Wednesday Thoughts:

INJURIES AND TRAINING: Briefly interrupted on the blog by multiple distractions. I'll take this up again soon.

THE SLOP AT MONMOUTH: What a job by the track crew!

BREEDER'S CUP BLOODLINES: Did pedigree have anything to do with success on Breeder's Cup Day? It would take me a day that I'm without to take a look at it, but, I wish someone would.

BREEDER'S CUP AND THE EUROPEANS: They need to find ways to be more accommodating starting with that ridiculous quarantine rule that keeps those horses from training for several days. What does a horse galloping around a race track have to do with quarantine? Could they have a ceremony to recognize those that have traveled from the far corners? Could they provide some part of the travel expense and help with the organization. The ad hoc nature of this sport cries for some leadership.

OUR NEW ARRIVAL: I could hardly be any happier with the 15'1.5" little fellow. He's flashing impressive acceleration and speed, there's perfect conformation on a long bodied frame with a short croup that you see in sprinters, and he can breathe! My one little concern is that the ephysial plates in the knees presently seem a little large for my taste. I was looking at the little horse this morning considering how possibly to fault him and how you'd buy a better one regardless of price. Guess you'd improve a perfect little horse by going to a bigger, more powerful Curlin body type. That's all I could think of. We may have a major league prospect. We'll see.

TRAINING: Last year's model, our two year old Amart, is back at it after a two week layoff. I'll post re Art's training now as we go. Art has morphed into a man over the last 30 days. He's close to impressive looking now with maybe a little more Nijinsky II influence than I like. Art has trained riderless 4 out of last 5 days with last night being: riderless--1 mile W/U + 1 mile at 90% speed + 1 mile slow + 10 min walk under tack.

Breeder's Cup Classic Post Mortems

I tend to side with the proposals that the Breeder's Cup be moved to an artificial surface. Weather and injuries!

STREET SENSE: Anybody else besides RR astounded to see Street Sense sent 1 1/4 miles along the rail on a sloppy track. Earth to Carl, I know your horse likes the rail, but, in these conditions??? Notice in the photo how much less slop dealt with by Curlin than HS to the inside!

HARDSPUN: Ditto. L. Jones and M. Pino again don the dunces.

CURLIN: very good horse, but, how many times in the slop have we seen the horse to the outside run away from those struggling on the inside?

ESPN VIDEO CLIPS: I especially enjoyed the Espn clips of the the horses galloping and breezing pre-race. The commentators were impressed with Tiago's breeze. Otherwise for me. Strictly a Grade II animal.

What I really noted from the clips were the differences between the Curlin and Street Sense breezes. This blog, after all, is trying to figure out how to win races. You'll note that Curlin despite the slow time of :50 and change has his speed from the get go and holds it steady to the wire. Additionally, it looks as if he's already well into 2 minute clipping way before the breeze.

SS on the other hand performs slow early fractions and comes home at speed, which is the sort of "acceleration" type of breeze that I've always disliked. This exaggerates SS's breeze, but, what good is it to supposedly breeze 5f when the first 3f are near a 2 minute clip? The tape shows Curlin doing the more effective breezing and galloping. Which brings me to:

STEVE ASMUSSEN TRAINING: Around Triple Crown Time I was complaining about Asmussen's powder puff breezing and simultaneously noting this may be something new. We know he's training a good horse, but, this may be a trainer to watch!

October 29 Photos

More Photos

A ??? Dollar Horse

What will $3500 buy you at the sales these days?

Still smokin' at whoever that was that was bidding against me in increments of 100s starting at the $1,500 level, but presently I'm grinning ear to ear at the pedigree page of the youngster blazing around my paddock. Take a look:

Dams:
AURORA (Danzig) $285,236 7 wins at 3 and 4 and 4 foals with black type and dam of ARCH
ALTHEA (Alydar) $1,275, 255 8 wins at 2 and 3.
SEA BREEZER (Gulch) $142, 980 and dam of SHORE BREEZE. Whoops. She also foaled one which won $1,500,00 in Japan.
LAKEVILLE MISS (Rainy Lake) $371,582 Champion 2 yr old filly and 7 wins at 2 and 3. Dam of Mogambo.
RAPUNZEL RUNZ (Explodent) $244, 266 and 6 wins at 3 and 4.
HIGHLAND GYPSY (Our Native by Exclusive Native) $151,598 and 9 wins at 3 and 4

Sires:
DANZIG (twice)--world's leading sire how many times in late '80s and '90s? Watch Danzig's few races on You Tube and be impressed.
GULCH--$3,095,521 Breeder's Cup Classic
KRIS S--think Brocco, Action This Day, Hollywood Wild Cat. Prized, and Symboli Kris S, Horse of the Year twice in Japan.
ARCH--7-5-1-0 and $480,969 before they hurt him.
EXPLODENT--in the '80s I saw Explosive Bid and Explosive Wagon live. 'Nuff said.

So far, do you think my boy might run a little? Of course this leaves the two unraced dams which would be "the" dam RUNNINOUTTAREASONS (Arch) who must have sold a for a bunch as a yearling, but went for $18,000 in Ocala as a 2 year old. And the third dam by English Horse of the year Sir Ivor who was unraced but had a couple of $250,000 earners as foals.

And, SHORE BREEZE the sire won (only) $152, 948 and 4 races. You get the name connection--Lakeville Miss--Sea Breezer--Shore Breeze.

Impressive by any standards? I'd think! The muffled little raps sounding in the background would be RR patting himself on the back at correct on the fly decision making in selection of the catalogue page, getting Max the bidder under control, recognizing the horse on the tiny screen with the 30 second delay, and going to $3500 for the youngster "blazing around my paddock".

George Washington, Horse

The air just went out of everything for me. This is what I rail against. Anybody see this magnificent animal on the Coolmore website racing before they removed him due to his infertility? The regal bearing shows in the races and in the photo below just before the end.
What caused it? Let's open with: enough of the platitudes! It was other than the weather, the track, the conditions. Was it the training?

I've posted before that with every breakdown my thoughts: there but for the grace of god go I. This can happen to anyone. An owner or a trainer can exercise the highest degree of care and that feared condylar-sesamoid fracture combo could happen. BUT, here's my opinion. With the highest degree of care, this is unlikely to happen.

Let's take a look. 2007 Breeder's Cup Classic PPs: Who was the only horse to lack a race since the 9th of September? George Washington. Who was the only horse failing to show a race this year over a dirt track? George Washington. Who was the only horse failing to show a breeze since 9/9/07? George Washington. Any horse in the race fail to get in two breezes since 10/1/07 besides George Washington? In the negative.

Now, please note the European horses never report their breezing on Equibase, so this is hardly unusual except for one little extraordinarily bothersome fact: If you're going to have a horse run in the Breeder's Cup Classic do you have him over here breezing on dirt before the race? It's a no brainer question because I consider the apparent handling of this horse from what shows on papers as gross negligence in the legal sense approaching intent to do the horse harm. How could the handlers of GW expect anything besides what happened?

