Just plain happy to have a NEW year.

By now, Christmas has come and gone and we've got a good start into the New Year. Frankly, last year wasn't SO hot, and I'm happy to have a new one.

My husband went full force with Christmas spirit this year. He has never, in the seven years we've been cohabitating, contributed at all to getting ready for the holidays. This year he actually assembled the Christmas tree and put the lights on - one small step for man, one giant step for his wife. I don't mean to complain, he always gets me one gift, last year a vacuum, the year before a stepper, but this year he got me two presents and was really excited about giving them to me. I'm not sure what's gotten into him, but I think it's mostly to do with the new house.

Ray's dad was admitted to the hospital the Friday before Christmas for emergency surgery and it was touch and go as to whether he would not only make Christmas, but then whether he would make it home for Christmas. The hospital released him just in time for Christmas eve dinner and I brought over my rendition of the seven fishes (my in-laws are Italian - very Italian), which was actually just one fish dish and some shrimp - he loves my shrimp scampi. I had supplied them with a small decorated tree and while they were out I slipped their presents underneath. Christmas day Ray and I opened presents then went back to his parents' for an early dinner that we brought over - a Honey Baked ham one of my wonderful, thoughtful aunts sent me as a gift (it was really good by the way). His mother seemed, how do I put this, miserable, but that's understandable, she had her heart set on seeing their relatives in New York for Christmas like she does every year - not to mention the stress of both of their failing health. We tried to make it as nice for them as we could, I hope they enjoyed it.

This is our first home we purchased together. When we met, I just moved in with him, and luckily or not, depending who and when you ask them, he did buy the cow after having the milk for free all those years. I got an e-mail on December 31st from the realtor who sold us the house saying that the people would be all moved out this week. As of Tuesday, it is officially unoccupied and awaiting our arrival. I got the electricity transferred over and the realtor said she would go by and make sure everything was all closed up and set the thermostat so the pipes won't freeze. We can't wait to get there. More than that I can't wait to sell the land Ray owns here in Florida. With the housing market dropping off like it is, I'm a little worried about being able to sell it in a timely manner. Hopefully the fact that it is vacant land will work in our favor. After what went on last weekend with our neighbors where we live, I am putting my foot down and we are listing the land this week, period. I don't know why Ray has been procrastinating putting it on the market, I don't even think he knows why. We've been closed on the Arkansas house for almost a month now, time's a wastin'!

Ray and I met at Delaware Park (race track) one morning. He needed some help with his horses and I just so happened to be on the in-betweens, in more ways than one. I was in between jobs, in between places to live and in between relationships - lucky for him. I started working for him, hanging out with him, then eventually but not long after, started living with him too. I came to Ocala, Florida on December 31st of 1999. Very memorable for me because I grew up listening to Prince sing about 1999 like it was never going to happen and here I was starting life all over again a thousand miles away from everyone and everything I ever knew. When I got here I couldn't believe my eyes. I had spent a considerable amount of time in South Florida with a previous boyfriend, that's a whole other adventure, but Ocala was like nothing I'd ever seen before. As a girl who grew up in the burbs, only dreaming of ever having a pony I was landed smack in the middle of horse paradise. Ocala, filled with grandfather oak trees, draped in Spanish moss with one pony cuter than the last around every corner. I guess the best way I can describe it around here is that everyone has a horse in their back yard. All different breeds and disciplines. Well, with all those cute horses come a lot of crazy people.

We race horses. We breed them, break them and take them to the track to race, then if they're lucky (or nobody else wants them) we bring them home to retire. Over the seven years we have been doing business together we've gone thru at least forty different horses. Some are owned by other people that just send them to us to train and race, then when they need to, we send them back home. I've worked for lots of different trainers on the track and off and learned different methods of caring for the same animals from each of them. I've consigned horses, trained race horses, bred horses, trained them to jump and even worked in equine nutrition for about two years exclusively. Ray has been working on the racetrack since he was about sixteen. He rides and trains and now is primarily a farrier (shoer) - and a very good one, he has been recommended to people by our old veterinarian who is familiar with his work - and that says a lot. Ray and I have one mare that he bought just before he met me and we agree that her babies are his and mine together. We only breed one horse every two years and since I've known Ray he nor I have ever bought a horse. Someone did give me a horse one time, which leads me into what I've been trying to get to...

We live on about fourteen acres, there are two homes on the land, one for Ray's parents and ours, as well as a barn and a shop, etc. It's not a small understatement to say that it's nothing fancy, but it's home. My horses all have shelter and fencing and (knock on wood), we haven't killed one yet. For those people that don't know horses, they aren't the easiest keepers - or cheap either. They can come down with all kinds of ailments and injuries and have to be put down, i.e. a fellow we all know as Barbaro narrowly escaped one of those in 2006.

