The Toe Grab Rule

Well, yesterday was not intolerable, but I only got on seven horses; there’s a 50-50 chance of no training this morning, on account of it having snowed yet more, a fairly wet snow, meaning a fair amount of large clods of ice over the surface of the track. We’ll see…

The other day I had surfed on over (on my computer) to the female jockeys website of Chris Forbes’. I forget what I had originally been looking for, but I nearly always stop and check the interviews. So I was scrolling through them and noticed that Vicki Baze had one. I had never see it before, and the preamble said that she has her own business since retiring. I’m like, “oh, what business?” the name was Bon Chance Horse Shoes. First I thought maybe she was manufacturing horseshoes, but I went to the web site and what she's doing is creating decorated horse shoes.

These are really nice, and I suggest you check it out. The economy being what it is, these would make great wedding gifts, Graduations, and all-around notions to get for people when you just want to wish them luck. The stuff used to decorate them is quality stuff- beads and ribbons; as I said, you ought to check it out. (BTW, She didn't request that I place this link here, but I don't think she'd mind that I have.)

So getting back to what I was doing.. when I saw all the shoes, my first thought was Ed Burkle, my asshole boss! Because, if I haven’t already said something about it, there is a new rule in place that has affected us, as well as other tracks aross the country. Here at Mountaineer (as of Dec. 1st) horsemen are prohibited from using toe grabs that are over 2 mm. high on the front shoes.

This means that here at Burkle's Turf Supply we have a lot of obsolete shoes laying around right now. Ed keeps saying to me "one of these days we’re gonna spend a few hours grinding the toe grabs off of these.” (You know; with a bench grinder.)

I’m not enamored of doing this, mainly because I think it is a waste of time and probably something we’ll never get around to doing anyway. So when I saw all those fancy horseshoes at Vicki’s store, all I could think was “holy crap…There’s our ace! We’ll get rid of all these shoes by selling ‘em to Vicki!”

My mind even flashed to the blocks, stickers, jar caulks and other odd and barbarian-looking designs, some of which have been gracing the shop for a couple of decades. (Ed gets stuck with merchandise that goes out of favor after a trend passes. Like those freaking cowboy boots….) It’s like being in a museum sometimes.

I quickly penned Vicki an email, introducing myself and asking her about the shoes. She got back to me quicker than I thought. But the news was not the win-win situation I was hoping for;


“….I did just the same thing to help… (Northwest Horseshoe in Seattle)... They sold me at cost all of the toe-grab horseshoes. And although I don't usually use those ones, I found that I could use them in one particular design that I use the turquoise beading. I just bought a 100 pair and also stocked up last week. My main horseshoe that I use is the Victory Elite double 00 and I use thorobred's sidewinder……saddlehorse and barrel racing horseshoes.

Gosh, if I could have known earlier...”


Burkle said it was at least a nice gesture on my part. So it looks like we’re still on for the grab-grinding, unless I can think of something else.

As I was Saying before I was so Rudely Interrupted by Having to go to Work.....

Yesterday the track was closed. Covered in ice and snow. Charles stopped over there yesterday to have a look and told me that they were working it, so I suspect that it’s going to be open today. And it will surely be a busy day.

What I was saying before, about the horse sense for people, and where our behavior is rooted. We assume that evolution follows a path of adaptation, culminating, for example, in the opposing thumb and the development of our own ability to create any number of meanings for any single object or event. So we are always looking at animals as ‘lower’ forms of intelligence. I don’t deny this, but I want to make a point about the way we look at things:

Since we see things in terms of moving in a direction from simple to complex, we refuse to accept animal behavior as something that is alike to our own. We call it anthropomorphism and argue that people who do this are wrong to think that animals can be like us.

You see how our direction points us to blindness? It is not that they are like us. No way. They don’t get their behavior and language (such as it is) from us.

It is WE who are alike to THEM. It is we whose behavior is rooted in the more primitive behavior and languages we ascribe to them. If you want to see where we came from, look at them. See the Seven Sins as the things we once needed to commit in order to survive.
I’m not advocating that we ever adjust our expectations of humans to be lower than it is now – that’s not where I am going.

