Goodbye to Groovin' Claude

Tommorow i'll put our six year old retired gelding Groovin' Claude onto the trailer and haul him to his new home. Claude was foaled here, an accidental product of a Daughter from the family of Smile and a Sire from the family of Groovy. The sire by Groovin' Time had jumped the fence and mated with his own sister. I thought this might produce a sprint champion. I named the foal after my father Claude, and when I told the 85 year old human Claude that a horse was to be named after him, the reply came back "that'll be your best horse." In a lot of ways Claude was our best horse, but he had a slight breathing problem which made him not competitive.

Sunday I was in our little feed store conveniently located in a direct route to my office, and told June, the store owner, about Claude's availability. Surprise June, age about 50, wanted Claude for herself. June is a novice tailrider, and Claude an aspiring trail horse. It difficult to transfer a horse. I always know they'll hardly again get the quality of care they received here. I've never had one gentler and kinder than Claude. He might have been a great race horse, who knows, but, i'm happy that he's going someplace where there will be plenty of feed and the perfect owner for him.

Today's Y training--11/1/06--more pasture work aided by nippy temps--Y gallop-trotted for about 15 min. with his companion of the day. Would like to see a little more speed than we're getting, but, the horse is weak at this point and uninclined to take off. A more controlled environment for riderless gallop soon.

Day 5- An Abcess

Not of Y but his running companion. Damn, the horse was training so well. Abscesses bring training to a screeching hault. For anyone interested I'll share some learning experiences, but, first Y's training up to date:

Sunday Oct 29: third pasture test. Y's prior care is unknown so there is concern re grass founder. He will get on grass about two hours this date, and is again chased by the herd boss, but only to the periphery of the herd this time rather than across the fence. We're making progress. Y does a little trotting and slow galloping by which time I discover he has lost one of his sales shoes. Big surprise, not. And then I proceed to make my first of what undoubtedly will be many misktakes with Y in that instead of immediately doing the shoeing and proceeding with the planned exercise, I go ahead and ride my others first. By the time I get back to Y on the first day in Missouri of Central Standard Time, the sun has dropped like a rock, and I'm out of daylight to shoe. First lesson for the derby i'm supposing, give the derby horse priority. From now on Y will be #1 each day. I was a little worried about the continuing lethargy, disinterestness, and weakness of the little fellow today.
Oct. 30. Monday. The sun is out, and with Y the nutrition is starting to kick in. This is the first day he is showing normal energy. I tack on the shoe--i'm going to use Queen's XTs initially--and put Y in the pasture for his run. The self-starting companion has developed an abscess. So I use a lazy old gelding as companion. With me chasing we got in about 10 minutes of riderless gallop and trot around the pasture. The strenghtening continues. Y shows more muscle tone than he did when he got off the truck last Thursday. The coat is now glistening instead of dull and unthrifty, and voila, the little fellow has popped up a couple of inches. Yearlings spurt this time of year particularly with changes in nutrition. Those boys in KY might have cost themselves $7-9,000.00 with their substandard care of this horse. Right now Y would draw a little attention in the walking ring outside the sales pavilion. With just a few days care he has turned into a flashy little horse.

Abscesses have become so standard with our we weather on the farm that i've turned into an abscess expert, though even for the expert finding, locating, and curing can be tricky. E.g. with today's abscess--right front foot of a horse deep into training, I waited 36 hours from the start of foot pain to digging with my hoof knife to locate the abscess. Too soon. I was too anxious with missing training, too anxious to use that horse as Y's running companion. I located the area of pain with the hoof testers, removed as much sole as I dared, but, no abscess. In short, I started looking to soon. The first thing about abscesses--one needs to wait at least 48 hours, and 72 hours is better, before the first knife work. I'm speculating, but, probably initially the abscess is very small and close to the sensative laminae. It actually needs time to develop and find a weak spot nearer the sole surface so that it is actually locatable. If you start to search too soon, 4 times out of 5 all you'll find is healthy sole. That's my situation today, so, I applied Epsom Salt Paste to the sole surface and put the hoof in a rubber boot. On those occasions where I'm unable to locate the abscess, this method will bring it to the surface about 50% of the time. The other 50%--I still am without an answer when despite all efforts you are unable to locate the thing. Had I waited things out, i'm fairly certain I would have located, and the thing would be over. Now i'm punished by my own stupidity, and hoping the epsom paste will do it's thing.