Ok, this being said, several years ago a client of ours sent us a champion stakes horses to our farm to recuperate from some injuries he sustained at the track. Groomstick. I'll never forget the day he got off the van. Groomstick was kind of a legend for us, another client of ours bred him, my best friend Jackie broke him and he had been around us when he was young, but never really had any interaction with him ourselves. Groomstick also has a Cinderella story that goes something like this... He was a really ugly yearling with a funny hump in his back, got shipped back and forth from sale to sale until they finally dumped him for five thousand bucks. A trainer took him to the track and it's all history from there, he made his way up the claiming ranks and won several big stake races all over the country, bringing his lifetime earnings to somewhere around half a million, not to mention he set a couple of track records. So, when he got to our house I had really been anticipating his arrival. The driver pulled up and let down the ramp, unhooked him from the tie chain and led him off the trailer and I actually had to ask him 'are you sure this is him?'. I couldn't believe that a horse that won so many races and made so much money was so little to look at. He was tall and lanky, and still had that funny hump in his back but when he looked at me with those big brown eyes I just melted. Groomstick was sound when he got off the trailer, but two weeks later the nerve block in his foot and ankle wore off and to see him walk you would have thought he had a broken leg (which he probably did have several fragments in his ankles, both of them). See horse trainers, and mark my words here, this is important, some horse trainers will inject a horse with all kinds of things to numb their pain in order to squeeze a little more performance out of them before giving them time off to recuperate - and this goes for ALL breeds and disciplines, not just racing. There are a lot of stigmas about race horses and the way they are treated and I just want people to understand that it's not the sport, it's the people. We don't believe in all that. If a horse is sore, we have a farm, so we send it home to rest up. Nothing heals injuries like time. So we went the whole winter watching Groomstick, worrying over him, wondering if he was going to be okay - to live, not even to race. This particular year I had just lost my soul mate, best friend, the only horse I ever wanted to be around in a claiming race and Groomstick was filling a little void in my heart - so I was really pulling for him. I would go out every day, two or three times a day and treat and bandage him appropriately and enjoyed every minute taking care of him because he was just so lovable. He liked his ears scratched just like the horse I had lost.

They say time heals all wounds, and for the most part I agree, but all the time in the world wouldn't get Groomstick back to the races. Two years went by and Groomstick (or G. as we now refer to him) was still at the farm. He sounded up some, enough that he wasn't living in discomfort any more and his owner called to have the vet out to take x-rays and decide whether or not he would ever get back to the races. The veterinarian deemed that he would never make the races because of his limited range of motion which was due to the calcification in his joints - from the racetrack trainer 'tapping' and injecting him so frequently. In laymen's terms his ankle joints were all dried up and the chips that were in his ankles had grown into more bone. Groomstick's owner was looking to get out of the horse business and told us to 'donate' him to a thoroughbred rescue, so that's how I wound up with him. Really, you could say that he was my first horse, the first one that I could put my name on the registration papers. I guess another two years went by and Groomstick was still around. We used him to wean the babies from their mothers, he was a great babysitter.

Living on fourteen acres, we don't have a lot of neighbors. When I moved in, Miss Madeline and her (teenage slut) daughter Lindsay were living next door. Miss Madeline, Lindsay and Ray were all friends or at very least friendly, but Madeline had been hashing out a divorce settlement with her ex and had to sell the farm. It went downhill from there. A guy bought the farm and sold it another two years later to Gillian, our neighbor now. From what I know of Gillian, she moved to Ocala from Tampa. She had a ten or twelve stall barn built on her ten acres (ten acres is not enough room for ten horses) before she moved in and when she did she brought her two horses with her. The first year was okay, her horses got loose and onto our property and we helped her catch them a couple of times, no big deal. We share a fence line - her fence, but we both have horses on our respective sides, so you can't take the fence down or neither of us would be able to use the space. Gillian is thirty eight, a lesbian and to my knowledge has no friends except for the people that she pays to do labor around her farm. FYI, I have no problem with lesbians, one of my very best friends is a huge one. I guess Gillian's been living next door for about two years now. When she first came I was very excited that a woman close to my age who was interested in horses had moved in, until I started to get to know her. Gillian, or Gilligan as we now refer to her is kind of a needy person to be living on such a big piece of property all by herself, especially since she seems to have assumed that we are the farm hands that came with the property. Maybe working in the horse business has toughened me up, but when you live on a farm you better be prepared for grunt work - or have enough money to pay somebody to do it for you. I started to realize that the only time Gilligan went out of her way to concern herself with us was when she needed help and I have my own farm chores. Lately though, she's just filled with nasty sarcastic comments. She doesn't like my dogs coming on her property and must be of the opinion that I should be walking them on a leash, which no one does around here. Everyone's dogs go an visit the surrounding neighbors and if someone's dog is being a nuisance we either call and complain or tape a note to their collar for them to take home to their owner. We have two mutts and Ray's parents have two mutts, so there's one of her gripes, we have too many dogs. Apparently the dogs know that she doesn't like them because now they just stand and bark at her when they see here, which I really get a kick out of. Our horses mingle over the fence and if anyone kicks a board or squeals at the other she's right there screaming at them to stop (a totally mundane and obnoxious practice that usually would characterize someone as crazy). Of course then I get a report from Sgt. Gilligan that so-and-so was kicking at her horse, blah blah blah. Horses don't talk (I know, shocking) the don't make much noise, instead to tell each other to piss off they kick and bite, so seeing horses kick and bite each other doesn't mean they are 'fighting'. I can't tell you how many times she has referenced the occasion that her mare got into my paddock and G was chasing her mare - like that had something to do with me or I care whatsoever (because obviously G can do no wrong in my eyes).

