Post-Holiday posting...

I sure didn’t leave much time to write. Seems like before I leave for work, I’m all up, my nerves are all jangly and ready-to go (even if it’s work that I don’t feel like going to). At that time, however, nothing has happened to write about so there’s no reason to be sitting here. My head is often empty of events and opinions about anything.

Then, when I have finished my work for the day, I’m usually full of all that has happened, but I’m also crashing from my two-cup tea habit and ready to nap. As soon as I get home, I eat something and lie down. Once I’m up, it’s all over. I’m empty-headed again.

I noticed in the results this morning that one of my earlier favorite horses, I’ll call him Phoenix (because when he had a trainer switch, he improved tremendously), finished third last night. What a gallant fellow! He’s had a lot of bad luck. He missed out on some specific care for a long time, that the new trainer (I’ll call him Cal) has managed to provide. When Cal first got the horse, he reversed his performance almost completely; after getting beaten double digits repeatedly, he ran second. Then he had an injury leaving the starting gate, and he hasn’t been 100% since. Last night he felt good enough to run third, and I am proud of both him and Cal.

I’d like to speak more openly about my horses and people, but because most of my horses run in claimers, I don’t want this column to become a place where people scout for horses to claim. I also have an aversion to being deceiving in it, because that would produce no lasting benefit for the industry, my credibility, the horse, and my friends. So as strange as my names sound to me, I guess that’ the way I have to do it. Some I will be able to speak about, I think, but certainly not all.

I’m supposed to work for Burkle today. He's been off two days and at his request, I have collected Saturday and Sunday's programs to give to him. The idea behind having the programs is to mark down who made money each evening and then see which of those people owes the tack store. It's never a bad time to ask for money. Heck, one of my own clients just won a race; and I had been so anguished over the lack of renumeration for my services that I had really become resentful. And the bad part is that it is someone I care about and really love, but I was really feeling taken advantage of. The win was a hefty gift, a Maiden Allowance with a purse of abotu 21 K. When the owner-trainer handed me a check, she staked me $100. That sure helped!
It should be a very busy day today. I have a half-dozen clients that have to go. Nobody went yesterday except for Cal, and I only galloped two. There’s a new Canadian that shipped in over Christmas. I inquired yesterday and hopefully will be able to again, early, because he’s gonna have ten or twelve horses, they say.

It sucks that his putfit is all the way at the top of the hill – it’s hard to get up there fast from Cal’s outfit.

Gallop Girl Predicts Long, Cold Day in North Panhandle

It’s another cold one out there. Supposed to get up to 30 today, and then snow tonight. The last two days have been so without work I’ve been lucky to have my Burkle's job. So far I’ve made a few extra dollars dressing up other people’s boots with hair-on deer hide (see my reference to this way, way back in ’04. The proto-type was a whole set of leggings. Now I just glue the hide to an old pair of boots – just as warm, less trouble, toss ‘em out in the Spring.)

And it’s time to go now, a bit after 7. Today should be very busy. Track will be frozen mud, and hard. Jack has about 10 that haven’t trained since Sunday/ Monday; Perry Kerns is bringing 4 for after the break, and Jessie and Lori will both have something. Also I imagine Hugh Mahan will be sending. Only possible one not to go would be Pat, because he never gallops and has to finish early (for no reason - he stays here all morning regardless). On Saturdays the track forbids backtracking between 8 & 9 a.m. Cuz of the Schooling race. I'm the one for whom this call has been issued, but that's a story for another page....

Working at Burkle's

NOTE:

Before I actually begin this post, I want to let you know that this is all part of my website, which has been up for quite a long time with no traffic. So briefly check out my other BLOG, the Far Turn News to see what I am up to. It sure would be nice to actually get some traffic, and start using the Forum as a place to discuss things that are related to our little neck of the woods, as well as some issues that are pertinent to horsepeople on the Track in general. With that in mind, here's the url for the site. Please navigate it a bit, with the understanding that it is, as we sometimes say about our horses, stuck in neutral at the Chute.

If it gets a little traffic around it, maybe it would find its motivation. Not only the Forum, but the other departments I have planned (which are linked, but which have no content yet.) Once you see them, you can get an idea of what's possible in them.

