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Post by Damian Lancing on May 20, 2011 21:45:30 GMT -6
The day had not be an easy day for Damian as he sat at his desk, in his office staring at the blank e-mail he had yet to even consider starting. His head was resting on his hand with his elbow on the desk, around the laptop that was new and showed it by how white the outside of the device still was. He watched Bourbon snap at an early fly from her spot on the ground but she was also too lazy to get up and chase it so as soon as it was out of reach the shepherd cross would give up until it came back within range to bite at again. Why were that dog’s antics the only thing that could even make him grin today? He wasn’t even sure why he was so out of it that day. Sure, it hadn’t been get up and go and have everything go as planned but he was also the manager of a horse barn where most of the people who rode here were college students. Some crazy drama was bound to happen.
He had probably broken up three yelling matches already today and it was barely even five in the afternoon, and remember that he was never at the barn before ten in the morning except on show days. He had forgotten the gross amounts of drama that accompanied college aged horseback riders, especially when you added in those who had grown up with horses worth over fifty grand and stables that were more than $800 a month to board with students who, though they could often outride the latter riders, were actually used to doing barn work but also knew that they were not the stable hands. Oh, and don’t even get him started on those who didn’t understand how the leasing worked here. That one gave him a headache every single time, and now that he was thinking about it, his head was killing him. He moved his hand from his chin to his forehead and gently rubbed at his temple, closing his eyes. This office was great until the sun started to set. The window was placed at a bad point in the building and it caused a bad glare and the sun straight in the eyes of anyone at the desk. Sure, the blinds could always be closed but that would mean Damian would have to stand, which he tried to avoid on his bad leg as much as possible, so if he forgot to close them earlier he usually just let them stay open and his eyes be tortured.
Finally he turned back to the computer and started to type out a first draft of this e-mail. This was the type of e-mail he always found himself dreading. A student had just now been accepted onto the team and, though she was excited to be accepted, because it was quite the honor, she had been placed in a lower level than she would have wished to be placed and e-mailed to ask the question as to why. He had already reviewed her tapes to make sure he could remember her and now had to somehow format the e-mail to tell her “while you are an effective rider, your equitation sucks” which was never anything a rider wanted to hear. The rider he had in front of him was, in fact, one of the better riders and could obviously handle herself on a horse but she’d be eaten alive by the NCAA circuit if she was placed in the higher levels.
Just as he was about to start typing he heard a knock on the door that caused his heart to jump into his throat. He looked at the clock to find that it was five after five and thought about who may be coming to see him. “Come in,” he said, making sure it was loud enough for the person on the other side of the door to hear him. He wasn’t sure what it could be right now. He was done with practices for the day and his lessons were finished at four today… right? Oh shoot, could he be late for a lesson? It just came to him that, this early in the year, lessons were scheduled and rescheduled over and over again to try and find the time that worked best for each student. Needless to say, he would feel awful if he was last for a lesson with a student had had only just met. Talk about a horrible first impression.
Damian found it a little funny that the students thought they were the only ones that had to make a killer first impression when they showed up at the school. He was the new coach. The impression he made on each of the students was crazy important if he wanted to keep his fairly prestigious job. He had worked with so many trainers that always started lessons late, talked on the phone, left in the middle of his lesson or otherwise just didn’t pay attention and when he started coaching he had promised himself that he would not be that kind of trainer. He wanted to be a friend, yet strict enough to make his students actually improve. He welcomed critique of all types and just wanted to be the best he could be. As the door open to reveal whomever it was hiding seconds ago he was leaned down to try and find his phone so he could check to see if he had, in fact, messed up and missed someone’s lesson.
((OPEN! to anyone!))
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Post by Haidyn Abernethy on May 21, 2011 7:44:09 GMT -6
Haidyn Abernethy walked into the office as Damian told him to enter. He had been visiting Balian before his first lesson, because he had not had the time to come see his gelding before. He had been going shopping, making sure that he had enough extra tack for the sport he was supposed to be teaching, and enough supplies to start some people on shows, at the very least. Tomorrow was his first day of the job,and he just wanted to make sure that he had not missed anything. "Hello there, Mr. Lancing. I'm Haidyn Abernethy, the new western pleasure and showmanship head." It was presumable Mr. Lancing sitting there in front of him, this was supposed to be his office. He looked into the small office, taking everything in, noting the dog lying in the corner. He didn't much like dogs, but only because they chased cats. He didn't mind them if Nox was around. Nox hated it when he smelled of dog, though.
He stood in the door of the office, not sure whether to stick out his had or not. He hadn't even seen him around much, only in the company of other coaches. Dyn smiled slightly, trying to cover his confusion of the etiquette. If Damian stood up, he would hold out his hand. If not, he would just continue standing here as they talked, or hopefully talked. "I start lessons tomorrow, and I was wondering if you could give me any tips on which horses to use during lessons and such."
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Post by Damian Lancing on May 23, 2011 22:05:12 GMT -6
Damian was used to most people who came to the stable knowing who he was simply because most of the people here were students who had done their research on who would be coaching them. Thanks to that, most people knew of his injury, the pain he constantly felt in his leg and then easily equated it to the lack of movement he tried to make. Of course he often moved around the barn, limping from point A to point B, doing basic stable work for horses that did not have a leaser and the stable hands could not get to and was often pregnancy checking, administering vaccines or doing minor hoof work but, when he was already sitting, you were not going to get him up and moving either. By the end of the day his leg always felt plenty better than it did right when he woke up, which what happened to start his weird sleeping patterns of staying at the barn until three in the morning and not coming back until ten or eleven the next day. That, however, did not make it any easier to stand up or sit down, which really was the worst part of his leg as both required bending or unbending of his leg and when the muscles and nerves in his leg would prefer not to allow that it made his whole life quite difficult.
