Saturday, September 19, 2015

Keep you like an oath

I'm a deadline driven person.
I blame getting my degrees and then learning to organize. I like punctual, I like routine and I like familiar. It's comforting and gives a sense of control, even when I don't have any. Minus my personal life which never runs on time, my professional life is more orderly.

A few months ago, I entered into a partnership with Germany for a horse. With two other partnerships (Haiku, Flair) on the table and going successfully- it was a giant step in a direction.

I'm thirty-something years old, two years into my training business and I've started developing a larger network in Europe for career horses this year. I successfully sell everywhere (this year alone was fun to see how many places the horses I've touched have gone to).

Where and who I source from is very important to me because the clients are often buying sight unseen often on my reputation and while there are many great breeders out there in the the world, very few I feel can match the quality and ethics of the people who I personally have relationships with.

When I left Germany, I left my partnered-horse-of-choice behind to spend the summer growing up; as for the rest of us, we've been working our butts off, actively campaigning and developing.

He needed the extra time to develop more and I needed space to focus in on the mares. So there he went out in to the fields like the rest of the chuckle heads in his age group.

The plan was always to export him into America in the Fall as a longer-term sales horse (focusing in on the four year olds for 2016).

Somewhere between April and now, I lost track of time. 

It was easy to forget about him, he's just 2,000 miles away and the only real images I have of him are a photo on my mobile, and a video on my YouTube account. Like an arranged marriage, every once in awhile I'd pull out the cute photo or watch the video on a few loops to figure out what exactly I agreed to. Every time I understood, and every time I question my sanity.

But with the 90 degree heat, the current workload, the foliage still kicking it's Summer hue, Fall, until today was a distant thought.

So came the call from Germany a few weeks ago that basically was my alarm- it's time, the boxes are needed for other incoming horses and I need to begin focusing on developing another horse with Flair and Haiku safely cooking along. It was time for him to fly over.

Thus began the importation for October, one of the busiest seasons for any quarantine station let alone Kentucky. I'm excited in a lot of ways and holding my breath in many others. I was lucky to see him go for 60 days in Germany but for the last 180, I only have him in his winter coat still rough looking from the field.

But like pulling any young horse from the field, things change rapidly with work, maturation and nutrition- and like the girls I know he won't disappoint me.