Important News!  Sassy has her gate card and we are hoping to get her in a race in two weeks!!

The race we are pointing her towards is a Maiden Special Weight at Delaware Park on Saturday August 17th.  It is a 5.5 furlong race for 2 year old fillies who have never won a race.  Very exciting!

That groundbreaking news aside, Sassy had a super work today.  She worked with two other 2 year olds who have also never raced, one a filly and one a colt.  In order to get Sassy ready for her race, they wanted her to learn about getting dirt in her face and continuing on despite it.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the amount of gritty sand that is kicked up in a horse’s face during a race can be irritating and daunting, so the trainer wanted her to get a taste of it before her race so that she knows to push on and not to back off.

I took a bunch of pics, so you can see the entire morning.

First we saw Sassy in her stall.  It was a really busy day at the barn, made extra busy because we had two jockeys working horses today in addition to the normal 5 riders.

Sassy waited quietly for her turn, no pacing, pawing, or attacking her Jolly Ball today.

Here she is waiting patiently.  She’s really added a lot of muscle since she’s come to Fair Hill!

My niece Grace visiting Sassy

Sassy was good in the walking area by the barn, but her company was acting a little full of herself!  Just to reiterate- the horse crow hopping is not Sassy, it is the filly she was going to work with.

Sassy’s rider today was jockey Julien Pimentel.  Julien was checking out his stirrup length during the walk over to the track.  Sassy’s company settled down on the walk and seemed ready to work.

The horses galloped about a mile of warm up before they worked, and the other two stayed together while Sassy was held behind.  It is fun to look at these pictures because Sassy looks like she’s out for a walk in the park while the other two horses look like they’re putting some effort into getting somewhere.

When they started their work, they had Julien hold Sassy back and start her about 3 or 4 lengths behind the others.  He was to hold her there and let her get a lot of dirt in the face and then make a move at the end.  You can see that she was really holding her head high at first, probably in protest of the dirt.

Sassy settled in and relaxed despite the dirt.

Sassy progressively ate up the ground until she was just behind the two leaders.  She was really getting a face full of dirt.

On the home stretch Julien made his final move and pulled her to the outside to go around the other horses.  He asked her for some more speed and she quickly moved along until she outpaced the colt and then ended up head to head at the wire with the filly.

What I like to see in these final three pictures is that both Sassy and the other filly are exactly stride for stride, but Sassy is pulling past the other filly.  I suppose if they are striding exactly in synch that Sassy must have a longer stride which is pushing her past her competition.

We think that the workout was fabulous.  Sassy learned a bit about eating dirt and pushing on, and she showed some great heart.  In my opinion she blew away her work mates since she started a good bit behind and still ended up in front.  The workout was noted as being in 1:03, but all three workers had the same time, so I’m sure you could knock a second off Sassy’s time since she started behind the others.

Orb did work the same distance in 1:00 flat today, so we didn’t beat him today.  Maybe next time!