Sassy is now off her winter’s break and she’s back in training!  She returned to Fair Hill in early February and she’s been legging up in preparation for the upcoming turf season.  Her training started with what they call “shedrowing”, which is where they ride the horse at a walk and trot around the dirt or woodchip path that is inside the barn.  Racing stables are normally designed such that the stalls are on the inside, and there is a dirt walking path around the outside of the stalls for walking horses or shedrowing.  The path is under cover, so it provides an indoor ring of sorts for the horses when the weather is awful.  Our barn has about 50 stalls, and it is wider than many racing stables as it also has an interior set of stalls and a very wide aisleway.  Where a barn at the track will have two stalls back to back and then a path around the outside of both, our barn has two stalls back to back, and then a wide aisleway, and then two more stalls back to back, and the path is around the whole thing.  The nice part about this is that the horse won’t feel like it is turning so often or sharply when it is shedrowing at our Fair Hill barn.

After a short stint of shedrowing, Sassy’s workouts were taken outside to the Tapeta track, which is an all weather surface.  They built her back up to galloping about two miles, and just this past Saturday she “worked” (went at racing speed) for the first time since she’s been back.  She went 3 furlongs in 38s.  Not blazing, but we’re happy with her performance for her first work.  She was pulling for the first half of her work, but she got a little tired towards the end.  Pretty much what we’d expect coming off a winter layup.  She’ll probably do the same distance a few times until she isn’t tired, and then they’ll increase it to 4f and then 5f.

You’ll notice that her coat is a grayish color in the picture.  That is because her winter coat has been clipped off in order to keep her from overheating when she exercises and her grayish brown winter undercoat is now visible.  She wears a blanket while in the barn to keep her warm, and a quarter sheet on her back half to keep her warm while exercising.  She is sporting what is called a full clip, where the bottom half of her face is clipped along with the bulk of her body.  Her legs are left with long hair on them.  It is now shedding season for horses, so they are starting to shed out their wooly winter coats and the hair is coming off all over the place.  When Sassy sheds out her now shortened winter hairs and her summer coat grows in, her summer coat will be a normal length and a beautiful dark bay color. 

With the weather clearing up after this last winter hurrah tomorrow, Sassy will be working every Saturday going forward, so try to get out there to see her!  We’ll all be wearing our pink shirts and cheering her on in a race before we know it!