Two horses were adopted over the winter. Bilndots Big Peach remains in Lexington and is headed toward an eventing career, while Every Vow "Everet" now known as Oakley, has moved to Louisiana with an 18 year old girl who loves him and wants to do jumpers.

As predicted, the snow returned this morning, but is already quickly dissapearing. The ring is thawing out, and we have many horses lined up to ship in next week. Guidance will be returning to MMSC along with two other fostered horses; 5 yo 16h bay gelding Mr. Runstadler and 8yo 15.2 h dark bay gelding Olympia Fields.

We also have four horses which are pending TRF approval, all 16+ hands.
Racehorse Davis: 7 yo bay
Kona Kove: 7 yo dark bay
Mr. Informed: 5 yo chestnut
Hap's Online is an adorable 4 yo chestnut with a blaze and 3 stockings. "Happy" is in New York ready to come to Lexington. Check out her picture on the Maker's Mark Secretariat Center Facebook page under photos! http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/MakersMarkSecretariatCenter

The staff has stayed busy over the winter months keeping Ferdy and Fly Light happy. Most of the snow has melted (for now) and Fly Light shows of her muddy spotted turnout as Melissa feeds.
John has already jumped in to help with the latest addition to MMSC, a new shed. With a generous amount of help from some Amish men, John and Jerry will build a storage shed next to the current one to house the tractor and various other items that would benefit from staying under cover.

Spring 2010 brings three new interns to MMSC along with a new group of horses. Though there is still snow on the ground and only our winter residents, Ferdy, MMSC mascot, and Fly Light, Melissa's adopted TB, are here, we are gearing up for the first batch of 2-4 horses which are due to arrive back on campus next week. Everyone here is busy preparing paddocks, cleaning mountains of tack, and organizing the barn as well as updating computer databases.

With 12 years of riding experience including dressage, hunter/jumper, drill team, and trails, in addition to the Equine Science degree he is working on at UK, 20 year old John Stork of Burlington, KY will be a great Farm Management Intern.

In her fifth year at the University of Louisville, Whitney Campbell is the captain of the swim team, and graduating this spring. From southern California, she has mainly ridden hunters, and is continuing her riding knowledge as our Training Intern.

New to the Bluegrass area, 19 year old UK student Bryn Oliver of Barrington, NH is the newest Communication Intern. Riding since she was 9 years old, she has acquired a C3 dressage rating in Pony Club and plans to rate up.

Our adopting season will be cut short due to the World Equestrian Games coming to the Kentucky Horse Park in the fall, but we are looking forward to hitting out goal of adopting 50 horses. This willl only be possible with the help of our wonderful volunteers. If you have volunteered in the past, we look forward to seeing you back, and if you've never been, we always love to see new faces. Mark your calendars, our first Volunteer Orientation for new volunteers will be March 13.

I look forward to keeping the blog updated with all of the new things happening here at MMSC. Come see us soon!