Saving Baby (12 page)

I had not seen breakdowns, or at least I did not remember seeing them. It was one of those tricks the mind plays. John worked for Michigan Bell, but before he joined the company, I never saw a Michigan Bell truck. After, every tenth vehicle in my field of vision was a Michigan Bell truck. Now, breakdowns were going to go from some place outside the periphery of my vision to the center.

“Where on the back of the track are they taken?” I wanted to know.

“On those tons of acres back there. When they get enough dead horses, they call Darling International to pick them up and send them to a renderer.”

I knew from the way the guy was talking that this was not about picking up two or three horses, certainly not with that giant rig.

No way was Baby going to end up on those acres of death, I said to myself, all the more determined to find a trainer who could keep him at the front of the pack. I knew Baby was going to remain sound because I took such special care of him, but I started getting scared that someone else's horse was going to break down in front of mine and that Baby would trip over it and go tumbling.

When a Thoroughbred gallops, he is going as fast as thirty-five miles an hour, sometimes thirty-eight. His heart is pumping at its limit. His tendons and ligaments are strained to their utmost. Bones might break. If he stops right in the middle of a race, it can create an impact as significant as that of a car wreck on a main road.

Learning about breakdowns wasn't the only unsettling education I received that season. One day in the track kitchen, someone casually asked, “Did you hear what happened at the track yesterday?”

“What?” I said.

“Word got up to the stewards that one of the jockeys had a buzzer.”

“What's a buzzer?” I questioned.

“The jockey keeps it in his hand, and when they come out of the gate, he gives the horse an electric shock with it to goad it on. He also might use it in the middle of the race.”

“They can use those?” I wondered aloud, surprised.

“No, of course not,” I was told. “They're completely illegal. A jockey can be suspended for using one. But to try to stop it without punishment or embarrassment, the stewards told the gate crew to say to all the jockeys that they knew one of them had it, and that if it was left in the dirt inside the gate, before the race started, no action would be taken.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“The bell went off, the horses left the gate, and the gate crew went looking in all eight gate sections for a dropped buzzer. They found one in each loading section.”

I was astonished, but as with so much else, I let it go. I was too far in. And I felt my Baby was in a bubble, as would be Scarlett. I would keep looking after them; I would choose a trainer who wouldn't physically abuse them. Others, too, knew nothing was going to happen to any horse of Jo Anne's. She was too much on top of things, they'd say.

To choose a trainer judiciously rather than just by a feeling or by circumstance, I decided to do a survey of everybody I could talk to on the backstretch except trainers, who had a vested interest and often said to me that they'd like to train Baby. I would speak to jockeys, jockey's agents, the veterinarians, exercise riders, and maybe some grooms. Whatever name came up most often would be the person I'd interview.

I said the same thing to everyone I pulled aside. “I need some help. I want your opinion, and it's going to stay between you and me.” Insuring privacy was important so no one would worry that they were hurting their relationship with a particular trainer if they named another trainer.

“You know I have a Reel On Reel horse,” I continued with each person I interviewed. “And you know that I can't pick a trainer for shit. I need your advice,” and then I'd list the attributes of the trainer I sought, throwing in that I also had a granddaughter of Secretariat who would be coming to the track the next year.

The name that came up most often was that of a trainer with whom I was not familiar, close community as the track was. It was a woman, Pam Thibodeau, who, it turned out, kept to herself. She wasn't one of the ones who hung out in the kitchen. She didn't become involved in track gossip. She didn't chitchat at the rail.

She had about ten horses in training, not too many, not too few. I went over to the shedrow in which she kept them, and it was immaculate—stall doors painted with a checkerboard pattern, all the floors raked well.

Pam had actually been an exercise rider in the past, which I saw as a huge advantage over a trainer who had never galloped a horse around the track. She knew firsthand what it meant to feel how much horse a Thoroughbred had left in him after a run. She could watch an exercise rider and know whether he was following her instructions properly. Having ridden, she also had more knowledge than other trainers of the different types of bits, of subtleties in the way the reins were held—all of which meant that she knew about communication between the rider and the horse that went beyond voice commands.

