The Snubby Days of Autumn

I suppose it’s true that the economy has hit us all, but here at the track the impact is articulated as the newest handy excuse for low pay, slow pay, and no pay. At the same time; a gal like me can handle it; I’ve got a man to lean on, a savings to go through, a house to sell, and other talents to trade. But nothing smarts like disrespect, and for a gal in my shoes this is articulated as low pay, slow pay and no pay.

If one of my clients has more than one gallop girl, and one of those gallop girls is a man, the man gets paid, on time, and in full. The girl (that would be me) gets the excuse. Sometimes she doesn’t even get that unless she asks.

If the man gallops the 2-year old that’s never seen the track, compensation is assumed to be $20. You don’t snub a guy with $10. And that’s the whole ball of wax, right there; you don’t snub the guy with $10. That’s an insult. And you don’t say you didn’t get to the ATM machine yet, and you don’t say (as the rider prepares to bounce off to the next horse with only minutes to spare before the track closes) “got change for a hundred?” or “I have a check in my truck. Got a pen?”

Everyone knows riders don’t carry pens or anything resembling pens, pencils or long narrow sharp objects with them. If no one ever impaled themself with a pen, it’s still unlucky and everyone knows this. Just like not using tape over support bandages; why tempt fate?

So after the rider put his ass on the line for you, you snub him. You might as well ask for a fistfight.

That’s what all bar fights are about: disrespect. You flirt with a guy’s girlfriend; you say something emasculating about a guy; you say something emasculating about something a guy identifies with, like his politics or his sports team, and it’s on, so there’s no debating the fact that men are very sensitive creatures who don’t like to be crossed. I don't even have to be a guy to know this; but people seem to be unaware of the fact that sunbbery isn't lost on us women.

I may not have as much testosterone, but I never miss a snub. My days have been very snubby lately, and it’s really pissing me off.

I’m considering not coming to work in the hope that some of my snubbers will capitulate, but I hate to make them suffer for the misdeeds of others.

SHOULDA, WOULDA, COULDA... Maybe Next Time.

Well, here’s another great bet I missed out on:

For any of you Facebook friends who have been reading this; my trainer buddy Jessie Pizzuro had been sent a 2-year-old horse to get him OK’d to start. She has a photo of the horse in question among her pages (though I don't know if you would get to see it). The thing about Mountaineer Park is that it’s a great place to do this because every Saturday morning we have a schooling race. This takes place at 8:30 and is one of those things I would, if I happened to be in Marketing or Media Relations, highly recommend and advertise for people to watch. But if I were in media relations, I would make spectators aware of every little nuance in the sport before during and after a race. What do I know, though? I’m only a spectator who got too close.

Anyway, Little Chestnut (our nickname for him, for he’s a small red coated horse) was sent to her by a trainer at Charles Town to get OK’d in the schooling race. The first time he went, he was fractious and broke poorly. Although he had done lots of gate work at a training center, we learned that he was mentally unprepared to handle his new surroundings. But other than that, he was a good mannered and willing youngster…with some shining early talent!

In horse racing there’s more than one kind of fast. Little Chestnut’s kind of fast is that he doesn’t cut blistering fractions, but has a ground-covering stride (for a little guy) coupled with exceptional endurance. He’s kind of horse that has enough speed to place himself at a strategic advantage early and enough stamina to wear down any rivals in the final stretch.

The first thing we noticed was that he didn’t get tired, ever. He could gallop two miles and not take a deep breath, and could be hard to pull up after only one mile. He also had a nicely balanced body and a smooth way of going. Everybody liked him, and physically he was precocious enough to overcome both emotional immaturity and bad racing luck. All we had to do was get him OK’d. He was very smart, if just a tad high strung.

We spent the next week or two returning him to the Mountaineer Park gate and getting him used to the environment and procedure. The repetition was agreeable to him; he got the OK, but he didn't get to run at Mountaineer. He returned to the training center. I kept meaning to put him in my Virtual Stable. *

So you know the rest of the story, don't you? I never put him in my virtual stable. The first time I got the news that he ran, I asked:
“Did he win?”
Reply: No. (He ran 6th or something).
Whew, still time. Gotta do that. Put him in my stable...Then he ran again:
“Did he win?”
Reply: He ran third.
By now any savvy horse-playing gallop girl SHOULDA gotten their ass on top of the matter. But Me? I have one excuse; I WOULDA, but I’m not a horseplayer.

I COULDA, but I’m a bloody idiot.

Did you view the chart? In case you don’t read these well, he paid $35 bucks. If I bet just $10 to win on him, I make $115. Never mind wheeling an exacta with him on top; that would have cost me $18 and I would have netted $432.