What the horse did in fact before the race is unknown to us. You'd like to believe that as noted a trainer as Aidan P. O'Brien gave the horse sufficient gallops and works over a dirt surface in England prior to shipping. In this sense, I'd like to make a point with the few folks who read my blog.

I've long believed when there's a breakdown there needs to be an investigation. This should be mandated and the trainer involved put on immediate probation pending the results. And, if the investigation turns up training negligence there needs to be a suspension to send a clear message. I wrote that what GW did pre-race is unknown. This ought to be known and see the light of day!

The investigation will determine the following:
1. The horse's galloping and breezing schedule pre-race.
2. Was the horse acclimated to the racing surface sufficiently to insure structure to the skeletal system that will bear up under the race.
3. The health history.
4. Pre-race diagnostics. If there were none in a race of this magnitude to insure the horse received every known diagnostic method to show it entered the race healthy, that ought to be ground for lengthy suspension.
5. Pre-race warm up. Was he walked to the gate?

Should this investigation uncover training negligence, then good bye license for enough time to send a clear message.

As to GW, rest in peace, fellow. Down to the end you were an inspiration. May they learn something from your undeserved demise.

The Breeder's Cup

My favorite tape has been the first 10 Breeder's Cup races. Such good stuff! Pat Day on Wild Again. Gate Dancer and Jack Van Berg. Smile twice, who I bred to. Alysheba and Ferdinand, then Alysheba again. Manilla, Kotashaan. Easy Goer and Sunday Silence. While I still had my tape machine I'd play them over and over. For me, Alysheba, Waquoit, Blushing John, Slew City Slew, Forty Niner and Personal Flag in 1988 under the lights at Churchill was always just a slight cut above.

The Breeder's Cup serves so well as racing's show case event, and still too few people watch. Promoting racing as it's done leaves so much to be desired. I've never understood why the powers that be fail to promote the gambling side of racing. That's what the Casino's do, and I'd guess without knowing that extensive advertising of large pick six pots of the type that Terry Wallace used to generate every weekend at Ak-Sar-Ben would bring 'em to the track.

The other thing racing needs to do is get owners instead of losing them, and that seems so easy to me. Several things can be done. First, give those that put all their money, time and effort into the sport--the owners--in control at the race track. Assign stalls to owners, let owners instead of trainers decide how, why, when their horses race and train and remove those vultures who injure everything they get a hold of from control of the sport. The present trainer-owner relationship drives away even the richest of them eventually as, like Eugene Klein, they figure out the ponzi scheme. Make trainers employees. Put owners in charge. Things would change.

My picks for the Cup. RR hesitates to make selections this year since I've failed to follow the training. Strictly on intuitiveness and instinct, than any handicapping or recently following the horses, here's what I'm thinking about the Classic, which would be the only race where I'd have a clue:

The wet track will handicap the come from behinders, and so throw out Tiago who'll be carrying 25 lbs of water and mud down the stretch. Where does that leave Street Sense? He better be up near the front to avoid the same fate, and, since I consider that SS has the best trainer, and I'm always angling for the best training, would I thus pick SS?

Two problems with SS, who is a nice horse. Though Nafzger has the horse in the best conditining, Carl Nafzger for all his qualities, is also a fellow that frequently forgets to dot his i's and cross his t's. Nafzger makes training errors that cost big races. The one's that's going to cost SS here, Nafzger has failed to train in speed. In the Classic, of this quality, I'm thinking speed will out.

Any Given Saturday has the nice light hoofs for the track and the sort of body I look for on mud. But, throw out AGS as having insufficient tightness due to lack of racing.

And, I'm hardly enamoured by that final :50+ work of Curlin, who also looked a little to heavy to me in a recent photo. Tough to carry weight 1 1/4 miles particulary in slop. Without a clue as to Curlin's other recent training, but, I'm thinking Asmussen will get out trained here.

Which leaves: Lawyer Ron the four year old man among boys who tends to shorten stride in the stretch of longer races probably due to the sort of soft training he get's in Plecher's barn. This great horse will be leading them imo, but, he'll be craftily dogged by another one with a clean uniform, and, much as I despise picking the fastest horse when he has the worst imo trainer, I'm picking Hard Spun to outfoot Lawyer Ron with a water logged Street Sense in hot pursuit.

The New Subjects

This is Amart during Wednesday night's shoeing, showing off the slightly too long front pasterns that have been of concern. The other new subject, the Shore Breeze yearling, has yet to arrive, nor have I heard yet from the Van driver by Friday morning. RR getting upset at lack of communication from the Van!

Interestingly, Art has less pastern slump than on arrival in 2006. Casalc at Pedigree Forum posted a theory that low pastern angles may result from a youngster sliding continually on wet ground while grazing. Maybe! I'm thinking that development of a lower than normal pastern angle might have something to do with length of neck on some youngsters.

In any event, Casalc reckoned after the horse hits hard ground pasterns tend to straighten out, and, indeed Art's have done so though there's still some slight slump in the front left that fails to show in the close coupled stance of the above photo.

Encouragingly Art lately gives an impression of adult horse strength and scope. He's still small, but reaching trainable size. With my two youngsters I'm abandoning the "lone ranger" approach that I had last year. My aim now is to get 'em to the track, and get them there quick. I've got an add in the paper for a rider so we can take the youngsters in sets. We'll see if there's any response, and there's always the "worker's comp" problem before hiring anyone.

November 2, 2006

As I type the Shore Breeze has yet to arrive and I've yet to hear from the Van driver "Mike" since Tues. morning. Mike's phone is always on voice mail. Getting a little concerned they have yet to arrive, or me hear anything from them!

Just checked, and my, oh my. 11/2/06 was the first day I put the saddle on Art, now age two. That's one value of the blog. Creates a record. I'd never remember saddling Art happened that early, and here we are a year later and he's still yet to trot under tack.

With Woodland's any racing pressure is off and I'm back at the farm thoroughly enjoying the nice weather and slow pace. Last Sunday I took my six year old Acesmash to Archie, Missouri to his new home. Archie is 30 minutes south of KC. Horses all over the place. There was even a horse drawn carriage going through the center of town. Other than one of those commercial things. Just a couple of horses and six or seven people in the wagon having a blast on a Sunday.

I unloaded Ace at his new home and was thrilled to see so many well cared for animals, dogs and horses. I'd sort of figured it out on the phone, but, good to see it in person. Ace will be lucky for at least a year or so more. Decided to cut my losses with big Ace. That's one I blew, completely. A talented, major league grand son of Broad Brush unraced early due to my health problems, and then he just became too big and fat. I've never seen a horse carry as much manure as Ace. He just never passed but a little at a time and was always carrying 40 or 50 extra pounds around the track.