I went over and introduced myself. Pam was blonde, petite, maybe eight years younger than I was, in her late thirties. Like me, she dressed very neatly, had her nails done and makeup on. I told her our situation—that we had a Reel On Reel gelding who had raced eleven times but never won and would be turning four next year—and that she had been recommended. When I said the part about Baby's never having won a race, she kind of tilted her head, waiting for an explanation. “Well,” I explained, “he's still a maiden”—the term for a horse who has yet to win his first race—“because I didn't know how to pick a trainer. The first didn't have enough experience, and the second was Julian Belker.”

I didn't have to say anything more on that score.

“Is there anything wrong with him?” Pam asked.

“Not other than that he needs to gain weight because he wasn't fed properly. He's sound.” I also had to tell her that Baby had developed a habit of not wanting to come out of the gate. He'd linger after the bell went off. It hadn't happened with Coburn, but it started, and became entrenched, with Belker.

Pam didn't like that he was what she called “gate sour,” but she didn't rule him out because of that. She just knew it would require some retraining.

Then I told her about Scarlett, and she said that before she committed, she wanted to come to the house with her assistant trainer and see the horses. Her assistant was Jerry Bennett. Jerry's father, Gerald, was pretty much the leading trainer at the track, with a huge stable of some forty to sixty horses in training. His shedrow was right across from Pam's.

When Pam and Jerry visited the house, she noticed the osselet right away, and I assured her it was “cold.” She didn't seem overly excited, like other trainers who wanted to pick up an extra horse. Instead, it was really she who was interviewing me, not drooling over the extra money she might make. She was more concerned about her win percentage. She wanted to take on horses who represented quality because their wins would reflect on her.

I liked that Pam had a lot of questions, that she wasn't hungry for a couple of extra horses, and I liked that while she seemed a little hesitant when I told her I'd be at the track everyday, it wasn't a showstopper for her.

Baby and Scarlett, for their parts, turned their heads to whoever was speaking, literally listening to the conversation. They were relaxed, but clearly showing interest with their ears pricked forward. They seemed to know that Pam and Jerry were there for a purpose, and that the purpose was them and decisions were being made.

“Here's the deal,” Pam said, finally. “Racing is going to open at the track in March next year. “That means the horses have to start training in January. How are you supposed to get a horse fit
here
in the winter so it can run in March? There's three days in a row of snow and ice, they can't get out on the track, they backslide. What we do is go down to Florida after the first of the year—Ocala, about an hour north of Orlando. We get the horses conditioned down there in beautiful weather, and just before they're ready to race here, we ship them back up. It gives them an edge. So if you want us to train your horses, they'll have to come to Florida.”

After talking it over with John, who also met Pam and liked her, I said yes. It was scary, because now Baby—and Scarlett, who would be turning three—wouldn't be within driving distance. I'd have to check in by phone. It made me feel a little paranoid, but Pam told me the place was terrific, with training in the morning and pasture turnout for the rest of the day, where the Thoroughbreds could frolic and just be horses.

It was still only mid-fall at that point, so we were months away from shipping off Baby and Scarlett. In the meantime, I kept seeing other things at the track that took some of the shine off the “Sport of Kings.” One day at the rail, somebody was talking about a trainer who got suspended because he got caught with an overage of drugs; one of his horses tested over the allowed threshold level.

“What's going to happen?” I asked. “He has at least forty horses that he trains. Does that mean they don't get to run?”

Everybody started laughing. “Look, he's right there,” one of the guys said to me. And there he was, on the other side of the chain link fence separating the track from the parking area. His assistant trainer kept running back and forth to get instructions about what to tell the exercise riders to do.

