The crack of dawn

[Katherine Carr]

Katherine had always been an early riser, which made her choice of career the perfect option for her, the fact that she could live off almost no sleep also made barn management a good choice for her, she was just thankful that she had never had to worry about foal watching; her biggest issues were making sure that her charges didn't get cast in their stalls or colic, thankfully she'd only had to deal with the latter a few times in her career.

It never took her long to get ready in the mornings and she was always down at the barn long before her staff were due to arrive, though there was the odd day that a student seemed to beat her down to the barn.

Throwing the barn doors open and laughed as she was greeted by a chorus of whinnies, some of the horses kicked eagerly at their doors as she walked past, hoping that she had brought their breakfast with her. "Keep your shoes on." She laughed. "It will be here soon enough." She made her way down one side and then back up the other, checking in on each of the occupants to make sure that nothing untoward had happened to them during the night that she had missed.

With everything looking good, she made her way to the feed room; where she began to distribute the feeds into the right buckets, stacking them on the trolley so that the first barn-hand through the door would be able to take the feeds out. She then got the hay nets ready, these the students could put out themselves, but she couldn't only feed the unassigned mounts and staff owned horses, because then she would be asking for trouble.

[Brian Setliff]

After rising, Brian looked over to where Goblin was laying, her bright eyes already open and watching him, "Morning, Gob." After pouring some food into her bowl, and making sure that the Fold's water bowl was clean and full, he set about getting his own breakfast done, before he got dressed for another day at the new barn. He had no reason to be unhappy with the change in his position, but it had taken him away from his studs, and at the same time, had brought him so many more people to deal with, but at the same time... The White Oak barn existed, and Brown Oak was no longer, so having a job was preferable to not.

After picking Goblin up and hanging her about his shoulders, Brian left his apartments and made his way down to the White Oak barn, spotting the trolley with feeds all prepared. He spotted Katherine, stuffing hay nets, and smiled at her, "Morning." After dropping Goblin near the water bowl, where she spent a moment greeting Lilly, he walked towards the trolley and rolled it out of the feed room, "Let's hope that they choose to eat their food, rather than me, yes?" He knew it wasn't going to happen, but he needed something to say, and he liked poking fun at horses and feeding time.

[Katherine Carr]

Katherine looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps and smiled as Brian walked in. "Good morning." She replied as she finished the haynets and stepped into the main part of the room, dusting her hands off each other.

She couldn't help but laugh at his comment about the horses. "We have had a talk this morning." She told him in all seriousness. "The horses have promised to start a Brian-free diet. Though Guardian said that he couldn't promise it to be a Goblin-free diet." The gentle giant had become quite attached to the man's cat, and Katherine was pleased to have the second feline around the barn, as both did their jobs with gusto.

With a handful of nets, she headed out of the room and trailed the man down the aisle as she went into the stalls of the academy-owned horsed and replaced haynets; throwing the empty ones over her left shoulder, also using this time to check each of their water supplies and to note which of them would need a replacement salt lick in the holder on the wall.

As soon as she had finished with the nets, and taken the empty ones back to the feed room, she took the mucking equipment from the cupboards and took a barrow and fork down to a stall where she would start skipping out. Glancing at her watch, she knew that the students should soon be arriving to do their share of the jobs, and she had her phone in her pocket in case anyone needed her.

[Brian Setliff]

Brian chuckled, nodding, "Sounds good." He glanced at the cat, "You hear that, Gob? Be careful around Guardian. He might think you're a snack." The cat, of course, paid no attention to him, instead following him out and then streaking away as soon as they'd excited the feed room. Rolling the cart down the aisle, Brian started distributing the feeds, making sure that each bucket was labelled with the occupant of the stall's name before he fed, just to be on the safe side.

After he had completed that task, he rolled the trolley back into the feed room, parking it against the wall, ready for its next duty. Gathering up an armful of buckets, he began carrying them over to wash them, rinsing them out and then leaning them against one another to drip dry.

That done, he grabbed a barrow and fork and rolled them to the other side of the aisle from where Katherine was working, where he began skipping out, careful to leave space around the students that started arriving to take care of their own horses. As he worked, he occasionally caught glimpses of Goblin or Lily, although both of them were already hard at work, and never stayed still for very long.

[Katherine Carr]

Katherine laughed as the man warned his cat not to become a cat-snack to the gentle giant, who would never think of harming another being - to the point that Guardian quite often reminded her of the small study she had done on elephants back when she had still been in school, so many decades ago.

Once she was on task, she moved methodically so that she just worked by rote, making sure not to step on the felines who tore around the barn, busy at work themselves, and she worked at the opposite end of the barn from Brian and her other staff so that they would all meet in the middle somewhere, and the last one to finish with the stalls would get the lucky job of sweeping the aisle.

She smiled and greeted the students as they entered to look after their horses before rushing back to the academic side of the academy, either to fit in breakfast or to rush off to classes. There was the odd student who caused her a little concern; seeming to have their days planned in such military precision that they didn't seem to have any time to be able to stop and take a breath.

Returning the fork to the cupboard, she wheeled the barrow out to the muck heap, unable to stop herself from whistling the tune to Molly Malone, which she was sure she had heard a student singing softly. Emptying the barrow, she hosed it out and returned it to where the barrows belonged and then made her way back to the feed room, she needed to put a feed order in that day. She grabbed her clipboard off the wall and began to go through each bin, writing down whether they needed that particular feed or not. She made another note that they needed to order some more hay though as the horses were getting three nets a day now that the weather was cooling down, and she didn't want to chance running out if the snows hit them early and they were blocked off.

[Brian Setliff]

Brian kept at his work, glancing at all of the horses as he invaded their stalls, making sure that they were bright and alert... Or, at least, as alert as they usually were. Some horses just didn't care to acknowledge him, but that wasn't anything strange, when it was just their normal behavior.

Once he had finished and put away the barrow and fork, he went to grab the broom for the aisle, although he stopped short as he spotted the empty nails where it was usually hung. Frowning, he made his way into the feed room, thinking that someone might have swept out there and forgotten to return it, but there was only Katherine, looking over their feed stores.

Shaking his head, he left the room again and poked his head into the tack room, smiling as he spotted the runaway object, "Found you!" Ignoring the looks from the couple of students that were in the room, he grabbed the broom and left the tack room again. He started sweeping out the aisle, trying to be efficient to make up the lost time, without losing the quality of his work. Whenever a student led their horse by, he stopped, not wanting to spook anyone, then resumed, slowly making his way down the aisle.