With the new one coming in, five would be too many. With Ace gone I've had three the last few days, and it's such a pleasant, nice number. 12 feet instead of 16; two to ride per day instead of four, as with four you're always trying to catch up. Less feeding, less hay, less water, one less horse to corall, crash through fences, break in the barn. Four's a big herd for one person to do everything. And, three's been a pleasure!

Training:
It's also so much easier with three. More time to do less work! Art went for 15 minutes riderless one half mile at a time with rests between. Groovin' Wind was leading so every one of them snappy. Tough workout and rest tomorrow. Then 10 minutes trot-walk at the lunge under 30 lbs. Astride. Getting the sesamoids and fetlock ready for weight pressure. With Art I'll be rapidly going into galloping. I've had better race horses, but, I do like how little Art darts around the big fellows with great ease.

More Plans And The Price Of Gas

End of meet, end of effort, new horse coming reflection time. Things were up in the air after Saturday's nice Wind breeze, and by Monday I'd decided to retire the old fellow.

Is there any more fun in the sport than having a horse working well, just about ready? I'd have loved to gallop Wind on through this week, and would have but for a busy schedule. There was that option of moving on with the conditioning and racing Wind at Blue Ribbon Downs Meet that concludes in December. Nice purses there with the slot machines.

All this was running through the RR brain when a small additional factoid reared it's unpleasant head. Blue Ribbon is a 700 mile round trip. Hmmm. At 7 miles/gallon in the old truck that's 100 gallons at almost $3/gal. Every race would cost $300 for gas + jockey mount, pony, motel, etc. And, quite obviously you'd do that if you had a chance to win instead of for the fun of racing.

So, the retirement decision was made, though as I post I'm equivocating again considering we have a very fit animal that I might go on with and tear up Eureka next year on conditioning alone.

There are plans, stable plans, lots of them. Since plans change I'll just keep them in my head, but, the hope is to be at the track full time sometime next year. For now, I'm waiting the Van driver's call on my Shore Breeze yearling en route to KCMO, and have both the excitement and bummer of a lot of work ahead with a couple of youngsters.

Training: Art continues at 15'3" instead of shrinking back to 15'2.5" as he'd done so many times. Art's been off two weeks due to deep mud and losing a shoe I never had time to put back on. But, it's on. Last night 15 min. of stop and go play stuff riderless and 10 min. lunge under 30 lbs. Astride. Art goes back up to #1 on the totem pole. He looks good and I expect quick progress!

Stable Plans

It's a slow, beautiful October day. For the past five months this blog has been about the training of my older horse Groovin' Wind and our efforts to bring Wind to hand after a long layoff using the training methods of Preston Burch.

While there's mild disappointment at failing to carry everything to completion and get the horse racing, my conception of training Wind late in his 12 year old year was always as an experiment and learning experience, and to some degree a "relearning" experience since it's also been some time since I'd been plugged into the racetrack. From day one I was fine with whatever happened as long as both horse and rider came through it safe and happy.

In concluding the Wind experience since early May, some additional thoughts:

FARM TRAINING: I was quite pleased with what we were able to accomplish at the farm. Terry McGee, my old jock, once visited the farm, saw what we were doing, and contemptuously announced "none of it means diddley squat". The wily old owl McGee of course was right on with his comment since in this sport very little means anything besides your horse finishing first or getting ready to do so. McGee's point was that this happens at the race track, which is something I'm always mindful of when I'm training at the farm.

And yet, I'd say we were able to do a lot at the farm this summer with Burch style training. Consider that Wind went right from the farm to the Woodlands after 3 Eureka trips sporadically spaced and commenced full speed breezing under Nob immediately. The second breeze was a mile with 4f of it timed in 49.6, no injuries, a little shin heat, and we went right on from there without missing a beat!

We did, however, need that month at the track, lesson relearned and consistent with my prior experience. As I think about it I've never ever gotten a horse to the races without at least two months of consistent work "on-track".

In Wind's case, he was ready to go to the track early August. We missed out on this due to weather and lack of motivation to work around the weather. With youngsters we'll have to do better.

The Shore Breeze yearling is en-route from Lexington as I post. Final thoughts on Wind, next post.

Tuesday Miscellaneous

THE NEW PURCHASE: Did notice that Eagle Valley Farm, Carlisle, Ky had a terrible sale with their many Shore Breeze hips yesterday. They all RNA'd except two at ridiculously low prices. Now, I saw several of those, and they were nice horses, which is why I'm anxious to lay eyes on mine. The status of the Shore Breezes was similar to every other Hip sired by a non-commercial stallions. Most of them failed to sell, and several were nice horses. The state of the sport presently still sits such that smart people can come in a buy good horses for very little, which brings me to

THE RICHTER SCALE:

Left click to enlarge and see the best built stallion out there, standing for $5000.00 at Richland Hills Farm, Ky. For what fathomable reason this horse fails to get top mares further indicates the intuitiveness and lack of common horse sense of the majority of the people in our business.

Let's just reiterate that RR remains sick 24 hours after missing out on Hip 185, a major league horse out of Richter Scale that I missed by $500.00. I specifically participated in the sale to bring back such a horse, and, whiffed. Just ridiculous. Why? Several reasons. A busy distracting schedule. I never took this sale very seriously which is indicated that I phone bid instead of driving the Lexington. I carefully weeded through the catalogue determined to come back with a horse with first and second dams that were winners, black type under second dam out of a flashy, racy stallion with a dam post 1995 and with a winner (or young) as a foal. There were only 10 such Hips on the first day in my price range, and what do I do but buy a hip outside of my own predetermined guidelines.

In buying Hip 354 I compromised my own discipline partly because I allowed myself to be influenced by my Fasig Tipton bidder who was getting impatient by my constant calls. (when you phone bid, you have to advise in advance what hips you'll bid on, and thus very few hips are actually available for bidding.).

But, primarily I'm disgusted by missing out on the Richter Scale. This young colt, a chestnut, had the identical conformation to his pop, an imposing athletic presence that was so obvious I was shocked I was bidding against only one other. The lesson: this sport requires 100% concentration to succeed. It's difficult to carry it on under distraction. Will I ever learn?

GROOVIN' WIND: breezed Saturday in 1:18.4 on a very slow track. Rest Sunday. Track closed Monday due to rain--rest. The option was to enter for Saturday and breeze Tuesday or Wednesday, or abandon ship. By Monday I'd made the decision to decline entering the horse. This is partly based on Wind's personality and how he reacts to Race #1, which is that he's so flighty and nervous a decent performance is impossible for him. First race it's all I can do just to saddle him in the paddock.

The point of putting Wind in a race would be to see the end point of all the Burch training. BUT, we'd fail to see that in the first race, and in fact, the horse would need several races or additional breezes before being sufficiently conditioned to show his stuff. I saw little point in this. I've decided to decline sending Wind to another track. My energies lie elsewhere at the moment than racing my 12 year old, and I'll post on plans and further thoughts next couple of days.