OK: First, the Video (I don't know how to embed it from youtube, so the quality might suck- I'm uploading directly):

Anyhoo, yesterday as I was finishing up, Ed leaned out the door of the new establishment and let me know I was gonna be working. Here's the terms of my employ, just BTW:

1) You work only when I need you (you can't count on having work, or any specific number of hours per week.)

2) You work only when I am here (You MUST adjust your schedule to fit into mine when you do have work.)

3) Your job consists mainly of:

a) putting up with a constant barrage of claptrap, balderdash, and requests for the latest gossip

b) listening to a single, repeated line from the same song (or advertising jingle - my choice, a different tune each time you are here, but the same one for the entire bloc of time you are here)

c) replying at all times whenever you hear "Liiiiiiiiizzzzzziiiieeeee.........answerme......"

d) Listening to my stories

e) Replying "yes you are indeed," when I tell you I'm brilliant.

Other tasks include:

a) stocking shelves and marking prices

b) unpacking and counting stuff

c) wearing me on your shoulder while I scrutinize every little thing you do, while explaining how I have already figured out the best way to do it

d) Choking on dust.

e) Avoiding sweeping, except for when it's absolutely necessary

f) When doing the absolutely necessary sweeping, combing through the pile to retrieve any screws, rivets, useful scraps of leather or shipping labels with the Burkle Turf Supply address on them.

So I do actually work when I'm there, but it's more like Work, Interrupted. What it comes down to is really about half the work and twice the pay. And I meant that; it's a great job! Doing it isn't as fun as telling about it, but: you couldn't ask to work for a better boss, really.

I don't have any specific hours. Usually hollers at me to tell me he needs me, which is when he expects an order in. It's my job to get the stock out of the boxes, price-marked and placed on the shelves. Lately I've been putting in about 6 hours a month, so I wouldn't call it lucrative even though the pay isn't bad. Stock prices keep going up, and even though gas is cheap again, and even after saving millions of dollars in fuel costs by routing the trucks to avoid left-hand turns, UPS shipping has never gone back down after going up.

Add to that the change in racing days for the season - four more this month, a half-dozen in January, and not many more in February; everyone will be too broke to buy anything, so why pack the shelves?

So yesterday there actually wasn't that much to unpack; I don't know how I managed to blow four hours there cuz I only emptied five boxes, mostly Numotizine that's been sitting there since the end of October. I guess it was filling out the bad check complaint packets from the Sherriff's office in Lisbon. We spent more time discussing how to fill then out than actually writing. That was fun, even though I didn't have a stool to sit on and I had to sit on the counter above the cash drawer and use a crappy ball point pen.

Oh, yeah, we did accounts payable. That's fun, but not as fun as sending out accounts receivable. Accounts receivable always brings up the great stories behind the bad checks we filled out the forms for yesterday.

Wow, it's already time for me to go to my first job. It's raining like heck out there, too. I wonder if I'm gona have to do anything. Perry Kerns was supposed to bring 4 horses in for after the break. I hope he doesn't, because by the sound of things outside I'll have soaked all my raingear by then.

Mercy Wins.

Wooo, Mercy won last night. I didn't stay up to watch the race.Mercy who? you must ask; so here's my post about Mercy from early in the year. I'm so thrilled even though realize there wasn’t much talent in the race.

With her it's been one thing after another; the shin, her attitude, races being cancelled, races not going her way, being nervous in the paddock, nervous in the gate, only running half way, and so on. But after a six- week layoff this summer, her demeanor changed, from anxious and fretful to bold and self-contained.I think she was mainly suffering from pain in her shin, and the fear of pain in her shin made her difficult to work with. That layoff gave her a physical break that she needed, and probably put her finally into a more confident state of mind. She seemed able to comprehend the whole picture.