And the thing about it is that these are the once in a lifetime chances. He’ll never have a chance to be that kind of overlay again. In fact I’m a bit surprised that he went off at such a price, but that’s why it’s so special. I don’t even have to be near him to know that his last start, where he finished third, was no accident at all. Most people don’t like to bet maidens, but when you get on them every day you get to knowing when you’re sitting on one that has the ability, the will and the education to run a winning race.

Yes, it’s truly a thrill when you think to yourself; “and I got that horse ready”, or “I helped get that horse ready” when you see that it won. And nothing adds to that thrill more than; “yup. I blew it again. SHOULDA, WOULDA, COULDA. Maybe next time...”
....which then you have to wait until another one comes around like that. Honest to God. $35!


*I know I have readers who aren’t familiar with horse racing, so for those people - the Virtual Stable is the Fantasy Horseracing counterpart to fantasy football; you get notified when your selected performers will be performing. If you’re interested, here’s a bit about the Virtual Stable offered by Equibase.

Becoming a Rider Who............

My computer was in the crapper for a couple of days. After attempting to fix it I handed it off to my tech guy who said the OS could not be repaird so he had to do a clean install. Cost me $40 but I'm glad to have given him the business. He lost his job and has a big nut to hang onto, although his wife is a nurse and that helps with the bills and the two kids and three massive Bull Terriers they rescued.

My young friend Erin chose not to return to college this fall, and is hoping to find a job in Florida for the winter, preferably with racehorses. I can see that she wants to gallop, and I know that she wants to learn about breaking and training horses, although from there it's anyone's guess what she might get into. The one big strike she's had from the beginning is that like me, she lacks background. Don't get me wrong; she has done many other things and is good at them, and that doesn't hurt - tobe educated never hurts. The bad part is that kids with absolutely no other talents or interestes have spent a lot more time in their lives riding their horses. That they have had more hours in the saddle shows.

I'm going to digress for a moment about author Malcolm Gladwell's most recent work, called Outliers. Not gonna explain what the name means, but in the first chapter he demonstrates a phenomenon about the top Canadian hockey players; all of the big stars were born in the first three months of the year (with maybe one or two exceptions). The relative maturity and potential opportunity level of these players compared to their younger counterparts translates, he argues, to their success.

The reason is that when the skills evaluations come for these players they are not classified according to their chronological age. They are evaluated at their school's class level. The older one is at the time of evaluation, the more developed the skills are likely to be. In addition to having the advantage in the test scenario, these older boys have generally had more time on the ice, which has improved their skills over their younger classmates. This happens from year to year as they are evaluated at every grade level. Since the older ones at age 7 and 8 are visibly superior, they wind up with more ice time from then on, right through their senior high school years.

One of the conclusions from the book is that there is a magic number for developing skills in anything. That number is about 10,000 hours. For the average person, this would be roughly ten years. Obviously, for the student Hockey player born in July, ten years could take longer if he spent more time on the bench than the ice.

With racehorses, everyone knows that June foals don't make promising derby prospects; everyone wants to be born on January 1st, becaue all thoroughbred birthdays are dated January 1st; even the ones that are only five or six months old. You can't be ready to run in a race for three-year-olds when you are only two-and-a-half, much less win it.

But the brain doesn't forget anything, although neural pathways can become rusty with time; two hours here and two hours there still mean something provided the brain isn't damaged by age or injury. Can she ever be perfect, or does that mean she'll even be as good or as talented as anybody else, because she's starting out with a disadvantage?

I'm not done digressing; Gladwell also presents evidence for another case in his book; Your IQ may measure your intelligence and prove you smarter than the next guy, but for all practical purposes (at least in our current culture) the last ten or twenty points doesn't reward the owner of the genius brain. The bottom line, for my purposes, is; you don't have to actually be the best; you only have to be "good enough" in Gladwell's own words.

These things I'm talking about can be argued somewhere else; all I am saying is that there is evidence to support the points I want to make; if it works for you I'm glad. It definitely works for me.

The point I am going to make here is this, and now I am gonna bring us back to my living room and my friend Erin:

Give Erin more hours in the saddle and she will ride good enough to enjoy the rest of her career in riding.The same will hold true for other areas of learning that she will be undertaking as she goes out into the cruel world of work, where at some time or another she will be evaluated as incompetent, incapable, unguideable, or all three.

At Erin"s current level of riding, she is going to find a lot more work on the ground than in the saddle. Once she passes a critical point, she'll get more opportunities, but she'll find it frustrating I'm sure. I came around the same way. I had a limited amount of hours in the saddle and it was difficult to find learning opportunitied once I got out into the real world. I remember after my stint at the Ranch, my first job was as a show groom. I worked for Ellin Dixon, a member of the Widener family, at their Estate just north of Philadelphia County, in Flourtown. I had always wanted to work there but the job wasn't a riding one. I spent a month working as an Au Pair girl for a family near Kennett Square, but although I got to ride, it wasn't nearly as much as I had hoped it would be. The greatest thing that hapd for me while I was there was that I bought my Caliente helmet, and I have had it ever since.