ART: measured this morning. 15'3". He made it! I'm hoping for another little January growth spurt to 15'3.5". We may yet have a race horse here. Art's serious prep will begin tomorrow. I'm tied up today in research.

The Bid

New purchase just below. Left click on it and you can read it. RR reaches nearly physical illness Monday in the time slot when Hip 185 by Richter Scale left the ring going for $10,000.00 after an RR $9500.00 bid. Max (my Fasig Tipton Bidder--heck of a guy and same one that helped me last year with Amart) was egging me on--"c'mon, find $500.00 somewhere". Well, $500.00 more was in the drawer, but I (stupidly) stuck to my limit.

Nothing like the Richter Scale anywhere else so far in this sale, or most sales, but Hip 354 at left caught my attention when I noticed something interesting very late.

I had scanned this catalogue backward and forward, and had the interesting hips both in mind as well as stallion photos.

Earlier in the day I'd check out the Blood Horse page on Arch. Whoops! Beauty. $25,000.00 stud fee. Family of Althea, Alydar, and, bear with me here, Aurora, the dam of Arch is by DANZIG. And, Aurora won $285,000.

Arch is a heck of a horse with a heck of a race record. If he were on top the pedigree of Hip 354 this would be a $40-50,000.00 horse. Arch won 4 of 6 as a 3 year old and finished 2nd the other. SuperDerby, track records, winning by 9 lengths, Arch has it all except they hurt him early.

Then we get to the sire of 354, Shore Breeze. And, Whoops again! He's by DANZIG. DANZIG is sire of sire and sire of dam of broodmare sire. Hmmmm would describe the RR reaction, pencil tapping desk.

Now, I rather dislike bidding on the progeny of unraced mares. Too much chance of inherited breathing problems. I've been that route before, and was sworn to avoid. BUT, there's even more to like.

I'd become enamored with Short Breeze, standing at Eagle Valley Farm in Lexington for $5,000.00 before the sale. I like the photo, the balance, the breeding with the broodmare sire by Gulch. DANZIG-GULCH. This ought to be a decent horse. Today, several nice horses had come through the ring already by Shore Breeze!

Then, we go down the page. That the second dam is Rapunzel Runz by Explodent(think Explosive Bid, Explosive Wagon) and Rapunzel with $250,000 winnings was hardly a turnoff. Third dam unraced a bummer, but she's by Sir Ivor. And 4th dam wins $150,000+ way back when. There is black type all over this pedigree.

Then the colt enters. Max from FT on the line but the Internet feed is 30 seconds behind real time. He sees the colt before I do. The black colt looks a bit small. Max contradicts me and says he's decent size. I fail to see that, but, hopefully he's right. May foal though, and he looks at least 15'1". I'm unable to see any defects. There's good energy and he's a little bit of a chunk athlete sort.

Bidding starts. It was late afternoon and the auctioneers were having to work to sell anything. We were definitely in a dead spot in the sale. Bidding was in increments of 100s. Having researched the colt thoroughly I was laughing at the ignorance, to myself of course, but somebody kept egging it on. Final bid: RR for $3500.00, and to get to that $3500.00 we must have hit almost every 100 mark all the way up. Somebody, probably Eagle Valley was bidding against me, and then quit. Fine. Most of my bankroll is intact.

I called FT and arranged them to take care of the horse, and the Van desk is looking for transport. I'll get back to it in the morning. It was other than a Richter Scale, but real decent for the money.

Fasig Tipton October

RR phone bidding today. $9500.00 in the account. You fax them the hips you want to bid on, as well as an agency agreement. For today I listed Hips 147, 185, 235, 299, 301, 386 and 399. I can call them and bid on others I may pick out.

Wind rests today for second day. It's raining cats and dogs. Decisions are made. Nob will gallop the rest of the week, with some thoughts to possible entry on Saturday.

Racehorse In The Barn/Carl Nafzger's Comments

After several months of work, it's nice to say you can put one out there that can run. Wind probably needs four or five more breezes, which he'd get in Preston Burch training over about 18 days. Just a guess, but, believe over next 4 or 5 speed works the horse will move up considerably and be maintaining his air over the whole 6F. Will he get the chance? I'm in the middle of making a lot of decisions.

Timely comments in The Blood Horse from Carl Nafzger on Street Sense and working on a sloppy track, as we're also facing three days of continuous rain starting tonight. My intent, though we'll see whether I persevere, would be to gallop Wind come heck or high water, and if a dry track opens up we'd go. Could be an interesting week, but, we'll see.

Saturday Woodlands Report

I've got so many things going the next few days it's difficult to find time for the blog. A few things happening:

Fasig-Tipton: just wired them $9,500.00 for possible phone bidding. I might even drive to Lexington. We'll see. I'm less excited about making a purchase this year, unknown exactly why, but, it may have to do with the catalogue and also that I'm ambivalent about using the money for a new truck that would make us mobile. But then, the little birdie: what point in having a truck without a horse?!

Pasterns: as I was scouting for a pony this morning, and Ms. Torbit, I walked by a trainer bathing a horse that has exceptionally long pasterns. The guy, grey sweatshirt, was bent down washing the legs with his back to me: "can I ask you a dumb question? do you have any problems with the long pasterns on that horse in racing him?" Silence. (did he hear me, over the hose?). Then: "ya. you worry about 'em. This is a two year old. I've been going slow with him due to those pasterns." Back to washing. Finallyhe looks up and makes eye contact:
"If you're learnen' something, its other than a dumb question". I was impressed with the fellow's manner.

Ford F250: "will it haul four horses or do you need an F350?", I asked the trainer--still searching a pony and admiring the beautiful new, two toned truck. "Well, when I bought this, the F350 I ordered never came in, and this was all they had." "If you had it to do over?" "F350. Definitely. The F250 will haul 'em but it struggles a little". Interesting!

Wind's Work: Wind breezed 6f out of the gate. You know the horse does well when "they call you" to enter him. This was the exact same work pictured in the last post--I forgot my camera flash card and watch today, though I remembered everything else. We had a very decent, albeit very slow, track. On the way back the pony guy suggested "you really should enter this horse". "Might do it", but on consideration decided to take it slow instead of immediate impulsive decision. At least look at the Equibase time first.

So, I put the horse on the truck and drive back to the farm, and, as I'm driving down the driveway, buzz, buzz goes the cell phone with a different area code than ours showing. Could this be a "collector" :). I answered. "Barbara Noll here. (Renee Torbit's agent). Are you going to enter that horse?" I'm smiling, and tell her that I'm thinking about it, but if so, probably for Wednesday. When they call you, that's a good sign.