I am saying if you want to modify behavior in a human, see how it’s done with the animal, and use the advanced tools at our disposal to anticipate and channel our kids and our coworkers; it doesn’t even matter if we know we are attempting to modify each other’s behavior; to understand that, one already knows that when we behave as sociopaths, we behave as a primitive organism, for which there is no space in modern society. There you go. No need for morality – just “what works” and what doesn’t.

Along the Lines of "Horse Sense for People"

I am sitting here writing a letter to my new President. I hope to make it into a video. As I was writing, it occurred to me how much I see the human experience in terms of the equine one. This also brings to mind Monty Roberts’ volume on “Horse Sense for People” and the recent Flippen Group courses for educators, based on communicating with horses; for teachers to help gain respect, motivation and results in their classrooms (especially since I’ve heard this method so derided by people who are unaware of the fact* - that our own behavior is rooted in that of other animals, especially social ones such as horses).

BUT I’ll have to finish later- time to go to work again, and I have to pick up Barry in Chester, so bye for now.

*I now have to qualify that fact: Yes, I say it is a fact. But no-one need believe me. Let me put it this way, rather: Try it on for size; it isn’t necessarily true; but there is abundant evidence for it being so, and if you try it and it works then I have said something worth while.

8 Degrees of Separation - Between Jockeys and Gallopers

Yesterday was a welcome day off, as the track was not opened for training. The downside is that now we have to work today, and it’s colder than it was, by at least 12 degrees.

I asked Charlie why they cancelled racing; were the clods too big? not broken up yet? Heck, they worked the track all morning instead of letting us on. And he said it wasn’t the clods; it was the temperature.

I heard him mention on the phone to someone "Yeah, those Mexicans got together wiht each other and said 'don’t ride because we’re not riding!'" and created the deciding number of votes to cancel. Here’s the kicker; these guys are the same ones who used to be at the mercy of the leading riders; the main members of that group have finally decided to leave for parts elsewhere (because of the track conditions, and you can’t blame them.)

But now these guys are doing the very same thing that was done to them before; the riders on the best horses coercing the less fortunate to side with them - whenever they feel like taking off; resulting in unnecessary cancellations. They do this so that nobody else will have the opportunity to obtain those better mounts. How ignoble the ignoble become when they attain nobility. I thought only the already noble could be so!

Hey man, once I committed myself to something I always felt bound to see it through. I would never refuse to ride once I had engaged myself, and that for the sake of my connections and the Public. I might not offer to pick up other mounts, but I would ride the ones I was already on. I hated riding in the cold, but I never voted not to.

These guys sit in the indoor paddock till 2 minutes to post and go straight to the gate, then they ride their two minute race, spend five more minutes out there pulling up, returning and unsaddling, and they are back in the room. I know they are wearing pajamas; I WORE THE SAME DAMN THINGS WHEN I RODE.

So how come, at a temperature of 20 degrees, it’s too cold to ride? Track maintenance spent all morning breaking up clods and keeping us off the track at 20 degrees so that it would be good for the evening. But 20 degrees is too cold to ride? Fifteen was OK last week.

And now, and this is what bugs me about it so much, I have to go out there this morning, while it’s 8 degrees and only warming up to 20, tops. I was planning on having today off because it was gonna be too cold for the horses to go out and gallop.

But I’m gonna get dressed in my freakin’ snow boots, my wind shirt, sweater, hand warmers, double pair of socks and so on, all my freakin coldest-weather clothes, and work for four solid hours. And it will be four solid hours, because none of my charges went out yesterday, when it was nice enough. They'll all have to go today, regardless of it being too cold even for them.

But I'm just bitching. I wouldn't want to ride in the cold either. Only difference is I'm 50, and I don't wanna ride, period!

Feeling a Little Slack, I guess.

Well, I bumped off my difficult horses from the first outfit. The wife of a fellow I met at the Stewards’ School in ’07 has two or three for me to gallop every day, and while they can be tough, they are better behaved and easier for me to handle.