In other words, suspension meant the trainer was not allowed on the grounds for a certain period of time, but it was business as usual. If cell phones had been in use by that point, the assistant wouldn't even have had to keep going back over to the fence.

I was glad to find out around that time that I had, in fact, been elected to the HBPA board. I'd be able to look into complaints better, learn more, improve things. I took office immediately after the election was over. The president of the board chose me to be chair of the communications committee; chair of the PAC, or political action committee; and a member of the purse committee, which looks at how the purses are structured for each race. I was going to be able to effect change from within.

While things were moving along on the ground, emotionally it was a difficult time. Before, feeding Baby when he first came home, riding him in the quiet, I was able to be a horse. That is, I allowed myself to live in the moment, which horses do naturally. They don't anticipate the future or mull over the past. Like someone in a deep meditative state, they have only “now,” and so did I, and I relished its centeredness. But once Pam was chosen, I was anticipating again, anxious about time. I knew I'd have to see Baby and Scarlett go off.

The weeks of fall went by until Thanksgiving came and, with it, growing apprehension. I was glad to be able to excuse myself from a dinner table filled with twenty people that day and put on my barn clothes so I could check on the horses. I have always appreciated that about having horses. No matter how many people you're entertaining, you get to have that time away from them and just be with your animals and in that way reinvigorate yourself. You plan your day around going to the stalls, in fact, and no one can take that from you because, after all, you have to take care of them, of Baby, of Scarlett, of the others. But I was ticking off the last days of November on a calendar, and Baby and Scarlett's departure was now only six weeks away.

Throughout the Christmas season, their leaving made me more and more nervous. I couldn't just lay my face on Baby's shoulder and breathe into his body, recognize him by his scent and push all else from my thoughts, like I could in late summer and early fall. Whereas before that left me calm, renewed, like the way a special scented candle might for a non-horse person, now it left me longing for him before he was even gone.

And Scarlett, who was the whole reason all of this started—she had been with me in the backyard for the better part of three years. How was I going to let her go? I wouldn't be able to check on either one's eating or on the quality of their hay.

Then Christmas did come and go, and I filled the holiday stockings I had hung not just on Baby and Scarlett's stall doors but also on Pat's, Beauty's, and Pumpkin's—with special treats like apples and carrots, and, just this once, sugar cubes. After all, it was a big moment for everyone. The herd was going to be separated in a new way, and we all had to say our good-byes. Then New Year's arrived, and apprehension evolved into a kind of dull, ever-present dread until finally, on January 5th, 1995, the huge trailer that would take Baby and Scarlett away came down our little road. It was so enormous it could not turn around in our driveway, so the driver had to back down our entire road from the main street.

I watched as Baby and Scarlett stepped inside for a two-day ride to Florida. Both loaded easily, unlike many other Thoroughbreds, with whom you have to fight for an hour before they walk on, and I was glad. Horses who have a reputation for being rank, or hard to handle, get treated more roughly. They don't receive the same kindnesses.

I gave them both a last kiss, worried that I wouldn't be able to check their legs for heat or swelling, that I couldn't assess ahead of time the conditions they'd be living in. I had just had two pretty bad years with poor trainers, and now my horses were going to a place I had never seen with someone I barely knew.

Still, I reminded myself that I did have a good feeling about Pam, and that she came recommended. Picking her didn't feel like such a crapshoot. I was relieved to some degree, too, about the trailer. It was an air-ride, specially made for animals to give them a smooth trip during which their slender legs wouldn't have to feel the constant rumble of vibrations and thereby make it difficult for them to keep their balance. And it was brand new. The man who drove the rig was very warm, friendly even, and had asked about Baby and Scarlett's personalities, saying he put them in the spot that would give them the most comfortable ride. With that, my never-ending roller-coaster ride of emotions took another turn and dip, a bit slower and easier than I had expected. Off the horses went, with me watching the huge trailer grow smaller and smaller until it was out of sight.