Wind's Work: What does 4.5 months of Burch training get you? This morning's work would indicate "racehorse: as Wind put a little coda on the training by a nice 6f performance out of the gate. That Wind's earlier slow times probably were caused by bleeding has been confirmed the past two weeks as we're getting zero post exercise coughing now, and starting to see the horse we saw in August. Horse was quite humorous this morning, all business as he was being unloaded at the track, deliberate instead of bouncy walk, with eyes focused straight ahead, pisses immediately when he hits the stall, and very alert to his surroundings. Wind's put on a bit of weight, and, in addition to my suspicion that it's coming together, the horse also looks that way. Very fit and powerful looking animal developing.

I never saw the gate pop due to the trees in the infield. But, Wind was flying when he came into view at the 4f. Too bad I forgot the watch. The horse buzzed all the way to the quarter pole and basically ran out of gas at that point. There was a 3f worker in front of him that he was unable to catch, though the good news, he never lost any ground either. From the 1/8 pole to the wire I counted 15 seconds. The jock came out of the gate too fast, but, it was a very encouraging work. This morning Wind looked like a race horse, and Ms. Torbit was all smiles.

Wind's Time: 1:18.4 Equibase. BUT. Take away the :15 last F and you average :12.68s for the other 5f or about 1:03. The track was very slow. The Equibase times show 3/4s of the workers did their work in :13s, slower than Wind. Additionally, I'm realizing--you need regular toe grabs on this track. Wind was struggling with footing down the stretch.

Bottom line: If we have the luxury of working another couple of months we'd have a race horse. As it is, we'll see. More day at a time stuff coming.

Schedule: the RR next few days problems: big RR court docket at 9:00 a.m. Monday + Lady from Archie, Missouri wants me to deliver my gelding as her new family pet for a three hour round trip, Fasig Tipton Mon. and Tues, got to draft a complicated document by Wed., + racing. Phew? And, 16 feet that need to be shod after this rain.

Weather: probably will decide things. Four more days of heavy rain coming, but, at least for today, the horse business was a lot of fun!

Woodlands 10/17/07 #1

Finally, RR remembers the camera.

The outrider sits at the rail just in front of Wind and pony as they enter the track about 8:30 a.m. Dogs up. (Left click to enlarge.)Wind gallops toward us in his warm up. He'll do a two minute lick down the stretch, and the pony will catch him in the Clubhouse Turn. Then, to the gates.
By the time last photo is saved and next one snaps, Wind is gone. Jock R. Torbit can ride a little!


They got him in. Yellow helmet! Mr. Starter, carrying the whip. Nice fellow!

Take him out, spin him around, and in again.
Continued next post. Unknown when they'd spring the gates, and I missed it.

Woodlands 10/17/07 #2

Wind and pony leaving track post w/o.
More, leaving track.
One more snapshot for the GW fan club. Professional job by Jock and Pony.

3f out of the gate missed by the clocker, apparently as the work fails to appear on Equibase. Starter said he'd give gate card after Wind works out of the gate in company. No gate card, no entry, though (encouragingly) Ms. Torbit thinks we should enter. Next breeze Saturday. Farm under water with 7 inches in 4 days.

Frog (Or Horse?)

Training Causing Injuries: Rider Control

I've covered the preliminaries--track surfaces, shoeing, warm ups, trainer diligence or lack of it, and now it's time to get down to the nitty gritty. Exactly how do injuries happen in "training" in terms of "cause and effect", and why therefore does RR think he has to train in any way but the way everyone else does.

I started all this way back when by commenting on the condylar injury (now presumably healed) of Todd Plecher trained Ravel, wondering about the mechanics of what makes it happen. Presumably, if we know, we can avoid?

There are all sorts of injuries of course, but we can classify them as "soft tissue injuries" of the type that happen to tendons, ligaments, suspensories and occasionally muscles, and "hard tissue" or bone injury that generally refers to fracture, but also involves chips and tearing of the sesamoids.

Let's follow our race horse to the track, and consider what may happen.

Everyone understands the importance of the rider, and I'll take it one step further by noting that much of what separates good race horses from lesser is the ability of the lad or lassie to handle the horse.

Unless you ride you may fail to understand fully how reactive horses are. When your rider brags about their soft hands they're stating their skill at sending small signals to the horse to which the horse responds. Please know that such riding skill is possessed by the few instead of the many, and that my own Nob is excluded to date from this select club.

An immediate example in my stable is the inability of Nob to stop Groovin' Wind on the race track, and the attendant ability of the 110 lbs. jock Renee Torbit who is without any trouble at all in stopping the horse. Nob is a 6'1" weight lifter who tries generally unsuccessfully to muscle the horse, and Ms. Torbit, who knows how she does it. I'm going to ask her.

Another example is a remarkable scene I witnessed this very moment as we were walking Wind onto the track. There's a downhill chute leading onto the Woodland's track where horses enter about the quarter pole. At the top of the chute was a jock on a horse with the horse jumping around refusing to go forward to the race track. The jock was clowning around with the spectators joking about how he was going to back the horse to the track and he proceeded to do so with the horse precariously backing and with every step threatening to back down a very steep hill that might have caused a disaster.

Our Aylward has been pulling this same stunt and Nob always needs assistance. In contrast, our little pinhead this morning, much to my disgust, just ignored the precariousness of the situation and guided his jumpy horse onto the track. Rider skill. It's like other skills, artist, athlete, musician--at some point good riders have so much concentrated practice upon which they mentally focus that they move up a notch in skill to a place ordinary mortal riders are unable to comprehend.

How riding affects the injury situation, next post.

Training:
Voila, the next gate breeze is set. After the impressive two mile gallop Monday we back tracked Wind a mile at the trot at the Woodlands today. A little exercise before tomorrow's tough work, and hopefully a calming influence as this is the first time this year Wind did anything other than take off. He was tired today albeit his usual jumpy self. After the work I walked him all over the place looking for jockey Renee Torbit or her agent Barbara Noll to arrange tomorrow's breeze. Nowhere to be found. Then--how's this stuff happen--I was in the truck turning the key to leave, and Barbara Noll's crimson van comes right by the truck. I flagged her down, and the breeze, presumably is set. Big stuff. We'll be without excuses tomorrow. It will, however be interesting whether Wind is able to recover from that very tough gallop Monday in 48 hours. Art has one more day off due to deep mud. Sun and wind today, however!

Burch Training

Some thoughts on Burch training this post: That's "Preston Burch" for anyone new to the blog, based on this old time trainer's book that you can find at Amazon.com, and based on exercise schematics set out in the book used on such horses as Preakness Winner "Bold" and Triple Crown Winner "Assault".

The Burch method, and Max Hirsch with Assault involved breezes or races every three days, first working the horse up to :12s, and thereafter most of the work was done at 12 seconds a furlong unless the horse would run away faster. In the other two days the trainer is to do what they think best, which would be rest, walk or gallop.

Groovin' Wind has been at Burch style training, albeit at the farm instead of racetrack, since June 1, probably 35-40 breezes in these 4.5 months. Quite a bit of work compared to what you see these days.