One of my perrenial inadequacies as a rider is my overly sympathetic hands. I must carry some low self-esteem that, like a disease, translates into horses getting the upper hand with me. If I have control, I let go of it. I avoid taking a strong hold until it’s absolutely necessary (which is usually too late). I’m always too permissive as far as what I allow them to get away with, all the while thinking; “I should give them a little slack; they’re being good. I have to stop giving that slack, because it’s too hard to get the slack back! Hell, they can drop-kick me any time if they try whether they know it or not, so why must I offer them the chance to find out?

Though not as brutally cold as Monday and Tuesday, yesterday’s air carried the sting of moisture that is equally uncomfortable. Today is going to be wetter still, but at least warmer, like 30s and 40s. Almost a heat wave! I don’t feel as averse to going out there today as I did yesterday. I think I’ll shut my eyes for the next hour before I leave for work.

I realize this is boring to readers; I just keep devoting my first (and best) hours to replying to emails and other little diddling tasks, and I always tell myself I won’ but I do.
Maybe I’m just a slack-cutter. I cut me slack; I cut them slack.

Tuesday

Tuesday, about 6 a.m.

Workedat Burkle's yesterday. Man, does he have a slew of 70's era cowboy boots. I don't know what kind of money they could bring, but they sure look good! He can't sell them in the store, so we're going to advertise them on the Internet.

Just at a glance, the two pair of Laredos with decorative stitching look to be the most popular. Teh ropers haven't changed in years. The Dingo square toes with the skinny ankle and the inside zipper are out-of-this-world cute! I'm putting an ad in Craigslist.

For the last two days my knees have been hot and swollen. I can't flex them. I looked up Rheumatoid Arthritis as a cause, and though I know I shouldn't get all worked up about possibly having this (one of my most dreaded diseases) I'm making a move to change my food sources to anti-inflammatory ones. Especialy since I blew my Health insurance on account of I can't afford it.

After my nice long and involved discussion yesterday about the horses that are so difficult to handle, the bay mare flipped me like a flapjack on to the track in front of the grandstand.

Actually, it was more like a slow motion surfing exhibition, followed by a crushing wave. When I tumbled to the ground, after five strides of escape speed sprinting I was forced into a ball. My helmet cover was pulled off from the force. But it's good to roll. When you don't you risk winding up like Christopher reeve.

Written over Saturday, Sunday, and Monday…..

Wow, I’ve been up since 3 yesterday (Sat.), the track did not open for training, and now I’m up again at 5 this morning (Sun.) and it’s taken me this long to get to this entry. I definitely have too many things to do.

Now it’s Monday, at 4 a.m. ….

As an update to the Catty Shack horse (that the owner calls Hogan), What his present owner and I have found out is that McGreevy only had him for his first win. After that he injured himself in the trailer; he kicked or something and cracked a hind sesamoid bone. McGreevy sold him to Eli Betancourt, who I’m guessing gave him the needed recovery time before finishing out the horse’s career.

The woman sent me links to photos of him and he looks like a five-year-old. He’s a very beautiful horse and has kept his youthful figure, bound as it is to a well-put-together frame.

I saw Jerry Norwood a few days ago and knew he wasn’t kidding when he said that the horse was cut out to be a pretty nice horse. It was McGreevy’s loss that the horse suffered an injury. Jerry had expected Catty Shack would never race again after that.

He informed me of how to get hold of McGreevy and Betancourt, and so far, Catty’s owner has made an initial inquiry. We’re waiting to hear back.

On the home front, it looks like I’ll have to go to work today after all. The bad weather is not supposed to hit until later this morning. Come ON, bad weather! I may be broke but nobody likes to work outside when it’s only 20o all day long. Yesterday I had to change my clothes at break time because the windbreaker layer was wet with sweat and I was starting to get chilled.

In my opinion, you have to keep your eye on the weather and choose your gallop days in advance. While that’s just common sense, few trainers seem to be keen on planning more than a day ahead, at most. In this game where everything matters, you lose when you don’t pay attention. Granted, it’s difficult to plan during the winter around here. It’s bad enough that you never know if your race will go (which is a year-round problem); add to that the chance that once you’re slated to run your date might be cancelled on account of the weather, and the futility of worrying oneself about whether anything matters is enough reason to ignore the local Storm Tracker report.

The downside to all the missed days is the relative rambunctious-ness of the horses when they finally do get to exercise. I’m galloping three for an outfit at the top of the hill that a person my size and age has no business sitting on. They’re all bigger and taller than average and don’t get enough training to begin with; much less in the bad weather.

