The first week of school was flying by for me.  My classes were going to be intense; I already had massive amounts of reading and studying.  I had my work schedule for the clinic planned out and the first couple of days had been great.  Dr. Blandau was awesome and I was looking forward to working in the clinic for her.  Turns out she knows my dad and that he had actually trained a horse for her sister.   I knew she wouldn’t play ‘favorites’ but I think she felt a little more confident in my experience of being around horses all my life.  She assigned me to help her out with the Equine ER cases. I was out of my mind excited to be getting hands on experience so quickly. 

I went over on Thursday to let Mrs. Davies know I was back in town and that I could start taking care of her horses again.   She insisted that I started calling her Ellen, because I was more of a friend that hired help.  I was glad to hear that she thought of me like that.  I really like Mrs. Davies…Ellen.  She was a lot like my grandma in that she lived alone and was happy with it, which is probably why she and my grams were such good friends.  Ellen was glad I was finally back. She was positive the summer help was smoking pot in the barn and being an over all ‘useless punk kid’ so she had fired him a couple of weeks ago.  The horses never did like him and he wouldn’t accept avocados and oranges as I did for pay she told me.  Just being able to come take care of her 3 horses and talk with her was payment enough for me.  It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford to pay me.  I knew Mrs. Davies’ family had money…a lot of money.  Her son was rocker Raife Davies.  

I had met him briefly once last year.  He had come to bring Ellen flowers and take her out for dinner on Mother’s Day and I was there taking care of the horses.  He was totally ‘normal’ when Ellen introduced him and didn’t seem star struck at all.  He thanked me for helping his mom out and that he wished he could get his own daughter to get out and do some hard work once in awhile.   I told him that horses just weren’t some peoples’ cup of tea.    He laughed and said he hoped to see me around again before they left for dinner in a Bentley Continental GT.