If you don’t like the weather at Belmont, wait a minute. That’s what it’s felt like this spring. A couple of weeks ago, it had felt like summer – and now that’s back. But when Joe and Steve were at Belmont on Sunday morning, it was cold and rainy yet again. So cold that Joe and Steve were on their own – unlike last week, when, in bright sunshine and balmy breezes, they were joined by partners Vinny DiSpigno, John Capece, and Ellen Cohn. And, so rainy that a lot of the horses just jogged around inside the barns, rather than getting their feet all muddy on the training track. That was probably better for the horses – and their riders – but visitors beware! It wasn’t so great for Joe and Steve, who barely had time to leap out of the way whenever a horse came jogging around the corner of the shedrow.

We checked out Good Law at Bruce Brown’s barn as he was getting tacked up for his jog. He’s happy and in good shape. Jogging around the shedrow, he was bouncing along, up on this toes. He’d had a breeze this past Wednesday and is all ready to go. We’re hoping for a starter allowance, and there was one in the condition book for closing day at Aqueduct, but that wasn’t used. It was brought back for opening weekend at Belmont, but, again, didn’t go. If it doesn’t fill next time either, we’ll look for other races for him.

At Leah Gyarmati’s barn, it wasn’t just the horses who pined for better weather. With all those horses galumphing around the shedrow, Leah’s two Jack Russell terriers had to stay in the office. Instead of being grateful that she was saving them from all those hooves, they were leaping around even more wildly than Jack Russells usually do, whenever anybody made the mistake of going in there.

Strings and Arrows looked in good form. Leah passed on the turf race scheduled for closing day at Aqueduct because she didn’t like the looks of the Aqueduct turf. She’ll enter Strings and Arrows for a NY-bred maiden special on the turf at Belmont. There’s one in the book for May 8.

And at Bill Turner’s barn, now back to (almost) full strength with most of the horses back from Florida, Bagavond was up on his toes and looking like he can’t wait to get back to the races. Bagavond came back from his winter vacation in Virginia in such good condition that Bill thinks he’ll be ready for a race after just a few more breezes. There’s a seven-furlong turf sprint at Belmont on May 20 that might be a good target for his first race back.

Iguazu is still missing from Bill’s Belmont barn. He’s at Diana McClure’s Carousel Farm in Virginia, where he is living the good life, spending most of the daylight hours in the paddock.Diana reports he’s happy to be out in the fresh air, playing in the big paddock with a bunch of other horses.

Joe and partner Marilyn Miller visited Talking Blues at Dave Rintoul’s farm in Suffolk County again on Wednesday morning. Talking Blues is getting to know that, when Joe and Marilyn show up, that means carrots. He spends a good deal of his time in the big round pen where, as the attached photo (taken by Marilyn) shows, he gets to roll in the dirt to his heart’s content.

If you’d like to join Steve and Joe at Belmont any Sunday morning, or if you’d like to visit Iguazu or Talking Blues down on the farm, just call Joe at (888) 989-7223 or email him at cvfsales@gmail.com and he’ll be happy to set it up for you.