We went out to train in company with Copper, the lead pony, allowing her to run away from him, and she loved beating him. She really got better all around. Even though she's a bitch to gallop, that makes it all worth it. And here's a perfect example of what I was talking about in the last post; about working together (which by the way, that post needs a lot of editing to be understandable):

Last spring Mercy was so difficult to work with, I felt as if I had caused it in her. Maybe when I realized she was dropping her head and taking hold of the bit, I began letting her progress too fast. Then she got a shin (epiphysitis) and she and I began fighting about how fast she could go, and time dragged on. The shin didn’t get better and the horse had to run, because she had been in training for eight months or something- no sense letting her lose conditioning, right?

But the problem was, from the time the shin got bad she lost the alignment between her physical and mental states. And on top of that, the two older horses in the barn were not earning a dime, so all the pressure was on her. Worse, it wasn’t coming from Lori, the owner-trainer, but from her owner-boyfriend, who cannot feel even a little of what a horse feels. All I wanted to do was have Lori stop with her and give her six months off, just to forget all the stuff that was making her so sour and to let that stupid shin heal.

People seem to think that if they need something, the horse must produce it. But this isn’t about the modern human experience; “Tommy you must learn to earn your keep, so do your chores or be punished.”

You cannot reason with a horse that way. They don’t know why they are being asked to continue in pain; only that they are being punished while in pain. That we feed and bed them for doing so is a stretch to ask them to understand- it’s an artificial relationship, and not something they require of each other.

That’s kind of odd, when you consider what’s so for humans, at least us american ones; that our work ethic has a moral imperative attached to it is so inseparable from our Protestant legacy. We are unaware that we work to please God; we look down on our neighbors if they don’t work hard. The horse doesn’t fear god, and cannot understand the room and board exchange, and doesn’t require its neighbors to produce or be left to die; the lazy members are just lazy, without any repercussion from their kind.

So we expect them to try when they do not feel well, which to them is a threat to their survival. They can only see that we ask them to die willingly or be forced into death unwillingly. And we hate the lazy ones among them and among ourselves. The horse is the less intelligent, but perhaps not the less practical, or the less ethical. Could we take a lesson from the horse?

OK, enough of the philosophical wandering; the whole point is, Sweeny couldn’t give the horse a break, and it took Lori the incapacitating event of giving birth to force a well-needed break for the horse on an unwilling grantor of same.

Somehow, providence shines when truth and reality are aligned. The truth was, the horse needed the break. The reality was, finally, that the horse was getting a break. Horse gets a break, horse comes back renewed physically, refreshed mentally; with a new picture in her mind. She expresses it with a winning performance.

And the best part is the Providence: Maiden Special Weights pays $12,644 to the winner, including the return of the jockey fee ($1,2640) to the West Virginia resident owner, plus any breeder award for having a West Virginia bred; it couldn’t have happened in a better race.

Nor at a better time. Lori owes me so much in gallop pay (another squeeze from the owner-boyfriend) I’ve been afraid to count it all up. I’m only glad I permitted myself to be patient, and rather than getting mad and cutting her off of my services, I’ve stuck beside her, the only change being that I got my pay horses first, before getting hers out.

I’ve been so broke myself, and some days, like Sunday, have been so absent of horses to gallop, I might as well have stayed home. How can I stand in judgment of her?

So now, on a high note, I leave my readers to go about my day off, while Providence continues to bestow favors; a buyer for the Hoover Carpet Steamer I advertised on Craigslist for the second time a week ago suddenly appeared in my email. Just when I was down to my last ten bucks and a hundred dollars in my checking account.

But the bottom line is, it makes a difference when you don’t work together in the interest of the horse, just as when you do: Lori’s significant other put the screws down and it forced us to do the horse an injustice. Once that pressure was off, the horse returned to us an equal measure of what we needed. I’m only so glad I worked with her through thick and thin, testing her way of going, adjusting to her needs in the weeks after Lori’s maternity leave, because the victory is indeed a sweet one. ..
Too bad I didn’t bet, though….

So where was I yesterday........

I'm gonna have two posts today, because I had an issue with my wireless and couldn't get the following column up after I wrote it. So this is my post for Dec. 16th:

So where was I yesterday? And I ran off to work only to find that none of my outfits were sending. So I got on three horses, left at 10, and went on a truly mediocre shopping trip, which included leaving one of my grocery bags at the store with 5 bucks worth of groceries inside.