Okay, I'm getting side tracked here. Before Gilligan started to be so blatantly nasty to us Ray's dad got sick - we thought he was going to die sick - and I didn't have such a good job and he wasn't making any money, so I got worried about having to foot the bill for all the animals and the farm myself. At this point I didn't really have any beef with Gilligan, we were actually what I considered friendly and was I feeling sorry for her because I never saw her riding either of her two horses. G is such a gentle and friendly horse I would trust him with anyone - yeah, that's right - I trust him with anyone, not anyone with him. Ray had been riding G to get him in shape and he was behaving perfectly. One day after Gilligan had been explaining to me how she wanted another boy horse to go in with Thomas, her male and another mare to go in with her mare and it occurred to me that G would be a great horse for Gilligan. Here was a horse I knew she could ride (because even I could, and I can't ride at all) and that gets along great with all other horses, remember I said he was so gentle that we put the yearlings in with him to get weaned! I offered G to Gilligan and she eagerly accepted. At the time I thought she was taking the horse because she liked him and his story and had been chatting me up so much about rescues and wanting to rehabilitate horses, now I know different. So I dragged G over to her barn and that's where he still is today.

The Jockey Club is the governing authority over thoroughbred horse breeding. When there's money involved there also have to be rules and the Jockey Club has outlined a specific period that is suitable for breeding from February thru June. Every thoroughbred's 'birthday' is officially recognized as January 1st of the year they were born. Horses that are born earlier have a size advantage in the sale ring. The Jockey Club is cracking down on horses being born prior to the first of the year that are not reported. This year representatives came (from Kentucky) to inspect our mare Ashley because of her early breeding date of February 4th she was expected to foal early to mid January. What they are looking for in an inspection of this type is strictly that the mare is still pregnant and we are not hiding her foal. They came for the inspection on December 27th, she gave birth the morning of Janurary 1. Someone must have told her to hold out, either that or the fireworks our other neighbors were setting off New Year's eve got her upset enough to send her into labor. Hearing the fireworks, I got up at 2:00 am and went outside to check on Ashley, which I've been doing almost every night for a week before the Jockey Club came. I grabbed my flashlight and trekked out in the dark, no baby.

New Years day I kind of slept late and took my time getting out to feed the horses, don't forget that they are 24 - 7 - 365, so we're entitled to a little rest once in a while. I got out to Ashley around 8:00 am because having just checked her at two I thought I was in the clear. I got to the fence with her bucket of feed and started calling her and she just stood there looking at me and then looking at the ground. Finally I realized that she wasn't coming to me because her BABY was laying in the sand at her feet! DUH. I ran across the field to the little guy and tried to rouse him but he wouldn't get up . When you have a new foal you have to make sure they can nurse and poop, those two things I know for sure, after that you are in pretty good shape. Ashley was nickering to him to get up, something mares do to their babies to protect them from predators like me, and she was nudging him and he just wouldn't even make an attempt. So I started trying to get him up gently rubbing him, hoping that he would be scared of me and hop up, but nothing happened. I ran back to the house and told Ray the two words I knew he would understand exactly what they meant, 'Come quick'. And I left him to get dressed. He came out and the baby still Had 't gotten up which was really starting to worry me, normally they are up and down a lot and I could tell it was worrying Ashley which worried me even more. We stood, looking at him and her for several minutes and decided that he should go in and call for the vet to come out. When Ray left me with them to go use the phone I started to tear up at the thought of having to put this little angel down and Ashley and I both started rubbing him and talking to him to try to bring him into consciousness and get him up - foals are heavy by the way, so I couldn't just lift him if that's what you're thinking. I rubbed and Ashley rubbed and his breathing picked up and sat up on his belly and finally started trying to get up and I was happy to help him when he did. Believe it or not this is the most effort I've had to put into one of her foals. What people don't understand is that nature takes it's course, there are things that you can do to try to assist, but what's to be is to be. So he made his way to his feet and Ashley and I steered him in the direction of her teats where he proceeded to try to figure out what to do. We called the vet back and told her not to come, that if we thought we needed her we would call back. Ray and I do a lot of veterinary procedures ourselves, injections, worming, etc. (we save a lot of money that way too).

