Woah, Mama! (open)

[Andie Simone]

Andie grinned from ear to ear as she lay down the last lot of straw for the bedding of her mare's new stall. After a lot of talk with the barn managers, of both Evening Primrose and Brown Orchid, Andie had finally settled on the stallion she wanted to breed her Tess with. She wasn't sure what she wanted from the offspring, but she knew she wanted something that could jump - she wasn't her mother's daughter for nothing - so she had settled on Battle of Dunkirk, a dapple grey Thoroughbred.

Once the stall was finished, to her own specifications, she put away the barrow and pitchfork and went to collect her beautiful mare, who was dozing in one of the grooming stalls. The reason Andie was so happy? She had just had Dr Carr check the mare over and she was indeed pregnant. It made Andie excited because the first couple of times, the mare didn't fix the first couple of times, but after a quick check from the vet and an ultrasound to backup her theory, the mare was in foal and was being moved into Evening Primrose for the duration of her pregnancy.

The woman calmed herself down as she clipped the lead rope onto the Thoroughbred/Hanoverian's halter and removed the cross-ties and led her down to her new comfortable residence. And, if you asked Andie, it was even better because now she could spend time with her mare in between mucking our stalls and caring for the other residents of the barn - and funnily enough, the number of horses occupying the barn was doubling as the mare's were dropping their foals.

The nineteen year old exited the stall and closed the door before stepping back as the mare walked up to look over the door. "Please tell me I made the right decision?" She begged the mare as she rested her forehead against the pretty dapple grey's. The five year old was a maiden mare, so anything could happen during the next eleven months - the reality of the barn she worked in was enough for that - and she hoped that nothing would happen to her mare or her unborn foal. "I'll see you later." She whispered as she straightened up, kissed the mare's nose and headed off toward the tack room to look at the board that would tell her which jobs still needed doing.

[Cortney Smit]

Cortney was bopping along to the music she was listening to on her ipod as she finished scrubbing out the dirty water buckets and leaving them upside down, leaning against the wall so that they could drip-dry before they would get refilled and returned to the stalls with the evening feeds. She then danced her way into the tack room to cross the jobs she'd done off the list.

"Oh, sorry boss." She said as she skirted around Andie, who had also just walked in. She pulled the bud out of one ear as she skipped up to the board and crossed off haynets, which she had filled and waiting in the feed room to be hung in each stall ready for the mare to be brought in for dinner, water buckets, which were all cleaned, and stalls. She hadn't quite made it around all of the stalls yet. "The end, down where your girl went, aren't all clean yet." She said. "And I just have two more to do in the middle." She shrugged. "I paused to get the buckets cleaned." She spun on the spot as she looked up at the list again. "Once I've done the two stalls, I'm going to go and spend some time with Tess." She shot the cheer coach a grin. "Better get back to it." With a wave, she danced out of the tack room and down to the equipment cupboard to pull out a wheelbarrow and pitch fork and walked down to the two stalls she was talking about.

Replacing the bud back into her ear, she set to work cleaning out the two stalls. Mucking out in this barn was a little different from the other barns, as the stalls were lined in straw, not shavings, and the stalls had to be thoroughly cleaned, not just skipped, and the straw taken out replaced. This way the stalls were always clean and ready for the mares and foals or for a mare who hadn't yet foaled. In this barn, cleanliness was definitely next to godliness.

Pausing in her work as she emptied the fork into the barrow, she wiped her arm across her forehead and then shed the shirt she had been wearing to reveal a red and black crop-top.

[Andie Simone]

Amdie gave the young barn hand a withering look as she was called boss. Yes, she was the girl's senior but she was far from being anywhere near the student's boss. However, she let the comment slide as she watched the girl and listened to her rattle off what she had done. "Thanks." She replied, pleased that the girl had had enough sense to keep away from the stall that Andie had been settling Twil. "If you do them, then I'll get the ones down the other end done."

She looked up at the list, and nodded with a grin when Cortney said she wanted to spend some time with the filly she worked with. "Not a problem. Once the stalls are done, we're finished until this afternoon." She pulled a face. "Since you seem to have done everything else." There was no venom in her words and her eyes twinkled. "Have fun with Tess and I'll get the evening meals in their buckets and leave them in the trunk so all we have to add are the supplements when we hand them out this evening." She laughed as the girl danced out of the room, she couldn't say anything though as she remembered herself doing the same thing only a few years earlier.

Leaving the tack room, she headed down to get the things she needed and then made her way down to the stalls she had said she would do. She stripped down to a crop-top before she got started and then quickly got to work, methodically working through each stall. And once they were all cleaned, she went down with a clean wheelbarrow and collected the fresh straw for the stalls.

Once the stalls were done, she headed to the feed room, scrubbed her hands and arms up to her elbows, and then began to put the feed into the mare's buckets, putting lids on them and leaving them in a trunk to keep the vermin-free until it was time to distribute them to the mares that evening. The, grabbing a small bucket, she put a scoop of grain and half a scoop of oats and headed down to her grey mare and offered her the food.