My Backyard... A Point Of Reference

November 2007 

Well, my Summer turned out to be interesting. I was able to see a little of this beautiful country.

My friend in Ohio enticed me to come and visit him and run at River Downs. I tried a few times to run in Miami, but found the trip too much, and the logistics of keeping the horses fit enough with no track within two hours more than I wanted to cope with. So I loaded a few of them on my van and headed to Ohio in July. Believe it or not, it is cooler there than in Florida! My friend, Greg Verderber, was having a great year at River Downs. He was running four and five year-old Ohio-breds, and got at least five wins, and many seconds and thirds. He had the best year he's ever had. Way to go, Greg!

I took MARIAH'S PROMISE with me, as she looked like she might have a shot there. And two owners' horses, NEW YORK BY NIGHT and DIAMOND SAINT. The fourth horse I hauled up to Ohio was IRISH SNICKER. After useful works, IRISH SNICKER came back sore and I turned her out at Greg's beautiful farm. DIAMOND SAINT ran second her first time out and, to my surprise, was claimed! She ran three more seconds there and then I lost track of her. NEW YORK BY NIGHT worked acceptably and got his gate card. He needed one work out of gates in company to start in a race, but he came up with a filling above the knee that worried me enough to stop on him. MARIAH'S PROMISE ran a few times and got a third and fourth, earning at least enough to pay for the trip.

We were there a little over a month. It was a wonderful change of scenery for me and the horses. Feed and hay is much more reasonable up there in Ohio. And so I was able to have a "semi-vacation" and enjoy my friend's hospitality.

August and September were so hot back in Florida that I couldn't train at all. TRUE PROMISES stopped sweating completely.

Another friend, Christy Berkeley in Delaware offered to have me stay up there during the month of October. What luck to have good friends near race tracks so we can visit and train at the same time! So I took TRUE PROMISES, MITZIS GAMBLE, NEW YORK BY NIGHT, and STORMY SPRINGS up to Delaware Park to train. It took about a month to get them back in gear, and I wanted a race under them before the track closed. MITZIS turned into a lovely horse and trained well, though not super fast, and ran fourth her first time out. She was a little slow breaking from the gate, but got up to second and then faded to fourth at the finish. I was pleasantly surprised with her effort. In her next race she was nervous in the paddock [not a surprise] and hurt herself. The jock felt she was not right, so he just galloped her around. She should be fine for Tampa this season. TRUE PROMISES trained well, seems to want to go long, and is still getting himself pulled together. He still needs more maturity, both physically and mentally, but I see improvement. Interestingly, two days after arriving in Delaware, he started to sweat normally. How remarkable! He's now galloping at Tampa and I hope to get him in a race soon. STORMY SPRINGS, a client horse, should start at Tampa soon also.

Unfortunately, IRISH SNICKER had a twisted gut and was humanely put down in September. It was very upsetting as she was a sweet filly, but that's part of the risk in having these horses!

MARIAH'S PROMISE is getting into gear to run at Tampa. She'll run at the bottom as she's shown no speed. But she seems to want to go long!

HONEST AND TRUE had little problems that limited his training this Summer. But he's now breezing at Tampa and I hope to have him going soon.

The jury is still out on this group of five horses. Will they pay their way? Will one be good enough to justify the expenses of all of them? I can only hope. But by sharing the trials and tribulations with you here, insight might be given to how your horses are training. I can't believe that these are three-going-on-four year olds! That's a long time to figure them out. And now, we are down to four of the original group of five.

I'll keep you informed! Hang in there!

My best,

June 12. 2007

It's time to give an update on my group of horses.

The Tampa Bay Downs meet is over, and usually by this time I have a handle on my three year old horses. That is, I should know if there's a glimmer of hope as to their running ability, and whether I should try to go up North with them or try to run them in Miami. That has not been the case with these horses. I still don't know if I have a bunch of plugs or useful runners.

I'd been so pleased with the even personalities of this group, something I attributed to the fact that they had not been rushed into the Two Year Olds In Training sale before I got them. I now find however, that this group has been slow to develop. For example, some of them will get hot when pressured, no matter how much handling they may have had earlier, which is not surprising since their personalities reflect their genetic backgrounds as well as environmental factors.