I’m looking back and it seems that my last post was in March, just at the end of the long winter that everyone around here has to tighten their belts for. And right now we’re at the beginning of another. It’s like my uncle said to me once “you either have time, or you have money, but you never have both.” I hope I have both someday.


I was supposed to quit galloping on my birthday, which is on the 23rd, but I don’t see it happening. And the interesting thing is, at least to me, that for the first time I am enjoying doing it in spite fo the cold weather. Years ago I had made an enemy of the cold because my next-door neighbor used to bully me and I hated playing with her, so anything else I was aware of whenever I was with her got added to it. I distinctly recall coming in from a play session crying because my hands had frozen, and it seems that since then I have always feared that sensation (it’s a nasty one no doubt anyway). So far this year I haven’t cried once about it. Really haven’t had it happen (though we’ll have colder days in the new year than we currently have had.)

One of my trainer friends told me about their horse’s workout – a horse I worked – said they had the second fastest work of the day for 3/8ths. This is a horse I really like.

I really need to drop a disclaimer in here, because I don’t want these horses claimed (or not claimed.) Some of my friends have horses that are definitely worth claiming, for the 5K or so that they are running for. So here’s the disclaimer, for anyone who is considering taking one of the horses I mention; they all have issues, and many of them would be difficult to improve, as we’re already doing what’s possible with them. If you take one, you take the same risk as you do without knowledge of them. And I’ll take some of the credit for helping my people solve issues they have with their charges; without it, you can’t be sure how much you’ll have to fix (or be able to fix) when you get them.

With that said, I feel as though I can start nick-naming my horses (and trainers) again. I love writing about my horses; their idiosyncrasies, their progress, their strengths and weaknesses and the connection in general that I make with them.

I do all I can to meet my charges on their level. From the moment they leave the barn with me, it’s about them. Are they comfortable? How does today compare to last time? Are they quiet, signifying some internal discomfort, or quiet, signifying relief from the same? For example, a little filly I have been getting on (sharing duties with another exercise rider) for a couple months and who has tied up on a few occasions suddenly went good the other day:

The long version is, she obviously had mixed feelings about training for starters; crawling to the track slowly and trying to turn around, expressing tremendous discomfort – not a fearful discomfort, but really crabby and pissed off. When she would gallop, she would have difficulty switching leads from her right to her left. Unless she was allowed to really pick up the pace and reach out, she would bear out on the turns until she got the lead change in her back end, and even after that she would still bear out a bit while on that left lead.

I told her new groom Diana, what I had been saying about this. The trainer knew she had an ankle that bothered her, but nothing would improve about the gallop. Not that it had to, but it’s always good when a positive change appears.

This day, she went to the track pretty much the same (there is unfortunately nothing I can do to show her my sympathy except for talking to her, while I furiously kick her ribs to get her to keep walking). I went straight from the chute to pull up after the wire, a mile-as she was to run the next day. As she galloped into the first turn, she swapped leads without a hitch; no pulling on my left rein angrily for more slack, no attempting to run off as fast as she could. And the fact was, she was to run the next evening. I was amazed at how good she felt, and I told the groom when I returned.

The groom, Diana, said “well good; I’ve been painting her hocks.” “I mean she’s a different horse, Diana; she dropped her head an picked up the lead with no trouble. If you had seen her before and seen her today you’d know you did right.”

But between my sharing my experience with the groom, and the groom’s attentiveness to the horse in the stall and the shedrow produced another improvement, and that made all the difference in her performance. I even remembered that she was in, and bet $2 to Place and Show on her. She paid something like $38 to place. Not bad.

Another filly in the same barn ad a big turn around because the trainer kept working on an issue until he got it right. I didn’t bet on that one, but I should have- she was in a field of maidens in a never win two allowance, with only one other non-maiden in there. She paid a decent price, too, but the point is, it was his perseverance toward making the horse more comfortable that produced the result.

So that’s a great feeling- contributing to success, and working with the horse, and with others. I love it. And now it’s time to go to work. Ugh! 50 degrees yesterday, 20 degrees today. Later…!

In General....

I'm down to fifteen minutes for writing. So never mind, I'll have to write later...