I went to Lavery Farm, in Ocala, and my very first job when I pulled into the farm was to wash the dogs, Mickey Minnie and Sean (Airdales). But I did get to ride there. I spent my summer as a groom at Finger Lakes Racetrack near Rochester, NY. My second year there I broke my knee and Mrs. Lavery said I would never ride at her farm again so I thought I was useless and should give up. So after I recovered I went back to Philadelphia, and did several meaningless jobs; Worked at resturants; Bain's, La Conversacion, Fratelli's, in various positions. I spent three months actually trying to sell Encyclopedias, but I was so afraid of people and had so little self-confidence I never sold any - at least, not to anyone who's credit passed the inspection. I took a two weekend course on how to do TV commercials, given by one of the original TyD Bowl men (forget his name). Cost $90. I was so broke by the time I went back to College at Alfred that I couldn't pay attention.

During school, I found a job and a place to stay with a local farmer named Harry - who happened to have racehorses. Between academic seasons I went back to Finger Lakes for a summer job. You can really make a lot of cash at the track. When you're a kid, you have nothing but time - no responsibilities, nobody to answer to. You can freelance all day long and make a ton. I bought a car and insurance. When I left college, I finally managed to get a gallop license at Finger Lakes, thanks mostly to Harry, who let me gallop his horses whenever we shipped up there. I was breaking them on the farm, so I fit them well at the track. So what did I do but go to California to see the west coast and amke six bucks a gallop instead of three.

GOing to CA was like starting all over again. I found myself on the ground. I tlooked like my only chance at getting my license at Golden Gate was gonna be if I slept with the Outrider, whose offer I declined. Unfortunately I couln't stay way from men. They were like flies, everywhere and they never stopped asking me, if not for a lay, then for a date, at least...Then this fellow Scott Simmons finally managed to wrap himself around me. Men are wonderful, but if you want to pursue a career you have to be with one who supports you in yor dreams; not demands your attention. Scott could've been worse, but he altered my focus from what I really wanted. The upside however, was no more harassment from anybody; including Outrider Ben.

I got into a car accident and after 8 months was awarded a settlement thagt I used to live on until I could finally support myself galloping. I had a car, a 1950 plymouth that I drove all the way to San Mateo every day, where that outrider let me have a license (without the vulgar gratuity attached) and I jogged horses (really still coudln't gallop yet, not very well). Finally one day when the San Mateo County fair was running, a quarter horse man asked me if I wanted to go to TX. Austin, to be exact. There, at Manor downs, hesaid, there wa snot a single gallop person, and I could gallop probably for everyone there.

Off I went to TX in the 1950 Plymouth. And it was there that this family, the MacArthurs, put me through the gymnastics that finally made a rider out of me. They put me in the round pen on the pony with no bridle and chased me around in circles. "Lean back", they kept saying; "LEAN BACK!" Aftera couple of days I coudl actually lean back till my head almost touched th epony's rump. Two other gallop people showed up and I still had to take less opportunities than I had hoped for, but finally, one day;

I was galloping one of the fillies that was sceduled for an upcoming futurity trial (not one of the outfits favorites, so I got to ride her). I was feeling a little tired and I stretched my legs out and almost locked my knees. My toes turned in and my feet went forward. Two old fellows went past me on a pair of colts and they both exclaimed in unison, and I will never forget this as long as I live; "She dit it! She got it!"

So I finally had my seat. I began trying in 1979, and here it was 1988. Probably one of the slowest career development of all time. That wasn't my call; if I had been born to a racing family I would have been doing it since I was ten. But it took me ten years to get about half the hours I needed to really be adequate. Anyway, I returned to Finger Lakes in the Fall of 1988, and after two more years (roughly) I was what I would call capable. All along the way, people said I wouldn't beable to. Harry said it; Mrs. Lavery said it; Outrider Ben said it; the MacArthur's shook their heads, God bless 'em....and al that time there was only one thing that kept me clinging to my hopes: I was more afraid of my unwillingness to do anythign else than I was of my inability to ride a horse.

Even now I have a hard time imagining doing a J.O.B.. I'm afraid I'd call in sick fivedays in a row and then just tell whoever hired me the truth; I really just don;t want to do it...

If I can help Erin avoid the time and trouble I could not, I will have made a difference in my life.

And now I'm gonna get some shuteye before I have to go to work. I have 3 hours!

The ROAP Video Exam; Better Late Than Never, I guess

Finally I hear we are going to get to take the review test for the video portion of the ROAP exam. The whole thing has been nonsense from the beginning. Still, I am not placing blame on anybody. The course is still taught largely bro-bono by experts in the various areas of racing, so;

a) The people who know how to watch a video are also the people that made the video.

b) These people know how to watch a video, but not how to make one.

SO, for their sake I am going to explain how to do this.