Yesterday two of them went out; the first one cooled out bad and the second one returned with a bloody mouth. In hindsight, I can count on myself to be more cautious about handling them. But to be realistic; to spoil the crap out of it, feed it buckets of grain that it’s dying to burn off in three or less miles a week and then throw a pint-sized rider on the 16+h. -sized animule is to invite trouble. Finally, commanding us to backtrack (jogging only- no running or galloping) is the icing on that cake.

So this is how things went for me Friday:
The first one, a strapping bay mare (1500 lb) wants to begin her gallop on the road before we reach the track, and my attempts to restrain her translate to priming the engine from sixty yards out. At least we were permitted to gallop yesterday, but with the caution that we hold her down till she passed the chute. What the trainer missed (as we disappeared behind the maintenance shack) was a duel for open space between myself and she.

She scrambled to break my “cross” which is a way of holding the reins so that they are crossed over each other where the rubber grips lie, creating a frictional lock that places pressure on the bit (the more they pull, the more they pull against themselves). I turned her toward the fence; she rears up in defiance of the barrier and leaped sideways; I loosed the reins, pulling the left in a line through my knee, forcing her to circle; She reacted with a sky-leap to the right to escape me, I fail to be loosed by her and circle her again to the left; she tries me one more time; I circle again, and she lets me have control until I straighten her and get her just past the chute. Then off she goes! The rest of the gallop is not so bad, after the initial .22 for the first Quarter.

The second one, another tall though not as sturdy-boned chestnut, was to backtrack (jog only – in the opposite direction of traffic, along the outer perimeter of the oval. The footing on the outside rail was littered with chunks of frozen track surface. Somehow I had to stay off of it, and still on her.

It’s common practice that when a horse is difficult to control when backtracking to cock their head toward the outside rail. At varying degrees, this blocks their relative opportunity to take off. You really have to be there to understand the difficulty in straightening the beast out in that situation, because as much as we would all like to permit them to travel in a straight line with their bodies properly aligned, all they care about is making tracks into the great wide open.

From there, it’s only a matter of who’s the strongest. Believe me if you saw a photo of teensy me on this Goliath, you wouldn’t need to worry about losing your last fifty if you bet it on the horse. So angling toward the only potential barrier this morning was essential for me.

I did a pretty good job; most fo the time I was able to stay reasonably off the fence and out where the surface was smoother, with the mare’s head still cocked in case she tried anything. Till we got to the 6-furlong chute, where my plans always threaten to unravel.



The six-furlong chute is where the starting gate generally sits, between 8 – 9:30 (7:30-9 in the summer months). This chute requires a break in that all-important rail (you know, the one I happened to be using to block attempts at flight.

It’s important to me to relax a moment when a horse picks up speed crossing that 70-100 yard expanse; avoiding resistance keeps the neck muscles supple. If I don’t do that, it’s harder to get their head cocked again, and in fact I find it easiest to sit down and loose the reins a bit while the horse guides itself. Can you tell this is the voice of Experience? I don’t know what anyone else does, but I can tell you that horses hit their teeth on the Clubhouse Turn (just after crossing the chute) more than anywhere else, so we must be doing something similar.


And that brings me back to the present, wherein I am pulling my charge back into a slow hobby-horse from an open gallop. I failed in my control to prevent her from contacting the fence with her cocked head. Often it’s the teeth, but more often the front gums or the upper lip that hits one of the support brackets and gets cut. Today was one of those days when I actually heard the little thwap and thought “that must be a lip; sounded like a lot of flesh in there.” Sure enough I could see that the front of her muzzle was bleeding as we came off the track and made our way back to the barn.

I don’t blame the trainer for being put out, but I reminded him that he has me way over- mounted. I’m 116, and she’s 1600 for crying out loud. When it’s between the safety of the horse and the safety of me, I can’t be counted on to save both of us every time. I mean this happens every time the horse goes out- not the bloody lip, but the wrestling match; it’s to my credit that we manage to avoid the same accident as often as we do.