So we waited and we watched. We let him nap and came back and watched and waited. By mid afternoon he was up and down a lot, but we were a little bit concerned about his ability to nurse so we had the vet out just to check them both over. Our regular vet, Ted, was out of town so we called the big clinic that we used to use and they sent out the vet on call. We stopped using our vet at the clinic several years ago because we really are minimalists when it comes to veterinary treatments and they kind of tend to run up the bill on unnecessary treatments, not to say that we're depriving them, we just don't treat them excessively. Dr. Backer showed up, a twenty-something girl, with obviously not that much practical experience. I knew when she got there that she was expecting something much worse. Immediately when she got out of the van she started loading her metal tray with syringes and little bottles. Ray grabbed Ashley, sometimes the mare goes berserk when you are messing with her baby and I grabbed the baby and Dr. Backer, hands trembling proceeded to draw the blood she needed and we decided that the situation looked good enough that we would leave it at that for now.

Earlier that afternoon while we were out watching the baby, a pick up truck came down our drive, paused where the baby and mare were and drove around to us. It was the people that live across the street, mother and forty year old toothless son, who prior to today had never really spoken to us. They came to look at the baby. The son said that he'd been watching me with his binoculars (you'd have to,their house is ten acres away) and that he saw me with the feed bucket this morning and thought something was up. I had seen the father sitting on the front porch, binoculars in hand, watching me feed the horses before. One time he was looking at Ray and Ray was looking at him with his binoculars and they waved to each other - when I first told Ray they were spying on us he didn't believe me so he checked for himself. I guess now they've caught on and they must spy from inside the house. I probably don't have to tell you how appalled my husband was to hear this stranger say how he had been watching his wife. I'm thinking that hill billies in Arkansas can't be much stranger than this. When Ray heard the part about him watching me, the friendly conversation was pretty much over and we excused ourselves to go back to the baby watching.

Boy was it a long and stressful day. Finally after dinner time we were ready to sit down and relax and celebrate a little. We had two phone messages from Gilligan that day. The first went something like this 'Ray, Sara, there's a mare that had a foal and I'm not sure who's mare it is or if anyone knows that it's there or not, give me a call.' The second was from a perturbed Gilligan 'Ray, Sara, it's Gillian, CALL ME!'. The third and final message was from Miss Madeline, our old neighbor. I blew off Gilligan and had Ray call Madeline back because we don't hear from her often and she sounded funny in her message, tired, worn, I wasn't sure. Madeline still dates the gentleman on the other side of Gilligan's, our friend Lloyd, so she and Gilligan have met and Gilligan got Madeline's phone number in case there were any emergencies on Lloyd's farm. According to Miss Madeline, Gilligan called her on a rant, furious that (she thought) we hadn't had the vet out for the foal and spouting off about how she thinks that one of our horses is too thin and that she thought she should call the Humane Society. I just want you to know that I care so much for all of our animals that when I leave in the morning I actually feel guilty that I have to come to work and can't spend all day with them. Before he got off the phone I was shaking mad. In fact I told him if he didn't get of the phone I was going to walk over and knock on Gilligan's door - which probably wouldn't have been pretty and may have resulted in her suing me - I have kind of a hot temper and have this thing about fiercely defending my own. So I called Gilligan, I called her home phone, I called her cell phone and no answer. Finally I realized that it wasn't going to do me any good to make our already bad relationship worse and would only serve to temporarily make me feel better, it would never change her opinion of us. I left her a message, my voice trembling with anger, "Hi Gillian, (Ray said I called her Joanne, whatever), it's Sara, sorry it took me so long to get back to you, we've been busy all day with the foal and having the vet out, you can call me back if you need to, other than that I'll see you around." My girlfriend at work and I were discussing this the following day and her wise advice was not to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had rattled my cage and she was right. The next day we moved all the horses around so that the Ashley and Happy (that's what we're calling her baby - for Happy New Year..) would be out of the lime light.

In hindsight I've realized that Gilligan took G, not because she liked him but because in her dimento mind she was rescuing him from us. As insulted as I am and as much as I hate Gilligan for the things she said about Ray and I, I'm still just happy he has a good home. Today, I feel like Gilligan's commentary is just plain silly, apparently you only get half the story when you get it thru the lenses of your binoculars.

In a nutshell, that was New Year's day. We still haven't really had a chance to celebrate the new baby, we've been so wrapped up in making sure he's got a healthy start. I'm planning to designate some time to that this weekend. My new year's resolution mainly consists of trying to maintain a positive attitude about life and our future in general and not letting things (Gilligans and the other people that don't really have anything to do with us) bother me - OH, and to play with Happy every day!