Making a Video of 8 Races:

1) Make sure all of your footage is in the same video format; if you are a video idio(t), you just get out your trust-y file conversion software (AVS4YOU is a good one, and only about $50 for more functions than you will ever need). Follow the simple instructions. It's easier than bakin' a cake.

2) Once you have all your converted files (properly labeled, of course. You know how to label a file). For our purposes, let's say you have them in Windows format. That's a popular format (WMA, WMV)

3) Place the clip you plan to use first in your trust-y movie-making software (such as the popular Windows Movie Maker).

4) Add text to your movie clip: Let's assume you have three views of each race; the Pan, the Head on, and Mountaineer would be the 3/8 Pole. SO you put the cursor at the beginning and click on "add text", And when the application pops up, Put your text in; "Race #1; Pan Shot. Then, at the junction between the Pan and the Head on, place your cursor and click Add text. At this point, you want to see if you can let maybe twenty or thirty seconds to pass, and that's easy enough, although I can't tell you exactly how to do it. But it's all in english and it's intuitive design; it'll be right there.

Then, once you're done with that, do the same thing for the 3/8 Shot.

And that wraps up video # 1.

5) do this will all 8 or 12 clips, making sure to label and run some blank time in between each view.

6) Place them all together in the same folder, and make sure that you have them labeled so that they fall naturally in order whenever you open it. To do so , you might have to label them so: 0001, 0002, or you might not. Just make sure they are in the order you want them so that they fall in the same order as your programs on the paper portion of the test.

7) take that folder and put it on a CD. If there is too much data, put it on a memory stick with sufficient memory to store all the videos.

8) be smart: make sure you have a copy of the program on the same storage module.

9) Now, check it out; when you place it on your computer, all you have to do is highlight all ofthe video files and load them into your media player (presumably Windows). You should, if you have the information viewable (on the right side) see each race; race #1, Race#2 and so on, queued in order. You can watch each video separately, one at a time. That way, if the person viewing needs to back up, they will not accidentally back past the point they want to see, which in the original video form has meant as far as a race or two prior.

That's the complaint; you can't review, because it's what I would call a Jumbalaya. Everything' s in there, but none of it is identifiable for what it is. It's a single hour-long video. One can't slide a slider that infinitesimal distance to find a review point, causing people to run over time and fail the exam.

10) be proud of your students because now they can all pass the freakin' test.

The Thoroughbred Stimulus Program

I meant to say that with regard to Casey’s Girl, the filly that won last week, was bred by one of my Facebook (and originally a Mountaineer person), Jennifer Brooks. This means that all the money Casey has earned so far this year (about 12,000) PLUS any other dough she racks up will be awarded to Jen next February.

Due to the tireless efforts of the West Virginia Breeders Association to fatten the wallet of the WV Thoroughbred Development Fund, we now have lotsa Government $$ to compete for.

And not only that, but Lori also gets money in February just for being the current owner. This is not the actual money she earned, the purse money has been paid out already. This is the equivalent of a matching fund! There’s nothing better then knowing that if you can just make it to the second month of the year, you’ll be able to buy oats for your horses and shoes for your kids.

Last spring, Lori had surgery done on both of her home-breds. One had a slab fracture of the knee and one had a fractured cannon bone. Believe it or not, they both apparently won their respective races with these injuries; a testament especially to Mercy, the little chestnut and older sister.

She would go out to train twice a week, and although she would be falling down sore, the vet couldn’t see anything on his x-rays, so she had to keep going. This is a true dilemma for a horseman (woman). You have spent four months getting your young horse fit enough to run, you’ve run it several times and now it’s fit enough to win. It also has clearly understood the nature of the game and what’s at stake.

Everything’s ready; you’re on “go”, and suddenly the horse is limping.

You’ve spent a thousand dollars just on exercise bills (just on me – that’s my job; Exercise). 14 weeks of feed – about 14 bags at 15 bucks a pop, so that’s $210, plus at least 4 bales of straw for bedding a week at 3 bucks, $170, hay 2 bales a week at 5.00, $140, and of course there are the supplements; You’ve got your 30 days of vitamins; roughly $50 so that’s bit over $150, plus you hafta have an iron supplement ($16 x 3), a glucosamine / msm source ($12.95 x 3), and some B1 if he or she is nervous, or some other supplement the vet says your trainee could be lacking.

Then, you have 3 visits from the farrier, $300, one visit from the tooth fairy (dentist) $50, and visits from (or to) the horsie doc for snotty nose, cough, a touch of colic or bouts of tying up syndrome (sever muscle cramps that can nearly immobilize a horse and cause it to drop to the ground if not kept moving or given pain relief). And don’t forget to add the cost of prescriptions: Sulfa, Penicillin, Bute, Banamine, Electrolytes, DMSO, Tagamet, Clenbuterol, Lasix (I’m surprised the French haven’t accused Uncle Sam of biological warfare).