Anatomy of the Purchase

It was really pretty interesting even if you're someone other than me. We have an aging stable on our farm, racers ages 6, 11 and 11. New blood is needed and as the summer progressed this was a subject for cogitation and checking my bank account. Figured I could scrape up $10,000, and the question became whether to claim or buy a yearling.

By Keenland September, I was deep into training for our upcoming Woodland's meet, but, the thoughts began to crystalize. Decided claiming was for those with money to burn, and watching most of Keenland's eleven day sale via computer video a firm idea of yearling values entered the herefore fuzzy consciousness. I realized I could spend the ten grand and get a dam good horse, or, could save money and spend a thousand and still have something raceable. I was good to go either way--burn the whole account or go very cheap.

Next sale was October Fasig Tipton Fall Yearling Sale, Oct. 23-25. Perusing the on-line catalog of the 1000+ hips, I made an affirmative decision to avoid (this time) out of the way unpopular sires--e.g. my previous purchase of Pancho Villas with the Secretariat connection, and go with the herd. The reasoning is simple: observation will tell you those progeny of Mr. Prospector (through Gone West), Storm Cat and A.P. Indy are all quick. For a little guy like me, this seems safe, and so I developed a determination to find buy a grandson of Storm Cat. For the grossly uninformed Storm Cat stands at Overbrook Farm for $500,000 live foal. He is by Storm Bird out of a sprinting daughter of Secretaria named Terlingua, and has been Kentucky's leading sire for the last how many years.

The Storm Cat son that stood out was Sea of Secrets--Storm Cat-x-Mr. Prospector, formerly of Walmac International, but now exiled to California where he stands for $3,500.00. My affinity for Sea of Secrets developed as I saw this damned near perfect looking animal on the Blood Horse Stallion Register beating Artax by 10 lenghts with ease. Again, for the uninformed Artax won the Breeder's Cup Sprint and was voted year end champion sprinter of his year. And, here was Sea of Secrets going by Artax like he was tied to a post (See the Stallion Register Video).

Sea of Secrets had 4 colts in the sale. I would miss Hip #12 by Broadbrush on Oct. 23 because the timing coincided with a ten case 9:00 a.m. Federal Court docket that day. But, after Court, I was heading for the 10 hr. trip to Lexington to bid on the other three, or was I. I went back to office to watch a bit of the sale before taking off. It occured to me that i had just about everything in my office that I needed to make the purchase IF only FT allowed telephone bidding. They do!

I wired my $9,000.00 available to their account, and by 9:00 a.m. Oct. 24 I was in business.
My FT bidding agent was "Max" who graciously put up with me calling him umpteen times as a horse walked into the ring only to announce to Max that I passed (after glancing at the horse).
The second Sea of Secrets with a dam sire by a horse no one has ever heard of named Double Negative, but of a dam who won $135,000, was spectacular. They quickly bid him up to $25,000.00. The third Sea of Secrets was a cribber. No way on a cribber. This horse consigned by Doug Arnold's Buck Pond Farm RNA's for $7000.00. He was ok but nothing special.

There was one Sea of Secrets remaining--Hip 1049 near the end of the sale. This buyer better consider something else just in case. So, i searched for Storm Cat grandsons, and noted under Vision and Verse (Hip 654) my own pre-sale notes. Vision and Verse was a plodder, a come from behind horse, but the notes said he was all the way a Grade I animal. He won the Illinois Derby and finished second in the Belmont Stakes by a short margin. He won over one million dollars. Vision and Verse probably has a Phipps connection because he is out of a Private Account mare with a Hoist the Flag damsire, which would explain his come from behind style.