We all know horses may change considerably when put to the test and asked to run their hardest. As this group has transitioned to the track, some have had radical changes in personality.

TRUE PROMISES - This gelding has had no physical problems at all. However, he did became fractious and try to flip over while going onto the track when I put a jockey on him. Right after that, I said to my rider "this horse has done everything right. He just bears a little to the outside. Breeze him easy and we'll see how far we can go." After flipping over, dropping the jock and running back to the barn, I realized that he needed more work before he could race. So it was "back to the drawing board." I resolved the "flipping" problem when he was going onto the track by using a pony horse to walk out with him. Having company made him more relaxed. He was fit enough to start in a race at Tampa, so I entered him there and watched him gallop along at the back of the field until the stretch, where either the rest of the field was slowing down or he was clicking into gear. He managed to beat one or two horses.

With the Tampa meet over, I learned that he needs a long race and he needs to roll into the race. That is, it takes him a while to get going. Maybe he'll be a true router. But he may just be a plodder. Aughhhh! I then hauled him all the way to Miami, with hopes of learning more about his ability. I entered him into a $25,000 maiden-claiming race, but ended up "ifed" into a 3, 4,and 5 year old Maiden Special Weight race [the other, more appropriate races for him didn't go] and he indeed plodded along. He still looks very immature and he needs more weight - he's quite raw boned - so I'm letting him grow. He'll gallop every now and then and we'll see what develops.

HONEST AND TRUE - He's had sore shins off and on. I'll work him soon and see how he comes out of it. He's been jogging on the wheel [Eurociser] and looks more filled out than TRUE PROMISES. He still seems to be a sprinter. It would be nice to have a stayer and a sprinter.

MITZIS GAMBLE - Well, I'm still hoping there is promise with this filly. She was galloping very well with Valerie, the French rider. When Valerie left, I took her over to my friend's farm. My friend had ridden her the previous year and he had found her very uncooperative. I told him how wonderfully she'd been going - even doing a nice breeze at Tampa and how we had stopped on her when her shins got touchy. She was now ready to do a nice strong gallop on his turf course. Well, leave it to horses! My friend got on her and she reverted to her old tricks! She bucked and carried on, and wouldn't change leads. But he finally got her going. He said she felt like her back end was bothering her. That had been the original problem - when her ovaries were hard and small - they had started to soften and I believed she was much better. I wonder now what else could be bothering her. How can she communicate to us that something is wrong except by refusing and bucking?

Back home, a few days later, the farrier came out and found her frogs to be very dry and starting to crack - it's been so dry without rain here that when he started to clean out her frog, it bled immediately. Could that be the problem? I've treated her frogs and it's starting to rain. Who knows what's next with this filly? By the way, she looks grand.

IRISH SNICKERS - A very uncomplicated young filly. Although small in stature, she's been a good girl all along. I think she'll be short and quick, and I see her doing her best at Charlestown as she's very agile, though light boned!

MARIAH'S PROMISE - is a rather gangly, raw-boned horse with a long back. She's had a few races but has not shown much. She seems to be a plodder. Can she win? Who knows.

I think I'll back off a little this Summer as it's getting very hot. I'll keep you informed.

Hang in there!

My best,

Feb. 4, 2007

It is time to bring you up to date on my new experiment - the five horses I purchased in Keeneland as yearlings.

TRUE PROMISES - the Broken Vow gelding is developing well. He's still growing and soon will be 36 months old. He has not started racing but is almost ready to get his gate card. He's galloping and breezing at the race track, but is hard to keep straight and is very hard headed. One day he will bear in, and the next time he will bear out. His teeth are fine and I think he's just starting to learn about running full out. His second mile on track is always better, and using a male rider also works better for him. When Valerie rides him, she is not as strong and can't quite hold him as well. This horse hasn't had any setbacks as far as his shins and joint filling is concerned. He comes back sound after his track works, but is then tired for a few days. He seems to want to go long, and shows no speed so far. He rolls into the works and gets faster as he goes further. Still quite immature body wise and mentally.