Cha-ching! Total: about $2500. In the meantime, you have nothing coming in, because your job is training the horse, so you hafta pay all your other bills, too. Plus the horse doesn’t win right away; it’s still learning and by the time it’s ready to win it may have raced several times, adding two more months of expenses PLUS the costs of race day medication, and someone to assist you for the event (that’s if it can win because maybe it can’t but you don’t know ‘til you’ve tested it).

You’ve emptied your checking account and maxed-out your credit, and your horse is ready to bail you out with a tremendous performance in which it must best nine others like itself backed by nine others like you, and now the horse is lame.

You have a choice: to scratch the horse and feed it for another two weeks and hope that’s all it will be laid up for, then work another week to get it back to where you want it before you can enter again (except you can’t afford to buy the straw, the hay and the shoes for another three weeks), or run the horse. So unless the vet can tell you not to, you run.

That’s a way of life for a lot of horseman, and especially true for horsemen here at Mountaineer Park; unless they have really strong backing from owners that have tons of dough and no place to spend it. In fact, a favorite saying of racehorse people is that you can build a small fortune in this business - provided you begin with a large one. There are very few people who can afford to do that.

Asking why we do what we do is like asking why anyone would be trying to climb the Corporate ladder…We like working with horses, dressing casual every day, telling dirty jokes at the top of our lungs and harassing each other needlessly. And if you leave the track and go to the farms and keep going to all the places that have a few racehorses, you discover why this industry is so important. It employs a lot of people.

And I’m sure if you ask a horseman about their animals, their replies would demonstrate that most of them do love their horses, and love the seven days a week with no sick days or holidays. The reason I do it is that I have to have my work be my play, or else I’m just doing a job. And I had to cover my social life while working because when I’m done then I want to go home and be by myself, which I also love. And it saves money if you never have to go out at night ‘cuz out’s where you go when you leave the house every morning. So I have it all. All except money and power.

But I digress; while the whole point of the Thoroughbred Development fund is to improve the breed in the state of West Virginia, and whether it does actually do that remains to be seen, the one thing I can say with certainty is that February is Christmas for the horsemen of the Northern Panhandle. Without it I don't know what we'd do right now, as bad as the economy has been.

The Girl Loves Horses

Much has happened since I last posted.

I had a really bad couple of days at work.

I thought I was gonna have a meltdown on account of trying to get things going faster and then suddenly not having anything to do, but that has been reconciled.

My friend and protégé Erin is having her share of difficulties getting started at the racetrack – nobody wants to use her until she has some experience and she can’t get any experience unless someone uses her – and I have suddenly been too busy to help her. The bad horses I was getting made me believe I was causing them; by just agreeing to help the wrong people, or by being inattentive and preoccupied.

I was having trouble communicating my desire to get paid for my work. That issue resolved itself into having even more trouble getting paid, but less trouble communicating about it.

Finally everything broke through and I feel like things couldn’t be better and to top it off, people are thanking me for all kinds of stuff. The money is still slow, but the economy has hit us, too.

It has been cloudy and rainy for a few days and began to rain just as things were winding down Friday morning. My clients are not quite fast enough to enable me to get on 10 or 11 a day, but that has been my choice. I love the people I work for, and feel that it’s somehow wrong to bark out “rush rush rush” all the time.

It can’t be all about money for me at work. It has to be about the horse. I want to ride them to the track and back to the barn and I don’t like people having to lead them down there for me and switch off at the bottom of the hill. If, to do it consciously and without getting all flustered means taking those few extra minutes helping tack up or riding back and forth, I’m happy with that when the people I work with have done what they can to have everything go smoothly.

I’m not getting on six before the break every day as I wished. But I’m satisfied because I let go of my own self-pity long enough to say what I needed. The extra effort to make things go smoothly for me makes me feel appreciated, and I think that is all any of us really want, more than money.


So YESTERDAY…NO, THE DAY BEFORE yesterday, I went out galloping with Erin, who had asked me to help her get a summer job at the track and is now attempting to get up to galloping. She’s too big to be a jock, but loves the track and racehorses - at least so far, better than anything else. She’s galloping a horse we call Captain that is a little too green for her. He isn’t bad, but he won’t go forward. Looks to be that although he's been gelded, his testosterone is still elevated, and especially with male colts you really have to get behind the engine and get them to scoot forward.

The thing about us humans is we like to use our hands to hang on, and most of us, to do this, must lean forward to have a grasp of some part of the horse. It doesn’t come naturally to lean back. Still, it makes more sense to do this when on horseback. That is, if you are short of the level of impulsion that you desire.

If a panther jumps on the horse’s shoulder, the horse will duck away, either left, right, or backwards. Thousands of generations of horses have learned this at the cellular level; it’s a reflex just like jumping when frightened. Lots of weight on the shoulders begs that reflex.

On the other hand, if the panther jumps on the horse’s ass, the horse goes forward.