Hip 654 was coming up rapidly, no pun intended, and i kept passing on several others. I quickly noted that the damsire of #654 to be Deposit Ticket by Northern Baby who had done a lot of significant winning for D. Wayne Lukas as a two year old. The mare, Nipsit, won $24,000.00 at Detroit racecourse, and her only other foal at age 3 already has won $15,000.00. And, here was the kicker--the other male ancestors on the dam side were Track Barron, a millionaire of the early 80s who i loved as a race horse, Nijinsky II, and Sir Gaylord. Every damside male anscestor of #654 was a Grade I race horse and most of them were millionaires, which was the same as on the sire side. There is always one dud in every pedigree, except here. The RR interest is arroused.

I called Max and said I was bidding on 654. There is a 30 second delay between real time and the computer sales video. So, when 654 entered the ring on my screen the bidding had already begun. First glance he looked OK--acceptable to my practiced eye. I told Max to bid and was so intent on finding any fault on my screen with the legs that when I bid $3,500.00 Max said I just bought the horse for $2,600.00. Oh, Oh. Something drastically wrong with that price for this horse. With the 30 second delay the bidding lasted for meemaybe 60 seconds. As 654 walked off I glanced for the first time from the legs to the whole horse, and noticed wow, this guy is small. I'll add as an addendum that in the flow off the sale there are dead spots, and I had noticed a dead spot developing about 10-15 hips before 654. 654 as the results show came off right in the middle off a long dead spot in the sale.

654 is the cheapest to date of any Vision and Verse at auction. I next laid eyes on the horse when he walked off the truck. That description is in post #1. As for the final Sea of Secrets out of an unraced Woodman dam, he was ok, I still had $6400.00 in the bank account and I was going to bid. But, this one looked nothing like his sire, so i passed, and it eventually RNA's for $14,00.00.

Day 1 to 3

I enjoy many thoroughbred racing blogs, but, i've yet to see one detailing training. On the premise, for those in the business of horse racing, that "its all about the training, stupid", i've decided to share in this blog the training of our new yearling. My interest is race horse training, and so I welcome all constructive comments pro or con as to what we are doing with our horse. I'll diverge to try to tell the story, but the emphasis here is on the nuts and bolts of training. So, without adieu, here goes:

Day 1 (October 26, 2006) the subject in question (hereafter designated "Y" for yearling) arrives from Lexington via Jim Anderson Transportation. Jim missed the cut-off, but made good time. Besides the 45 seconds of sales ring video, I first layed eyes on Y as he walked off the truck. Since my winning bid (Fasig Tipton October Yearling Sale) was $2,600.00, I was afraid to look. He was going to be small, and he was, and Y was also ribby and a bit unthrifty. He had "pasterns" meaning pasterns that were longer than ideal, but the fault is slight, i've seen worse, and the pasterns are in the range "acceptable". Otherwise, conformationally, a perfect little horse--straight leggs, balanced, athletic looking, wide at the jaw, intelligent eyes. I was quite happy. We had just bought the cheapest horse at auction ever by Vision and Verse (Hip 654), and he looks like a race horse. The horse also looked weak as if he's last galloped months before. Suspect he was walked the last 30 days by Ballsinwood, Agent, for sales prep, and before that probably was in pasture with minimal care. Lots of work to be done.

Oct. 27: I arrive at the barn at 8:00 a.m. no horse. zounds. If he jumped off the property, he may be gone for good. Luckily it turned out Y took the other route and jumped into our 5 acres of thickly wooded area where in the morning sunlight i spotted him under a tree peacefully eating grass. He seemed very happy to see me. Later in the day I discovered the reason for the jump when in our first pasture test, one horse did commence a chase of Y to my disgust. After a 3 minute chase in which Y did look very weak galloping, but, nice stride, the chaser slipped and fell in wet grass sliding 10 yards--asshole--giving me just enough time to rescue my yearling. All in all no harm done, and i got some unplanned running in on the very first day.

Oct. 28 This training session is planned. The main buddy so far is a self starter, and i put him and the yearling in the pasture. After a nice warm up consisting of play I entice both to about a 2f strong gallop. Is it my eyes or does he look stronger than yesterday? Nice stride. Afterwards they play f0r more min 10 min. Good strenghtening exercise. Horse already looks stronger and less ribby.

Tomorrow the interesting story of the purchase.