HONEST AND TRUE - the Devils Bag gelding has a good nature about him. He's willing. But he's crooked from his knee down on one leg, and when he runs fast he gets a little sore. So I have to wait until he's sound before pushing him again. [He popped a splint under the knee on the inside-right where he's offset - a predictable problem because of his confirmation - but he should heal and be fine.] At the moment, his shins are sore. He has been recovering for about a month and should be ready to get back into galloping or on the eurociser soon. This is "hurry up and wait." He has to build strong bone to withstand his own speed and, as he's crooked, he needs more time to rebuild. He's turned out every day and is still growing.

IRISH SNICKERS is the little red filly. She is small, short coupled and quick. I thought she would be racing by now as she has done everything right. But she got sore shins out of her last breeze, and since she is light boned, she needs time to rebuild the bone also. These horses do not have "bucked shins," but are touchy when the shins are tapped lightly. That is how they tell me they are sore. So, she also is being turned out, is growing and should be galloping in another week or two. This time off, in the process of training, is crucial to having a sound race horse. If the small problems are ignored, then fractures could follow. I think that if I wait now, when they start to race, they will be able to race about every ten days with no problems. My goal is to have a long-term race horse.

MORIAHS PROMISE - This Honor Glide filly is coming along well. She's been to the track and to the gates a few times. She is a little insecure, but overcomes her fears and is getting more workmanlike. Maybe she will race in early March. [I have a partner with this filly, but she's a horseman and understands the training process.]

MITZIS GAMBLE - by Running Stag, was the best looking animal in the sale, but was the filly that had possibly been given steroids in order to look that good. She is the horse that would never train well, and just seemed to be "wrong." The vet said that her ovaries were not functioning properly [they were small and hard] and that it would take time for the effects of the steroids to leave her system. Well, it has been over a year, and just recently she started acting brighter and friskier. She is galloping and finally going forward willingly. For so long, she refused to even walk out! She has been to the track a few times and is going forward!

Since I own all of these horses, I am enjoying being able to take my time and not fret when the horses get off schedule. I know it is the "ebb and flow" of training and I know that developing a young animal into a fit, sound racehorse takes "as long as it takes." It is a great relief to not worry about owners seeing their money fly out the window while waiting for the youngsters to evolve into useful racing horses.

By the summer I should know where to go with them!

Hang in there!

September 15, 2006

It is time to give an update of the five horses I purchased last year.
I have had a pretty easy summer. That was my plan - to catch up on the farm and to enjoy the season. I had one or two horses that we were keeping in light training to tune up around September.

I am trying a new experiment. Because of the difficulty of finding
good riders, I have purchased an exerciser, a machine that allows the horses to trot or gallop freely at a sustained speed. The
circumference of the machine is sixty feet so I only put the horses on it twice a week, and try to have them ridden once a week. The riders have been sporadic and I have been breaking the yearlings when I have a good enough rider to put on. Otherwise, I have been saddling them and putting them on the machine. At least this way I can set their head and have them learn to have a heavy saddle bouncing around on their back. Then, when the riders get on, they're fairly calm. It's very hot in Florida in the summer, so all of my training has been done in the early morning. While the horses are trotting around, I clean their pens, then wash them down and turn them out for the day. Remember that these are young horses, and the geldings are still very young looking. Their rear is higher than their withers, so they're like teenagers, growing in fits and spurts. They're all fed in individual pens and then turned out together for the day. They're fed and put up in the pens for the night. This has made my summer bearable and the turnout on the grass has saved me hay bills, and of course allowed them to graze and stretch their backs while rowing and munching on the grass.

HONEST AND TRUE

What a nice guy he has turned out to be! He's lazy and sweet and easy to be around. No hyper personality. And has taken to being ridden with equanimity. His relatives are doing well at the track, but I see him as a later developer. Hopefully, he'll start racing in December or early January in Tampa. He had a two week layoff when he got an abscess in his hoof, but finally it broke through, and he seems to be back on course. He is now galloping around the farm, doing five to six times around my little route, trotting and galloping. My goal is to get him to fly around the farm so that we can head for the race track and speed works. He has a high head carriage and seems to be quite willing once he gets the idea of what we want. He is starting to lose his belly and get a little more streamlined, as he is being ridden twice a week now. He is on the machine two days a week between the rides.

