Arwen's foal makes a move

A lot of things happened today. Arwen was supposed to race today, but when I went out there this morning, I could tell she was not feeling well. Her head was sunken low and she looked thoroughly depressed. The Snowman passed by and convinced me to take her out anyway. After all, Sofia and I had been looking forward to this afternoon as it was one of the main events of the year. When we arrived however, it turned out that Chinada, Arwen's jockey, had signed a contract with the Gold Man (as we kindly call him) and would not be riding Arwen, even though he had been talking about nothing else for about a month. It was a very eventful afternoon which ended up with Chinada loosing his job with Arwen and me making a very swift entry on a galloping horse. Arwen was at first upset that she was to be taken away from the track without having given her all, but she quickly calmed down and Sofia and I had a very nice walk in the fields. Once home, we left the horses in their garden and walked over to Ali, who had not been present at the track because one of his bosses needed him that particular afternoon. He was devastated about Chinada's behavior and had not know about the contract (I figure we were about the only two in town who did not know about it until this afternoon) but would find me another jockey the very next day. I told him however that I was pleased that Arwen had not raced, because for the first time since her pregnancy, she had shown signs of discomfort.

The discomfort continued and in the evening, Moussa knocked on my gate to tell us that Arwen had run through the gate to their garden. It was a boxgate that I had bought in Sweden and was a very solid thing, but Arwen had just run through it and split it in two. I found her grazing in the courtyard... We brought her back inside, fixed up another temporary gate and then stayed with her for a while. For fifteen minutes or so, it looked as if she was going to labor that night, since her stomach was living its own life and she was clearly very uncomfortable. She stayed to close to us as long the foal kept moving, but then all of a sudden it was over and she headed back to her food. Sofia and I thought about staying around, but knowing false alarms are all to common when it comes to horses, we decided to go to bed and just hope for the best.

Ishtar