Pate plays with the filly

Pate stopped by yesterday and offered to help Ansel fiddle with the filly. Ansel calls her Queenie, she was born May 2006 and her niche in life so far has been to greet Ansel every morning with nuzzles and knickers in exchange for her breakfast.

She is out of Ansel’s “Misty” mare (Apache Mystique, who’s out of Ansel’s old TB mare Golden Promise, who goes back to Bold Ruler) and is by an own son of A.P. Indy.

It wasn’t 5 minutes and Pate had her in his back pocket. She really wants to please and is very giving to the pressure. Ansel was very pleased with her attitude and the things Pate did with her.
After the training session, while they were warming up in the house, Ansel told about the black man that started this one very nasty dispositioned horse. See the post below - Starting TB's in a box stall.

Starting TB's in a box stall

It was the norm that racehorses were started in a box stall in a barn. The theory being that in the seclusion of the stall, there were no outside distractions to spook the horse, they were less likely to buck with out having room to so and they certainly couldn’t run off and hurt themselves. So in the stall they were saddled, and the rider got on, and let them move about the stall at will and to get used to having someone on their back.

This one horse was pretty hot… but this black guy was very good at starting race horses. They got the horse saddled, and closed up the stall doors and left the black guy alone with the horse. Pretty quick there was this explosion of commotion and banging that came from the stall… it was like the Tasmanian Devil himself was in there tearing the barn down… the fellers on the outside looked at each other in disbelief fearful that the black guy was going to be dead when the dust finally settled. But on and on it went… the crashing and bangin and dust was oozing out the cracks in the wooden walls… finally after what seemed like an eternity they hollered to the black guy… “Are you alright”? and the black guy hollers back… yessah, I’ze ahlright…

They looked at each other in disbelief and as the clanging and crashing continued they mustered the nerve to crack the top half of the door and peek in… there was the black guy safely perched in the rafters, flogging the horse round and round… “yessah, I’ze ahlright”…