So it makes sense to get back on the horse’s ass to get it to go forward, except that our instinct is to reach for the closest thing. So we reflexively lean forward and grasp the horse’s mane. In doing so, most people allow their entire body to shift forward – from the hips. But that reflex actually threatens to trigger the horse’s reflex. Or worse, it does trigger that reflex and the horse winds up running free and unhindered probably somewhere in the direction from whence the two of you came.

Older horses who have learned “all about riders” are incidentally kind enough to overlook the mistake, opting instead to go faster. (Actually, that's a sort of tounge-in-cheek joke; because half the reason so many novice gallop people get run off with, only to hang on more tightly, only to get run off with even worse, and on and on... )

It’s difficult to resist the impulse to hang on in that fashion, and it takes a certain amount of inner thigh muscle development. You have to be able to sit with your ass back and your feet forward. That’s at least part of why you can tell someone what to do, but they will look like they aren’t listening; they think they’re doing it, or they’re trying to do it, but it’s just not there yet.


So Erin is riding a bit too far forward and horse is confused. As soon as she gets her center of balance farther back on Captain he’ll go forward instinctively, then he’ll have learned something, too! Then she can stop clucking and tickling him with her stick; right now he has no idea why she is doing this.

After she gets it down pat, she probably won’t remember how to do it the wrong way, but until she does, the horse cannot learn what she wants.

Bear in mind, he also probably wants to play and maybe be mischievous, because after all, he’s a young horse and that’s what’s fun about being a young horse; telling jokes and being spontaneous. In fact what's happening with Erin is that Captain thinks she's playing a game and he's honestly trying to accomodate her. He has no concept of the reality of racing looming in the near future.

I shoudn't digress so far, but I want to add that when you change the scenario it changes the dynamic; place Captain beside anther horse for a week, and his attention will focus on the other horse as playmate, and allow the rider to play a more dominant role as coach.

Cassie has the same problem when she rides him, although she has more hours in the saddle and is a little farther along than Erin. Nobody wants to let the horse’s head go but it's awfully hard to steer when they get behind the bit, which is what Captain is doing. Learning to play with the rider instead of gallop can be counter-productive. Nobody wants a racehorse that tells jokes and is spontaneous when the objective is winning a race.

Poor John Holder needs Junior to pay for his oats in five months, not plod around bobbing his head and kicking the air!

Which reminds me that Captain is a beautiful gelding. I took a video of him with Erin aboard.

And that brings me to the next exciting event of late; that this young woman actually came to visit when I invited her over. I wanted to tell her about my career and how it sucked. No, no, actually it didn’t suck; it was fantastic and I’m so glad to have had it. But my career was about experiencing life and learning to ride any horse, as opposed to getting somewhere or becoming someone – which I still managed to do in my own little way. Oh, yeah, and having something to write about (which I haven’t even begun to do!)

So, Erin comes over on, um, Friday. A nineteen year old person might actually be my audience. It’s one thing to talk to a group, but another entirely to hang out one-on-one, at least for me. I’ve always been nervous and self-conscious about that; still she managed to put up twith me. She stayed couple of hours and I showed her all my photos and tols her about my career. After she left I realized I never said a word about being a jockey and never showed her a win photo.

The last thing I said as she was leaving was; “if you got nothing else out me jabbering at you for two hours, just know two things: first, when things suck or something bad happens, you are not alone. Whatever has happened to you has undoubtedly happened to someone else, somewhere else, at some other time. Second: when it’s good, it’s really good.”

So the next day (Saturday) she agreed to take a horse to the gate for someone she didn’t know, from the receiving barn. Everything bad that could happen happened, except for she didn’t get injured.

It was schooling race time, so he had to tell the trainer she couldn’t jog him to the gate (I guess the horse was gonna be too tough and he didn’t want her to gallop it) then she got on the track and the horse was wheeling or something and she asked Barb to help her, and Barb (the Outrider) freaked out and sent her back, after a tongue-lashing about not picking up receiving barn horses with a provisional license and anyway she (Barb) used to have the horse and it was a flipper, and what the hell was she going to the gate for?

Naturally word spread like an oil spill to poison half the back side with; “what the hell was that girl thinking?” and now she gets to carry that stigma – of having done something stupid.

Nobody seems to remember when they were just starting out and they were the stupid one. Either that or else our "village" uses strong language and sound reprimands to "raise the child". Still, I honestly think there’s an element of satisfaction whenever somebody new blows it; people have only one way of thinking, and that is, if one does something wrong, it’s bad. So when somebody new does something wrong, everyone else is happy to point it out to mitigate the seriousness of their own past offenses (which nobody remembers but them anyway).

As far as I’m concerned there is no wrong, when you are starting out. Or if there is, there's at least no bad. And there’s no right, either. There’s only trying to do whatever you can, and that is all positive, as in; it’s a three-dimensional event. Erin’s acting on her dreams and that’s a good thing. When you start with no prior experience of how to go about something, you have to make mistakes, and almost invariably that’s the first thing you do.