When the new man came in Damian couldn’t put a name to the face right away. He was much too old to be an undergraduate student but could be a graduate, he supposed, though he wasn’t looking around as a new, nervous student always did either, nor did he seem scared to knock on the door, which he often found with students as well. He swore, nothing was ever going on in this office that couldn’t be interrupted with a knock. Sure, from time to time there was a fairly private talk with a student going on, often something crazy that he didn’t want to talk about as well, but beyond that an e-mail could always be interrupted. Damian nodded when the man spoke and his question was soon answered. Ah, Madison had told him that she had hired a new western coach. That was her area of expertise. He did not hesitate to say that his knowledge of western riding and western horses was limited. He could tack them, judge them and tell the basics of if a stirrup was too long but that was about it so he let the hiring of coaches in such disciplines up to Madison.
“Damian, please. I don’t even let the students call me Mr. Lancing,” he said, with a shake of his head and a small smirk. “You’ll excuse me for not standing,” he half nodded down to his leg, not sure if the man knew a thing about it, but he would find out in time, “but it’s very nice to meet you. Madison told me you’d be coming around,” he said, putting his phone back down on the desk and turning the chair so he was facing the office a little more, instead of the computer. “Please, come in, no need to lurk in the doorway,” he said, motioning to a chair and he once again tried to place the name. The name rang a bell too… as did the face in some weird way or another. He pondered this as the man spoke, listening but not really paying that much attention. Finally, he figured it out and it clicked in his head.
“Did you go to Rowanoak?” he asked, after Haidyn finished speaking, of course. “I think we went to school together… you were a couple of years after me,” he asked, knowing he was right when he finally came to it, but not sure how. He was actually surprised by how many alumni were still in the area. They all needed to get together at some point, go to dinner or something like that just to all get to know each other and catch up a bit. Kind of like a college reunion. The only issue he had with that was the fact that they would then have to figure out that Missy and he never got married, which had been planned since the end of his senior year and never happened. He didn’t want to explain why or how or anything like that, it was just never fun or easy for him and it should be easy to understand why that would be.
After they figured that out Damian decided he needed to answer Haidyn’s question. “Anyway, Madison is the one to talk to about the western side of things, I’m a jumper. Your students are not too numerous right now and we’re currently looking for more horses but there are a few you can use,” he said, as he painfully stood up, his face showing some sort of pain even though he stood only on his right leg and then let the left leg drop with the help of gravity. He pushed back from the desk and closed the laptop, which was quite private in most of its contents before pushing his chair back in. “Here, let me show you around the barn. I need to get out of this damn office for a bit anyway,” he said, limping around the desk and letting Haidyn lead the way out the door. He made sure he had the keys, locked the office door and called Bourbon out before closing the door behind all of them and leading the way down the aisle, his limping footsteps obvious even by sound against the concrete floor.
“We actually just lost our old pleasure and showmanship instructor. He just stopped coming to work, still couldn’t tell you why,” he said with a shrug, pushing hair away from his face as Bourbon jogged slowly in front of him. “So, have you left the area after school or have you always been here?” he asked, genuinely curious. Missy and he had planned to stay in Lexington, buy a house in the area, get married and just stick around. Obviously, that didn’t work. She left, he still wasn’t sure as to where and he had to leave the main area as well, but never got too far away so he was wondering what Haidyn’s plans were. Lexington was a great place in the horse world, after all, not leaving wasn’t the most surprising thing ever.
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Post by Haidyn Abernethy on May 27, 2011 15:06:51 GMT -6
Haidyn nodded, “Sorry, Damian.” He didn’t mind using someone’s first, given, name, but he wasn’t comfortable with talking to people he didn’t or barely knew as if they were his best friend. “Oh, no, please don’t stand.” He had heard of Damian’s injury, he knew the coach’s name, he just didn’t remember a face to go with it. “Very nice to meet you as well.” At the man’s instruction, he moved forward, now fully in the office.
“Yes, I actually did attend Rowanoak.” He looked at the face again, trying to see if the face struck any memory. In fact, it did, he remembered the older boy helping him around the barn when he was new and lost. “I believe I remember you. You showed me around the barn on my first day, didn’t you?” It was actually surprising at how often this happened. He could go to the airport closest to here, and someone would be from Rowanoak. No matter where he went, the school’s alumni followed him.
“Thank you.” He was touched that Daimian would get up, despite his bad leg, despite everything. He followed the coach out of the office, waiting patiently as Damian called out his dog and locked the office. As he moved off, Dyn followed him, listening to what the man was saying about the horses and such. He didn’t mind that his students weren’t plentiful, he preferred to work with fewer people, they learned more from him in that way. The old instructor, he remembered seeing him in shows a few times, but they had never talked. He had heard rumors, though, about what happened, “I’ve heard a few rumors of the sort that he left town, actually. I never did, I’ve been here for a while. I left for a few weeks in between, once, but that’s the longest I’ve been away from here.” He didn’t hold much of gossip, but he heard a lot of it. It wasn’t often that he repeated it, not very often at all.
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