From the Saturday morning gallops

Four lots of varying levels of exercise.

Out at he crack of dawn (for new readers, that a euphemism for 'before our photographer is out of bed' - ed) were

• 'Grace'
• Princess Apollo (Kingy)

who were on the Up-the-Middle woodchip gallop for a couple of spins.

• The Boo Box (Callum)
• 'Adam' (Arakan gelding) (Pinkie)

and both of these horses did some roadwork consisting of walking and trotting in the nearby lanes.

Lot 2 saw a quartet of horses do a couple of canters, which were at a noticeably quicker pace than of late.

• Big Bad Dream (Callum)
• Paper Promise (Pinkie)
• Eternally Yours (Kingy)
• Baby Ticker (Leah)

It was nice to see Ron & Eileen Smith (co-owners of 'The Paper Sisters') back on the gallops for the first time this season.

Baby Ticker & Eternally Yours lead Big Bad Dream & Paper Promise

Third lot of the day also consisted of 4 horses. Each is about a couple of weeks behind their stablemates of Lot 2 and did a single canter.

• Dali Mail (Kingy)
• Paper Roses
• Stainsby Girl (Pinkie)
• 'Henry' (Malinas gelding) (Callum)

Dali Mail, Paper Roses, Stainsby Girl

Rob Bewley sent along an athletic looking, lovely moving Malinas gelding last week, who'd been through a spell of pre-training.
He joined in with Lot 3 above (just out of shot), so here's a photo below.

'Henry' (Callum)

All of which left a couple of fairly far forward horses (in relative terms) to do a couple of canters 'Up-the-Middle'

• Keyboard Gangster (Pinkie)
• Side of the Road (Kingy)

And finally......

Hawick, far less the Scottish Borders, is such a hot bed of equine activity, that we're always please here at Dodlands to give youngsters an opportunity to get a first taste of life in a racing stable.

As mentioned before (yeah, just the once or twice - ed) very successful jockeys like Craig Nichol, Wilson Renwick, Jason Hart et al started out coming down at weekends to experience stable duties and riding out.
Couple of last season's teenagers have moved on, Aidan Redpath is now with Mark Johnson and Murray Dodd is soon to start with Dan Skelton. We wish them well of course, but hey lads....just don't give away too many of our secrets.

This season, there's two or three teenagers - including Murray's younger sister - down at the yard on Saturday's and Sunday's, so we'll see how things work out in the coming weeks.
Of course, the older work riders are always happy to pass on the benefit of experience, as can been seen in the photo below with Callum showing a trainee how to sweep the yard. Next week - mucking out.

Granny Helen and Uncle Callum put Freddie through initial on-the-job training