TRUE PROMISES

This fellow could be the twin of the the other one. Same kind of
personality and parallel training, even to having an abscess about two weeks after the other one did. They are back on to the same schedule and haven't lost much time, as they are growing so much anyway. True Promises carries himself lower to the ground and seems more efficient in his stride. When he goes to gallop, he rolls into it and hunkers down more than the other. They do everything together and are best of pals. Of course, my dream is that they be allowance horses and that we travel around for years, running here and there. Well, we can all hope!

THE GIRLS

MORIAHS PROMISE

This filly is pretty close to the same level of training as the boys.
She has been on my friends farm where Dana has been breaking and training her. Dana is half owner, and our deal now is that I will take over and get her to the races. Dana has done a good job preparing her, and next week she will come to my farm to start galloping up and down and around my route. The hill work will help strengthen her as she has not done hills at her farm. Dana says she is still growing and seems to get sore on the rear while training. We will see how she does. I hope she grows into herself as she is very tall and leggy.

IRISH SNICKER

I put this filly on the back burner during the Summer, as she was so small. I saw that she was scrawny in the sale (that's why she was so cheap), but I thought she would have more of a growth spurt than she's had. She's still small, but is muscling out. We're just breaking her now, and probably wont start her til the end of the Tampa Bay Downs meet, if then. She'll have to show me something for me to put the time and effort into her. She's quick and agile, but so small. If she does run, it will be short distances. And probably cheap purses. Oh well. We shall see.

MITZI'S GAMBLE

I saved this filly for last. She was the most stunning purchase at the sale. Well built and muscled, maybe more so than she should've been for her age. At the time, I thought: "Hmmn. Maybe she'd been given steroids to grow more impressively for the sale." [I usually avoid this style of horse. I like them to look like yearlings SHOULD look: gawky, and growing in spurts.] But when she came through the sale, the bids were slow, and I got her. I told myself that if she "deflated," I had a year for her to grow and get the synthetic medications out of her system.

That's why I bought yearlings. That is, I hoped that THEY would NOT be too chemically enhanced. Unlike the two year old sales, when problems emerge after a sale, perhaps because of the sellers' "push" to do well in the breezes, I hoped that the yearlings might just be a little overfed, but NOT ruined by over training too young, or over medicating. Interestingly, the vets found quite a bit of sesmoiditis in that yearling sale, possibly caused by too much time on the exerciser machine. Too much, too soon, on green bone, in an effort to make them look more muscled.

But back to this filly, MITZI'S GAMBLE. I eventually sent her to another friend of mine to break her and start training her. This
friend was an excellent horseman, and he reported to me a few months later that MITZI just wasnt right. She had a list of problems, one of the most obvious being an incipient lameness on her right front side. After much discussion, we decided to just stop on her and let her grow, and see if the lameness would go away. We x-rayed her and had her evaluated by a vet, and nothing significant was found. I then treated her with EPM medicine, as it was suggested to me that the medication might eliminate the problem. The bottom line is that the medication was very expensive and I really dont know if it made a difference.

Then, months later, I started fooling around a little with her. Some
days, she would go okay. On other days however, she would not want to go at all. One thing I did notice was that she seemed to become overheated, after much less work than any of the other horses on the farm. She also was having a colic every 25 days or so. No one else on the farm EVER had colic, so I knew it wasn't the feed or hay.

I gave her time, and still, when we wanted to go forward with her, there were subtle problems. She just was not progressing the way she should've. Finally, I asked my friend, Dr. Lose, to come out and check MITZI. Interestingly, she checked her ovaries and found that they were infantile. That is, they were not the normal size for her age. When questioned, I could not remember that she ever cycled, even during the summer when the fillies are all a little pissy and flirtatious.

Based on her history, being prepped for a yearling sale, Dr. Lose
suggested that it might be THE ADMINISTRATION OF STEROIDS at precisely the wrong age that could've inhibited her normal development. There also was the possibility that MITZI was just a mistake of nature, and didn't develop normally. In any case, she still looks great, but doesn't train well. We pulled a thyroid test and it came back normal. I will keep you informed about her evolution. Of all the horses I bought, I thought MITZI'S GAMBLE was the most stunning, sound and precocious. I will train her lightly, just to her level, and see what happens.

I think that brings you up to date. From here on out, we will escalate the training of those able to go on up to racing.

Best regards.

Hang in there!