Our trip to Emerald Downs yesterday was a blast! We had a ridiculous amount of fun standing out there in the paddock with the other owners and trainers and enjoying all the excitement leading up to McLaren's first race. Unfortunately, his chances of running a career as an undefeated horse came to an abrupt end after yesterday's race. The betting public was apparently right when they sent him off at 19-1. He broke toward the back of the pack and by the time they entered the turn, he must of been 7-8 length back.
That's him, way back there. He closed well, but from there he had too much work to do... he passed one of the tiring horses and ran up on another and had to steady a bit.
All in all, his performance was not too bad, but he will be getting a new jockey next time out and probably dropping in class. He'll also be going an extra 1/2 furlong which should help his chances. I think he's got a great shot at winning next time out, assuming things play out according to plan. He may even be racing again as soon as Friday...
Ok, well it's my birthday today and we're heading out to Mom & Dad's for some dessert and good times. Will the fun ever end!?
Wow! 13 days since our last post. And you wanna know why? Well yes it's been a little nuts around the Armstrong home, but our absence has been due in large part to our failed attempt at moving our blog over to Wordpress. For all the wonderful things I could say about Wordpress, it gave us such a headache working with photos that we ended up never posting and well, that sort of outweighs any advantages.
So we're back... and including a plethora of photos that we undoubtedly would have posted had it been a bit more convenient. As for what's new, McLaren was entered in a race this last Sunday but was subsequently scratched, this time by order of the stewards. See, the rule is that if an owner scratches a horse, he has to wait 10 days to race him again. Sunday was day 10 so we thought we were ok, but according to the racing office, the rule as it has stood for a hundred years is that you have to wait until the 11th day following a scratch. Anyway, he's entered in a 5.5 Furlong race on Saturday. At this point, I'll believe it when I see him break out of the gate, although they do say the third time's a charm...
Meanwhile, Asher has been a dream kid for the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure why but we're not complaining. We've got another full weekend ahead of us so let's hope the trend holds! When McLaren scratched this past weekend we ended up going out to Lincoln City instead and Asher got to experience the Beach for the first time. I have to say, he really seems to like being outdoors (which he didn't get from me).
Asher's cousin Brenden came over today and the two of them seemed to get along swimmingly. Brenden did, however, seem convinced that Asher is a girl. Not sure why, but even after being reassured that Asher was in fact very much a boy, he continued calling him "Her".
That's all for now folks. Sorry about the drought between posts. We hope to be posting photos from the winner's circle this weekend! In the meantime, here are the photos I promised you at the top of this post...
Well we’ve moved about .5 miles in the past hour and a half. I guess there is a brush fire that closed down I-5 and we have been stuck between exits for what feels like forever!! Asher had been reasonably good, considering, but we’re all about ready for the freeway to open back up. Now if only I can find a way to get over to the right lane…
Here’s a photo I snapped of Joellen & Asher in the Emerald Downs parking lot when we still had (or thought we had) a reason to be there. Turns out, we could have just as well stayed home since we McLaren ended up scratching from the race. He’ll be fine and we’ll probably try and give him a good work this weekend and run him in a race a week from Sunday. None-the-less, we were both pretty dissapointed. It’s been a lot of time, energy, emotional build-up and money going into this horse and we’re just chomping at the bit (so to speak) to see him run. On the bright side, Asher was FANTASTIC today and slept almost the entire drive up. Now that’s something always worth celebrating :)
Well folks, It’s been 2 years coming but it’s finally time! McLaren has been entered in a race on Thursday up at Emerald Downs. He will be making his debut against 7 other horses in a 4.5 Furlong race (a furlong is an eighth of a mile). We’ve been looking forward to his debut for a long time now and it’s hard to believe it’s finally here! We’re hoping for a lights out victory, but then again I’m sure the other 7 owners are too… Too bad for them, there can only be one winner :)
and I think we're gonna keep him.
Well folks, we have moved our blog to a new provider. In fact we now host our blog on our own server using Wordpress. They have released an iPhone application that allows us to post full posts from our phones and gives us more customization options. Anyway, we moved all of our old posts over and we’ve kept the markandjoellen.com address the same so the whole thing should be relatively seamless… However, please let us know if you have any trouble with the site, posting comments or whatever.
Thanks folks! We hope you all enjoy the new site :)