First, what bothered me about this training: Only one thing really, which is that in conducting Preston Burch training there's very little of just galloping the horse. With Burch, you're either breezing or resting, or maybe doing an easy mile the day before breeze day. There's a bit of disadvantage in this in terms of schooling the horse, and we've had this problem with Wind at the Woodlands in taking his correct leads and in developing a warm up and also in stopping the horse post gallop. I also miss quite a bit long gallops with accelerations (such as we did this morning), that I consider such a valuable training tool for distance racing.

The above disadvantage will have me thinking a bit whether there may be a compromise that's improves Burch by combining longer gallops with frequent breezing. But, I'll consider later with another horse.

What I like about Burch:
1. Wind has had zero serious injuries through a lot of work. We've had maybe two episodes of minor heat in bones which quickly subsided, but, other than that nadda. Sure Wind is an older, and so sounder horse. But, old horses just like young one's buck shins, pull sesamoids, and in particular pull suspensories. The injury record through Burch training has been impressive, though note I've been dealing with slight bleeding in a horse that's always had the problem.
2. I'd have thought breezing so often would quickly move the horse up, and, I think really that it would have, had we had access to a track and jock as we now do. We could develop Wind into a legit racehorse with a couple more months at the Woodlands. However, we've been at it 5.5 months since May 1, which is a lot of time even for a horse that maybe had a little farther to come than I'd originally thought. The jury is out a bit for me how this program enhances horses, since we have yet to actually see it on the track. We'll leave "establishing the fact" to a later time.
3. Burch training really takes the pressure off compared to some other programs. You miss a day and its "eeeh, it's ok" because you're able to put a rest day almost anywhere except the actual breeze days. There's less fretting about missing training in Burch.

Training:

Two mile gallop with Wind this morning around the dogs. Mostly two minute lick stuff and :14s down the stretch both times. Interestingly, zero coughing on the way back, and perhaps as suspected, as Wind get's shape the bleeding stops.

Nob reported he had a lot of horse today, and much stronger than Nob's last gallop at the track. It was impressive, really, right after the 3 miles yesterday, and reminds a bit of the Wind of old. The plan--trot tomorrow and maybe we'll get that gate work Wednesday. I'm abandoning for the moment the plan I announced yesterday of continuous long gallops for the rest of the meet based on what happened today.

Art: another 1/2 inch of rain. The farm's a mess: off.

Sunday Misc.: Weather, Wind, Fasig Tipton

Driving to the office today I leave the Hyvee Grocery with sea of red Chief's fans stocking up for today's game, and the Good Year Blimp overhead floating out to Arrowhead Stadium The scene reminds of the benign divide between fans of sport and participants, and how lucky we are in horse racing to have that choice as trainers, breeders, cosigners, bloodstock, or weekend handicappers were we can sit back and take it all in. Some RR thoughts for Sunday, October 14, 13 days before the end of the Woodland's meet:

WEATHER: muddy mess this morning with 3 meteorological inches falling on us Saturday--little more inevitable in our normally dry area than mid October monsoons, and thus I avoid getting overly excited about the Woodlands Meet since we know what's coming. It'd be nice, of course, to get our horses ready to race "before" the rain hits, but it never seems to happen.

GROOVIN' WIND: After yesterday's cancelled gate work (weather) and due to the recent slow breeze times, last night I was ready to throw in the towel and retire the horse and leave to future conjecture the nagging question whether the Woodlands performances resulted from bleeding or just slow feet Then Nob trot-gallops the horse this morning at the farm 3 miles through deep grass and get's off exclaiming how much stronger Wind is now than at the last farm gallop, and that the horse seems after a couple of weeks of working with the jock, much the race horse. Wow. Guess I'll take Wind back to the track tomorrow and we'll see what comes down.

GATE CARD: 1. We failed to get a gate card Wednesday, and 2. our attempt to get one Saturday was rained out? This sport will just drive you crazy at times. What are the odds that when we went in the gate Wednesday we were the first horse arriving after their horrific gate accident, and they then refused to let the horse come out, followed by Saturday's rain out. We've been one or two breezes from racing for how many Woodland's meets in a row before similar stuff? I'll have to add this year's comedy to our tales of misfortune--"a bird will croak, what does it croak, mishap" (Goethe).

FASIG TIPTON October 22: I've got $9000.00 ready for the sale. BUT, seems an unusually uninspiring catalogue for bottom feeders. For me to be able to buy a prospect I have to have two things come together: 1. An unaware absentee owner with a "specimen" sends their horse into the ring without reserve, and 2. a lull in the bidding--either everybody there is tapped out, or they're all off to lunch. When those things come together we with limited funds can occasionally cherry pick a good horse. Unfortunately, of the colts--which is what I'm looking at--in my price range they're so few in number that the 10 hour drive to Lexington hardly seems worth it. I'm wondering what happened to that nice $2-5000 stud fee that they used to consign to this sale. There's hardly 20 of those (colts) in the entire catalogue, and zero of those are causing me much excitement.

I am looking forward to the next ten days of gallop at the Woodland's with Wind. If his lung problem has cleared up, maybe there's just enough time to decide whether the horse has got anything left.

Training: all other training cancelled due to weather.

Weather Again

The weather that we've dodged since 10/1 finally got us today. Wind's final pre-entry breeze was go off at 9:00 a.m. this morning. It was all arranged. Jock, pony person, gate card, and we were expecting a decent performance after Wednesday's 1:19 6f where the first 6f race that afternoon was timed 1:15.3.

We'll never know how it might have come out. Accuweather was a little off. Late as 1pm Saturday their video clips predicted rain late this afternoon. But rain started at 4:00 a.m. and never let up and still going as I write, so much that doubtful the track will open tomorrow. I'm thinking about my shedrow neighbor and his Metfield filly in the stakes today.

What probably would have happened for Wind had the breeze gone off would be a 1:16 and change out of the gate with a hoped for 1:14 and change race performance. Just a guess, but probably fairly close. For the last two weeks Wind had probable lung problems I'd thought might be healing by today.

Unknown exactly what I'll do with my 12 year old training buddy at this point. I'll decide in a few days and also post my conclusions re the Burch training for Wind since June 1.

Training:
Wind:
10/5: :52.6 4f under jock.
10/6: Rest
10/7: 2 m gallop with an :18 final 1.5f, jock up.
10/8: rest
10/9: 1.3 mile gallop with last 1.5f in :18 under Nob.
10/10: 6f 1:19.
10/11: Rest
10/12: 1.5 miles riderless at :17s-:15s.(unable to breeze today in good weather. too much!)
10/13: 6f breeze rained out.

Art:
10:13 3 miles riderless in :17s with a few spurts. Continuous gallop. Adult stuff now.

Trainer Diligence And Injury Prevention

My trainer acquaintance in the next shedrow was featured last post along with his habit of staying in the shedrow while jockey Beth Butler galloped his horses. But, I use these folks only as an example of what serves as the common method on at most racetracks. Visit any back stretch, count the horses galloping and compare them to the number of trainers watching at the rail and you'll generally see about a 5-1 ratio horses to trainers.