You have to keep going out there with the willingness to bounce left and right if you want to find the center, and bouncing left and right is bound to put you in out of bounds territory. There’s no such thing, in my opinion, as shame in making any glaring mistake. You can do wrong but it doesn’t make you bad. And you can do right and wrong at the same time, even if you are the only one who sees the right part (and you probably will be).

Anyone who does everything right the first time without introduction is lucky. If they never miss they’ve never learned. And I suppose it’s true, too, that they may have never needed to learn, but then so is it that they are lucky. They are the Lucky Few; they don’t even figure in the bell curve. The rest of us could lighten up.

I couldn’t wait to tell Erin how pumped I was that she took the initiative, but she left after that and I never found her till the next day. I told Barb I was helping her and that I was glad that she tried to do something even if it was wrong. It tells me how committed she is, that she could take that bold of a step (for readers who have no sense of what galloping out on a racetrack is like that was one scary thing to try. Some veteran gallop people will not seek work out of the receiving barn).

She doesn’t have any direction yet, though. If she’s anything like me she’ll probably go back to school later when her idea gets a little clearer and she knows what’s out there.

Anyway, I saw her the next day (Sunday) and told her. And in the meantime, Lori’s horse Casey’s Girl won, which is really great because Casey’s education was very incomplete. She was mainly conditioned on the equiciser at the farm. She was very fit but not very educated; not even to do what she would naturally do when placed beside another horse, which is test her speed against it. We put some time into teaching her and encouraging her competitive spirit, and it paid off.

And now Lori can afford to pay me off. We counted roughly thirty gallops since the last time they wrote me a check. So that’s another $300 in my accounts receivable column…

While Erin was visiting, I took her down to the house I bought in ’07. She said it was “awesome”. This morning she asked me if she could show it to Walter, so she really did like it. I told her I was gonna have a bonfire over there, and they could come. Maybe Wednesday if the weather is OK. I have tons of brush and tree limbs that have I have to get rid of. Come to think of it, I better sharpen up my axe and get out the saws and so on…Maybe I can get a little help moving and chopping brush!

It’s been very rainy the last two days, but I’ve been still working. The track surface is holding up unbelievably well; very few wash-outs. The only thing I’m not happy with is that a very small filly that Danny has working with (whom I call “Butterball”) seems to be sore somewhere. I’m hoping it’s only her feet, but she stumbled all over the place yesterday. She needs some shoes, and she needs him to take the warning seriously. I can’t let her get sour – he already has one young horse that has really sore feet. I got on her one day and I thought “she could flip over, and I wouldn’t blame her”. I don’t want to try to make a horse go if it doesn’t want to. I only like making horses go that want to.

Well, speaking of going, I’m gonna sign off. I’m tired and I want to sleep an hour before I go to work. But it’s been good lately. Really good.

The Post That the Post About the Post Was About..

It's two days later....

I can always tell when I am stressed beyond normal; I don’t sleep much but I don’t feel tired (good) an dI have a host of other physical symptoms. I’ve noticed this since I was a kid. I just have too much going on. There’s a lot of noise in my head.

Money is #1 right now. The hardest thing to handle (at least for me) is not being able to keep my clients aware of how badly I need every spare second.

This is the story of free-lance galloping in a nutshell, so any novices might want to listen up – because you’ll be facing this as surely as you will face serious injury or death once in a while, and a lot more often.

The track opens at 7 a.m.

But if you are there, it opens at 6:54 or 6:55. That’s five minutes earlier than 7. If you get there in time to set foot on the surface at the actual opening time, that puts you returning from your gallop at ten past, or quarter past if you are higher up on the hill (farther from the gap). If you get your second horse ate quarter past, you can be on your third at 7:30. It’s not hard at all to finish four horses within the space of an hour. Seven before the break is easy; hell, I’ve gotten seven AFTER the break. That’s seven in an hour and twenty minutes. Surely I could get seven before the break.

But the way tings are currently going is; my first two horses are two-mile joggers; or my first horse goes with the pony and can’t go any faster than the pony. Thankfully this only slows the walking to and from part of the gallop. I’m not one to race my horse to and from the track; still, if I have the opportunity to walk the horse freely I can encourage it move purposefully, so for the most part, at least in my mind, the pony is a costly accommodation

It’s good for the horse to have a pony if the horse is in an unfamiliar place, if it’s balky or nervous or any number of reasons. But personally I’m familiar with the Mountaineer routine of getting thrown up, turned loose and tie on while on the move, so I don’t treasure the pony by any means. I tell myself I do when I have one, but unless the horse is bad I’m always lying to myself. On the one hand, you’re safe, but on the other hand, you’d better be because he won’t help you pay for your workman’s compensation. It’s an expensive trade-off with no guarantee.

