Ace

The Arabian Prince will be 10 on Friday. He was born at night when a comet was visible in the sky and has a star on his forehead which looks like a swooshing comet (as you can see in the photo of the two of us), hence his registered name of Auspicious Comet. His call name comes from his initials, but Ace is short for a kind of sedative given to horses, which does make for the occasional attempts at poor humor by people who don't like Arabs.

I first saw him when he was a yearling. His mother was in foal to his baby sister (two years younger and born on the same day as Ace) and his older half-brother was still owned by my friend Melinda. Ace's markings are very similar to those of his mother, Flames Sirocco, who was also a flashy chestnut. His sister is a bay, and his half-brother is a gray. (He has many half-siblings by his sire, Padron's Mahogany, a magnificent bay.) Fortunately, Ace did not inherit his mother's temper but did learn from her that he should be the center of attention and he loves to show off for an audience. At a year he had his winning personality. He also loved to be fussed over, which the kids working for lessons at the Family Equestrian Connection have been happy to do.

There's about to be an interruption in that attention, and, unfortunately, it will happen on his birthday. The FEC needs to find another home, and a number of the owners who train with Gayle and Zsu Zsu are making temporary moves until FEC finds its new home. Many are leaving on Friday, and with them go the girls who don't own their own horses. We'll be staying through May, and I'm hopeful that Gayle will find a location where we can be together by May. I'd stay put, except that the owner of the place where Ace is housed has changed her mind about letting outside trainers work on the property and the trainer who remains (and the one we hear is moving in) does hunter/jumpers, so that's not appropriate to my needs. In addition, we hear that the dressage arena will become a second jumping arena, so the footing will not be right for us either. I expect it will be far less convenient to ride when I get done at work.

I'm quite sad about this kind of disruption falling so closely on the heels of the implosion of the equine facilities at Pierce College. It only shows how wasteful it is for those facilities to remain empty when there is a real need in this part of the valley for horse boarding.