And so you say, well, if everybody does it, why really do trainers need to watch every horse in the shedrow perform routine gallops and breezes every single day? Please allow me to use my usual oblique methods in answering the question by beginning with the observation that while mucking stalls or putting your horses on the walker while the gallop boys and girls do their thing is common practice, there are those few, and let us call them for the sake of argument "conscientious" trainers, who do watch their horse gallop.

I even looked up the word "conscientious" and the synonyms: meticulous, painstaking, particular to the work at hand. D.W. Lukas comes to mind here as someone on top of his operation. Ross Staaden("Winning Trainers") documents Lukas's early arrival times, the pony saddled in the predawn twilight, and Lukas to the track with the first set. Watch the opening scenes of "On The Muscle" and you'll see Lukas and son on ponies accompanying their horses.

Needless to say, when we're talking "painstaking" as the degree of care, if you're an owner you might consider how difficult "paintstaking" becomes when you remain in the shedrow when the horses gallop.

Let us take note that the groomers, the stall muckers, the walker boys (and girls), all those trainers who do everything at the track but give a flying hoot about what the horses do on track approach the sport with quite a different mindset than such as this blogger, Wayne Lukas, Mandella or most of the top trainers. For RR nothing else that you do with a race horse matters unless you're there conducting the actual training, which means you're there watching the galloping. Why? It is because I happen to believe that most injuries are preventable provided that you are indeed painstaking and control every one of the injury causing variables.

Hopefully as the posts go along I'll be able to make the case that it's ridiculous to believe you can prevent racehorse injuries unless you're physically present observing the horse gallop.

Training: Wind is off today. Eating well, stone cold legs. We'll still be watching of course, but it seems the legs have adjusted to the surface. With the workouts we're doing developing fracture is always the concern. Next breeze would be out of gate Saturday if the jock maintains her interest. This will be a question given the performance to date.
Art: Transitioned to "big" horse workouts yesterday. It was a tough one, riderless: 3 x 6f including gallops in and out at about 85% speed. Art was strong all the way, which surprised me a bit.

Who's Training?

Interestingconversation from the neighboring shed row a couple days back as during the break Jockey Beth Butler arrives to take a filly to the track:

"What're we doin' today? You wanna breeze her?"
"Ya. Take her 5/8th" End of conversation. Ms. Butler mounts.

The trainer looks to be in his mid fifties with health problems, and the short, chunky wife with short curls and wire rims about the same age. In another life she'd be fat, but mucking eight stalls per day provides some modicum of fitness to the lady. Trainer and wife recommence mucking as Ms. Butler rides off.

Ten minutes later Ms. Butler reappears with the filly, and they continue to discuss:

"How'd she go".
"She went awright. She's havin' trouble pushing off that right rear. I had to force her to go".

How to interpret?

Preface that Ms. Butler is a real decent jock, probably early 30s, athletic, high energy, and in my observation seems very dedicated to what she does. A good girl! Ms. Butler has an interesting face, sort of a mix of "country" and what you might see in those mountain folks in Deliverance, the movie, tough mien for a tough girl. She's no fool, but I'd doubt her schooling goes much beyond the 10th grade.

Mr. and Mrs. Trainer have won 30 races this year at Lincoln, Grand Island, and Columbus (N.E.). They have a four year old Metfield filly that's 7 out of 10 for the year, just beat the boys, and is entered in a male stakes race this Saturday. Mr. and Mrs. Trainer have a much better record than you'd ever guess at first glance.

Another example of their training would be what I observed this morning. The Metfield filly is in Saturday, and Ms. Butler arrived after the break to rider her:

"Just gallop?"
"Ya".
"1 or 2?"
"2." and off they go.

The trainer is galloping his filly 2 miles on Wednesday before the Saturday stakes. Thurs. the track is closed. I'll see Friday what they do the day before the race.

What is happening here?

Without writing a book, I see a couple of things. I've long understood that winning may correlate directly to a good jock working with your horse, morning and afternoon. 90% of what you see at the upper levels comes from such combos. The top horses get the top riders from day one, and this degree of riding talent provides the big outfits at every track an almost insurmountable advantage.

The second thing operating is that the trainer could care about the development of his horse on track. He'd prefer to muck stalls than watch them work. I have yet to see either husband or wife over the course of two weeks make one trip to the track for either gallops or breezes. I have watched Ms. Butler gallop their horses. It's other than going through the motions. Ms. Butler races these mounts, and on track in the morning she's very deliberate and professional in the three gallops that I've watched.

Essentially, if you want to subtract animal husbandry, in this shedrow Ms. Butler is the trainer. Sure, the trainer decides how often the horses go to the track, and I noticed that he never asked Ms. Butler for her opinion on that. She only shows up and jumps on. But, once she takes off it appears she decides everything else. I'll break down in the coming posts what it is that the rider here instead of the trainer is deciding and monitoring.

I'm sure that Ms. Butler does a fine job. Probably better than most jocks might do in the same situation. The record speaks for itself. However, as intricate as training thoroughbreds is, do we want somebody with a tenth grade education making the on-track decisions and observation for our horse, regardless of experience? Highly doubtful.

The filly failing to push off on the right in her breeze and the jock "making her go" instead of immediately aborting, is one indicator of problems. Here's another. This couple has an eight horse shedrow full of well conformed, scopy, decently bred (Metfield, Pike's Pass) racers only one of who will have been entered this week and next. Trainer announced he's going home after the stakes Saturday. This is code-speak that despite their 30 wins, nothing else remains raceable. It would be interesting to watch and see how many of the 8 make it back next year. My guess would be 2 or 3.

Training:
Here I'm talking about other trainers only to watch Wind lay another giant egg this morning. Jockey is late. Agent Ms. Barbara Noll drops by at 8:30 a.m, "oh, by the way, Ms. Torbit had to go with a set out of the gate". Barbara Noll is the "ex" mother-in-law of noted Prairie Meadows jockey, now retired, Cindy Noll. Before Ms. Torbit arrives they close the track because a horse was injured in the gate and had to be hauled off by ambulance. Ms. Torbit's set was stuck behind the gate as they regraded the track to get rid of the tracks left by the ambulance.

She finally arrived at 9:20 a.m. Off they go with the pony I hired. The plan: warm up--back track to 3f, turn around and gallop past wire with at least 1f at 2 min clip. Pony catches horse and goes to gate (first time since 2003) for 6f in 1:18. (I wanted to avoid pushing the horse after yesterday's disaster.) There were alternative plans if any of this went awry.