I won’t defend myself any more on paper here than to say I will always do the best I can to keep us both safe. If I return with a C- or D+ for performance, just chalk it up to A+ effort and get someone who can do it better than me.

The jocks you see on TV in the breeders’ cup don’t have to put up with this kind of behavior, because nobody wants to be responsible for putting Edgar Prado in an embarrassing position, much less the hospital. Compared to the average rider, high-profile jockeys are spared these circumstances, and my point here is you won’t see this on TV.

To the non-horseman it may look as though I don’t know what I’m doing out there, so I’ll say it not for the first or last time in my life: I’m a feather trying to fly the bird! If the bird must be tethered, I’m not a good prospect, and I‘ll be the first to acknowledge that. There are lots of big, strong, heavy-handed people who can wrestle the beast into submission. But the reason I’m still alive and in with love this game is that I love being a feather who can fly the bird, untethered.

Discussion Board..

Please have a look at my Website's News Page to get an update about the forum I'm begining. We'll be able to discuss issues here that are important to the health, longevity and popularity of horse racing, especially here at Mountaineer.

http://www.thefarturn.net/news.htm

Oh, and read my post below, about my cousin, Leah's dream of being on the USET eventing squad!

Leah's Dream of the Oympics

Some really wonderful things have happened lately. The first is that I recently got a letter from a woman named Kim about Jerry Norwood. Here's the note she sent me:

Hi,
I am sorry to bother you...but I was wondering if you could help me with any info on Jerry L. Norwood who was a horse breeder? I came across your blog when I was searching his name to try to get any info on him.
I own a horse that I have traced back to him...he bred the horse. I was just looking for more information/pictures or anything on my horse from his racing days. I am not even sure if this is the same person you mentioned in your blog....he was supposedly in PA then?
My horse will be 23 this coming year.
If you know any leads I can follow...I really appreciate it!!
Sincerely
Kim


Remember my post about Jerry? (Saturday, Jan 18, 19 2008, scroll down the page )and the half-broke horses I was talking about? Well, that's the same Jerry. He's been around a long time, and this is one of the horses he bred. She calls him Hogan but his real name is Catty Shack.

This is the second instance of someone contacting me regarding the history behind a retired racehorse. I'm beginning to think that a smart thing would be to create a database of retirees and what their careers were like.

This is also the second time that photographers have been either deceased or no longer working at tracks that the horse won at. The point we're at with Catty Shack is that we have to find Jim McGreevy if we want to get his win pictures. I met a McGreevy at Thistledown when I was there, and at that time I think he was shoeing horses. Do't know if he's the same one, but anyway, Jerry sold Catty Shack to Jim for 20K and Jim trained and raced him for his entire career. The horse ran in 33 races and won 4, making about 45K. He's a gorgeous horse; she sent me links to photos of him. He doesn't look 23! He looks like he's in his prime.


I think it would be a good idea to start a Website for people who have retirees and want to find out about their horses’ careers. It is such a compassionate thing for them to do, and Thoroughbreds are so gifted at returning sensitivity and affection; what better way to honor your noble friend than to treasure his records? (Even if he retired as a maiden).

Just two days ago I got more exciting news, from my Cousin in Richmond, VA. Her name is Blair. She has 3 kids; on son and two daughters. They are my second cousins, once removed. The daughters are both horse lovers, as was Blair. The youngest, Leah, is about 10 and is evidently an accomplished rider at her age. Not only is naturally physically talented, but she also has very mature intuition with regard to her mounts. To me that's important; when you can specifially ad instantly identify subtle signals that the horse communicates, you gain the ability to make ongoing adjustments to optimize their performance. That's often the difference in a few points or ticks on the clock.

She has her focus set on making the USET and competing in the three-day eventing competition. You have to be good, but you also have to be well-mounted. For her, this could be hard, since she is far from being connected, and obtaining a good horse is a costly and daunting prospect for a family with no liquid assets. You’re always well-mounted in the Olympics; but you must be well-mounted to get to that point. She has a long road to travel and will need considerable sponsorship.

So I'm going to take a moment to advertise Leah's Website and read her very articulate descriptions of her experiences. Please donate if you can afford to; every little bit is appreciated; she cannot get there without you. Also please have a look at Leah's slideshow (you can also see it on her wesbite):