One Wedding and Some Good Training Reports

Hello blog readers. So, I know this is suppose to be about horse racing, but I first must report that Laura and I tied the knot on Saturday, May 7th! It kept me away from posting here for awhile, but it was well worth it! For those who love racing, you’ll be happy to know we played the Kentucky Derby radio call live at our reception and gave prizes away to the winners (each person got a horse name on their seating assignment). Laura’s father also made a special mention of Mo winning the Windy City Pace during his speech after dinner at the reception. So, although In Over My Head was physically in cold and rainy Marrengo that day, he was with us in spirit down in Key West!

A couple of weeks after the wedding, Laura and I were out with Danny and we realized that per State of Wisconsin marital law, Laura is now an owner in two race horses. Welcome aboard! I’m sure Mo and Seeknee are excited to have her as owner.

As for the horses, they continue to train down slowly, but surely. Although we are 455 days removed from our last race, we could be within about 45 days of Seeknee seeing the track and maybe 75 days for Mo. Obviously, things can change, but I like looking forward much more than backward. Here are some fun updates on our guys:

- In Over My Head – Has been in 2:36 at John’s track in Marrengo with Tyler at the helm. They had been going two training trips a week, but he came up a bit sore after his second last week, so we’ll back off a bit. No rush. Great news is that he’s loving being on the track and is quite a handful when out with other horses. As you can probably guess based on his past racing experience, he wants to pass everything in sight. Easy big guy, they’ll be plenty of time for that later this summer. For now, we’ll keep training him down at a measured pace and just keep a close eye on him. He’s in good hands with Tyler, Penny, Dr. Tony and everyone else who is working at John’s. Danny and I are heading down June 5th. We’ll get more pictures.

- Showtime Shark – I think I speak for Greg, Danny and I when I say we can’t wait to see what Mr. Seeknee can do on the racetrack. All reports from Julie Miller on him have been very positive (not including his occasional bonehead behavior around the barn). On the track, he’s all go and seems to really enjoy the competition of racing (or at least training) against other horses. John used to say the same thing about him when he was a 2 year old. His injury has healed and he has shown no soreness at all. Yesterday, they went two trips with him with the second in 2:20. He’s on track to be ready to qualify in 4-6 weeks. We haven’t seen Showtime in person since last winter in Florida, so when he gets racing this summer, we’ll definitely make the trip out east. We think he’ll like the mile track, so we’ll angle him to towards the Meadowlands.

I love good training reports…but they are dwarfed by good racing reports. Hopefully by the end of the summer I can be writing about races for both our horses!

Mo(hawk)

As a group, we haven’t seen In Over My Head in awhile. After spending much of last year with Greg up in Mineral Point, he got sent down to Florida to get back into racing shape. Laura and I went down to visit in late December, but shortly thereafter, he aggravated his suspensory injury and had to be shipped back to Illinois. It wasn’t until this weekend that he was visited by his ownership team when Greg and Danny headed down to Marrengo to see him. Mo had just moved over to the Butenschoen’s place after spending the last few months with the Leonards.

A quick side note, from what I hear the Leonards gave Mo great care when he was with them and if you happen to be reading this, we’d like to thank you for stepping in and helping all of us out. We very much appreciate it.

In Over My Head has always carried himself with a bit of an attitude. Not that he’s a jerk at all, he’s just pretty sure who’s the boss: him. As long as you go in with that attitude, no one is going to have any problems. Well, as Greg and Danny found out this weekend, he has also found a new way to express himself. Thanks to Danny’s fine camera work, we give you...Mo with a Mohawk:

As it turns out, Mo has decided that he wants to rock this mohawk on his comeback tour. Who are we to tell him no?

Danny got to take him out for a nice 5 mile jog and he is ready to start training down. We just have to wait until the weather stops being so rainy so the track can dry out. No rush, we've been waiting for well over a year. What's another couple of weeks?

In other news Laura and I are off to get married. Kentucky Derby day will also be our wedding day! So, I won't have any blog updates for a couple of weeks. HOWEVER, when we get back, there is a chance we could have both Mo and Seeknee no more than a few week away from a qualifier. You never know what will happen, but this is the closest we've been to a real race in a long, long time!