Result: The gate crew refused to let the horse come out of the gate. He was walked through twice and stood in the gate, and, reportedly fidgeted. My guess--we got lucky again--they'd had a horrific gate accident minutes before and decided to avoid another. Pony and rider exited the gate and commenced the breeze which I missed completely as I was waiting for the gates to fly open. By the time I spotted Wind (there went my photos) he was doing :14s at the 1/8th pole. Equibase time turned out to be 1:19 only 1 second slower than planned. So, better than it looked. Ms. Torbit said Wind started very well and ran out of gas at the head of the stretch. I interpret this as mild bleeding, something that plagues the horse. We'll give it one more try Saturday and it'll be time for horse and rider to show some stuff. Probably, nearly the last chance.

Art: just play galloped riderless on sunbaked, rock hard mud with the oldsters. Good exercise. Measures just under 15'3" in horse shoes. Seems we have slight growth. Serious training starts tonight.

Luck

Yesterday I had an electrician restore power to the barn. Later, at noon I had an office appointment. Ask the guy what he did for a living--electrician. What are the odds? FYI first time I had an electrician in the office or house.

Mind boggling coincidences happen, and though the odds may be astronomical, in chaos theory there's so much at play that we do get a steady stream of unexpected events. One every two weeks would be close to right on course for yours truly.

In horse racing we'd of course prefer our coincidences as good instead of bad, and yet, when you throw up that rider, you never know. Could our horse be carrying an OCD lesion or other weakened genetic or congenital body part? Is this the day when we clip heels or suffer the fracture producing torsional force of a bad step on a cuppy part of the track or any of those other horrors I've seen on track that I prefer to avoid recounting?

There is indeed bad luck that happens on the race track, and we'd be remiss to mention it before embarking on a section relating training to injuries. Amid pointing out human failings, errors, negligence and downright gross negligence in training methods, there's also a humility that plays in there as every time I see one go down I consider that there but for the grace of god go I.

Wind galloped under Nob at the Woodlands this morning before tomorrow's 6f breeze out of the gate. Some more photos:


and, my barn last night after the electrician forgot to close the doors. The horses got in and did their thing. It's been worse!

A planned easy mile this morning turned into a pre-breeze gallop gone awry. I'll have to check the legs tonight! Just as we hit the track so did 15 other horses. Wind immediately barreled through all of them, failed to change leads into the club house turn, and when Nob attempted to trot him to switch to the left lead Nob was unable to stop the horse, and then had to speed up to finally get a left lead into the final turn. More horror then as a little white horse was breezing right beside us and Wind took off and raced him to the wire. Nob with frozen hands was helpless and just went along for 2f all out with Wind hitting the wire a length ahead under 168 lbs.

This is the unruly, runaway Wind of old. Good and bad. Monday's work woke him up but this is hardly what we wanted today.

Art gets an additional 12 hours off due to mud and will recommence tonight.

Relating Training To Injuries

In our stable we train other than conventionally because conventional training causes injuries. For any who have followed the blog hopefully I've convinced you of the truth of the statement. The blog is past debating "whether" conventional training causes injuries. It's all documented in the archives for such conventional stables as Lukas and Mandella(see December '06 to January '07.). Back in the old days I used to warn: every conventional trainer will injure your horse within three months of entry of getting their hands on it. An exaggeration? After looking at the injury rates of some of these outfits, we can with a fair degree of certitude declare that the statement is an exaggeration, but, barely.

To review: based on close examination I estimated that D.W. Lukas loses 64% of his horses to injury in 1.5 years. Mandella--drawing conclusions from small numbers, 5 of the 8 horses on the DVD "On the Muscle" were injured in 11 months. One, The Tin Man is still racing several years later. I noted the early gluteal injury to The Green Monkey and mused in wonderment that if they can injure a sixteen million dollar horse assigned to the best care, the best stable, and presumably the most intelligent training possible, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Well, hang in there. We're talking about conventional training. There's a lot of ways to skin the cat here. And though I've tried to document, to the extent possible, injury rates in conventional stables and hinted here on causation, I've yet to identify positively the manner in which the injuries occur. If we can somehow figure out what happens, then we can get into prevention!

Training:
WEATHER: Our annual mid-October monsoon arrived yesterday, and we have 6 inches of water in the buckets this morning. How many consecutive years have we had Wind and Aylward a couple of breezes away from racing at the Woodlands, and down comes the rain and they close the track for a week? This caused immense frustration at one time. Now, I just go with it. If weather shuts us down it'll hardly be anything new. Would be a shame after all this work. We'll see. We've been there before.

Wind: I looked at him this morning. I'd say he's down 75 lbs since July. Ribby, overly skinny neck. He's muscular and strong, energy level is very good right now, but, I've yet to see Wind get this thin through any of his prior training programs. Lucky unlike many times in the past, Wind is eating. He gets about 18 lbs. of grain a day, free choice pasture in the day, and plenty of high quality brome hay with minimal amounts of alfalfa at times + his supplements. Part of the problem is pasture death. All the horses have lost weight since August. Our walnut trees are without walnuts this year, and they say the wild life will have a hard time this winter due to the late April freeze shutting down the nut and berry shrubs, and then the alternating periods of rain and drought. I'll be watching Wind's weight. The good news is that the attitude is good, the horse continues to joust with his buddies, and legs still stone cold.

Art: Monday rests after yesterday's riderless breezes. The mud is such it might be two or three days before we can do anything. Depends on the sun.

Sunday Morning At the Woodlands

This morning's photo efforts. Oh well!


Renee Torbit on Groovin' Wind after this morning's gallop. Jock instructed to do "fast" (as opposed to "slow") two minute clip with a final 1/8 in :12. Horse was back tracked to the 3.5f pole, turned around, and, instead of trotting back to the 2f as instructed, immediately commenced a hard left lead gallop from the 3 1/2 pole. The work commenced at the wire and Wind zipped along for the whole mile and did get the final furlong in :12 under urging. Ok, it was a :12 instead of :11, but, we'll take it. Unable to give a time for the mile as I forgot the stop watch.

Ms. Torbit was smiling as she trotted by me at the rail "that was better than Friday", and, indeed it was. A bit of a break through, perhaps. Horse and rider looked pretty good with Wind getting the rear legs under himself with much more forward propulsion than I saw Friday. Ms. Torbit said "he wanted to go today", an indicator of the horse adjusting to the lighter rider, and the rider beginning to figure out her horse.

Ten minutes after the above photos the skies opened up with rain, and for the third consecutive track breeze I dodge the rain. We've been as lucky with the weather as we were unlucky in April.

Due to rain I cancelled tomorrow's breeze, and hence the quick work today two days after Friday's breeze. Wind will be off tomorrow, gallop a slow mile Tuesday, then Wednesday will be the big one, 6f out of the gate hopefully in company. A 1:15 and we'll enter this weekend. Slower, then we'd have to consider what we're doing. A lot of work will come together for us Wednesday morning. The legs have been stone cold, and a high energy horse as expected with the human vitamin supps. from IHerb.

Art this morning breezed riderless with the oldsters 4 x 2f. For the oldsters it was all out; for Art probably 85-90% speed.