t she?" Sarah laughed, jiggling the lead to get the filly to
pick her head back up. Johnny took over her lead while Scott by default had to grab Kapu,
who was still prancing in place. “The rest are just broodmares, right?” "Yeah, though watch
who you’re calling just. Those fillies didn’t come from
cabbages you know." Scott couldn’t reply as Kapu dragged him off towards the paddock
holding the yearlings.
The broodmares came off much more calmly. The team had heard
all about Honor and Lass, she’d been planning on purchasing them. Abby moved forward and
took the leads of the mares, already starting to show with the foals they carried for next
year. They sighed as the cute bay backed off. She had nice, clean lines. “Willing Enough,”
Andrea said in response to their questioning gazes. "Out of four races she only finished
once out of the top four, all her other races she was first or second, and she missed her
three year-old year. So she should be a good addition."
Her voide was muffled as
she disappeared to the back of the trailer and came back out with the final mare, another
chestnut, this time marked by an irregular blaze. "And this is Miracle. Nothing too
impressive on her dam’s side, but she’s by Easy Goer, so I thought she might make a nice
broodmare for foals marked to go to auction." The grooms nodded and Abby came forward to
take the mare’s lead. Andrea traded her for Enough’s lead, taking her new toy mare towards
the broodmare barn. "Let’s turn them out together and let them stretch their legs, then
we’ll figure out who lives where and goes out with who." The three women headed towards the
nearest empty paddock with the four mares in tow.