Life with Rosie by Helen Thomas

Author:Helen Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2016-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

Still, this show has to get on the road and so the weekend before Rosie is due to leave for Melbourne to join the Class of 2009, I walk her and Roxie back up the hill to the stable they spent so much time in earlier in the year. This way they can be drenched and learn again, Rosie especially, that they are racehorses-to-be and not brumbies running wild through the southern tablelands, a role they are both beginning to enjoy.

But once their halters go on and the lead ropes clip under their chins, they walk out of the paddock quite professionally, despite Rosie’s half-sister Swirl’s sudden agitation at being left alone. The daughter Poetic Waters was not supposed to have—who raced, fittingly enough, as Miss Unexpected—has been in the paddock with the yearlings for the past month as a steadying influence and it has worked well for all concerned. It gives the fillies a calm point of reference, and the young mare has the chance to be boss of the yard.

As she is the youngest in the farm’s band of mares, she is always at the end of the pecking order and so has enjoyed life with her two young charges … until this point, as she watches them disappearing over the rise.

Once I get the fillies re-settled in their stalls, I bring Swirl up to the stable too, putting her in the box she was born in six years earlier. She is not quite as happy with the arrangement as the young ones, especially when Rosie starts banging around in her box, cheerfully demanding to be fed.

But once dinner is served, the trio settles down happily enough and I close the stable’s big doors, front and back, for the night. The next morning, it is windy and cold, a typical autumn day in Braidwood, and Swirl isn’t at all pleased about being indoors.

I put the two fillies in the round yard, where they spent so much time in summer as part of Rosie’s recuperation, and walk Swirl down the hill. As soon as she knows she is heading back to the older girls, she settles into step beside me and walks calmly in with the others, happier to be out in the wind than listening to it whistle through the stable.

After cleaning out the stalls, I bring the fillies back in and check what was once the gaping wound on Rosie’s neck. It is now a thin, six-inch scar over slightly puckered skin. It is almost unnoticeable under her mane and it really is hard to believe that it was as bad as it was a couple of months ago. This filly obviously has a hardy constitution.

And good as she is during this inspection, she eventually decides she has had enough of being fussed over when I start to groom her, and somehow manages to bite me, under my right arm. It is just a quick nip, but within 5 minutes, an angry red bruise appears. So much

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