It’s great for the trainer. With a pony they have a ride to the track and more control over the expensive investment they are charged with protecting and conditioning, so I know why a trainer would like a pony. Then again, most trainers who have ponies and use them daily also have expensive gallop people and offer workers comp. What I’m working under is slow ponies, no expensive salary and no workers comp.

That’s the great bonus about West Virginia; they have this great new Workers’ Compensation system that has matched the other states in comparable premiums, but they don’t require employers to actually have a policy. If you ask me they cut their own throats. Because if they had left things the way they were, with the low premiums they used to have, they’d have more people actually obtaining it. I had to let it go after I had been injured and earned nothing, and my premiums doubled. I gotta remember to send the Governor a video of me explaining this.

The bottom premium rate is based on twice as much as I earn, and four times as much as it used to be: Instead of 7-8K, the rate is based on a minimum payroll of $32K. And here’s the part that makes the wealthy laugh and the un-wealthy cry: my wage compensation is not based on a payroll of 32K; it’s based on my actual payroll of 15-25 K (15 when I get injured, 25 if I work all year without taking any time off for anything.) I’ve been priced right out of my range of affordability. Religious symbolist will love what I got every two weeks during my most recent disability period; $666.66.

And the pony isn’t helping me. Since everything moves slower when we factor in the pony and/ or the two mile joggers, and/or the not yet mentioned “we need to throw the same tack on the next horse”, “we’re waiting for the smaller girth – it’s on the one that the jockey is breezing”, “we need to clean the poultice off the legs yet”, “we gotta switch tack – this one has a loose shoe, and so on, and so forth, we’re talking about losing three fo the five minues we gained when we got to the track at 6:55.
What’s three minures, you might ask? Nothing. Three minutes is nothing. Six minutes is something; the track closes at 9 to be renovated (re-harrowed), but the reality is, it’s 8:55 when they stop allowing people through th egap. Anytime you create a cut-off; anytime you draw the final line and say noboy else can cross now, then six seconds is too late; never mind six minutes.
Here’s a word problem for math lovers:

On a normal day six horses go to the track in two hours. The first two take twenty minutes each, and the third has to jog two miles so it takes twenty-seven minutes. The first horse goes on at 6:55. The last one is finished at 8:02. The fourth horse is in another barn and it takes three minutes to get to that barn and get on the horse, and twenty minutes for the horse. That one is returned to the barn at 8:25. Same for the fifth horse (are you counting with me?). We’re on the sixth and last horse at 8:48, seven minutes before the cutoff. Plenty of time to get to the track and gallop around without holding up the harrows.

If we have to fuzzle around for three minutes with just two of these horses, we’ve shut down our window of opportunity for getting the sixth horse out. We’d only have one minute of grace to beat the clock.

Theoretically we make it, but in practice it’s a bit messy.

Three minutes becomes four minutes, five minutes and so on. Sometimes I’m waiting for a second rider so we can take a set (go together). Sometimes the horse has to go two miles the wrong direction at a jog and doesn’t want to jog, so I have to keep pulling it down from a nervous, hobbyhorse canter back into a proper trot. Most of the horses need some kind of warm-up whether the trainer says so or not. Sometimes the horse hasn’t been out for a number of days and I jog a mile before taking up a faster pace. I may or may not be asked, but I will do it simply because in my judgment (for any one of several reasons) it’s best.
Sometimes I have to pee. If I have time for the real bathroom I might go (cuz they have toilet paper) but if I’m short on time I find an empty stall and do like the men, only squatting. But most of all I find the things that stall me are those that happen within an outfit. The girth is too long and needs to be changed; the horse needs rundown bandages. Some other rider came and took the tack that was gonna go on my horse and we’re waiting for it to come back; one of the grooms or hotwalkers didn’t show up and now there aren’t enough people to do the work so I have to tack my own horse.
“We gotta get the poultice off before we send him out”
“She spread a shoe so we’re changin’ the tack to Bubba and you can get her later” (later WHEN?)
“I just have to get this horse in the (ice) tub and I’ll be right with you…”

I try not to get excited because it casts a pall on an outfit and everyone becomes either frantic when they see me or resentful of having been spoken to with a raised voice as in; ”hurry the fuck up! I got four more to get before the break!”

I’m not done with this post by any stretch of the imagination, and as soon as I get time again (like when it rains) I’ll finish it. But I was going to end it with:

You can bet that if I charged by the hour, it would be 40 bucks per hour. And I’ll give you ten-to-one that suddenly all my problems are solved.

But nothing’s that simple.
I have to try to get some work done on my house before Monday or Tuesday when it rains, so I might not write again till after.

The Post About the Post

My posting is almost as bad as my record of visiting with friends. It's as if there's never a good time. Right now I'm writing a post about time, and as soon as I find time, I will post it.