Saving Baby (9 page)

It felt like a frozen moment. Everything was shut off. It was as if I were waiting for someone to say, “Here's what happened.” Then, in a flash packed with spikes of emotion that made me feel like I was going to explode, the minute was over and Baby had come in dead last, soundly beaten by fourteen lengths, a length being the length of a horse.

I felt so mortified that I almost wanted to give back to everybody the money I knew they had bet on him.

The horses continue to gallop for another half mile or so after the race is over. They can't stop immediately. But I was already running down the stands to reach Baby and comfort him. The poor thing was covered in sand and dirt from what was kicked up at him by all the horses running ahead of him. He was breathing heavily, never having run so fast in his life.

Though I tried to hide it, I cried on the way back to the barn. Coburn, uncharacteristically, was throwing things around, saying, “He did that purposely.” It was so ridiculous I didn't even call him out on his nonsense but instead just whispered, “Oh, Baby, it's not your fault.” Even at that stage I hesitated to contradict my trainer openly.

Baby had calmed down by the time he had been walked back to the barn, as if it were any other day. He was even hungry.

Afterward, people reassured me. “Don't worry. A horse rarely wins its first time out.”

Baby's next race was eleven days later, October 21st, perfect in that horses do best with ten to fourteen days between races. They need that much time to build up their speed again before their next all-out run. For this race, the newspaper predicted that he would come in third rather than first.

Baby did come in third—he “showed”—and, better still, he missed first place by only three-quarters of a length. You'd think I was the jockey, the way I was shouting out. It was an excellent display, and we were paid $730 out of the $7,300 purse—very exciting. We could begin to recoup on the $10,000-plus we spent to train him.

The race itself was a thrill to watch. Baby had come from behind. Things didn't look so promising as he remained near the back of the pack at the last turn. But the jockey was saving him for the end, when he started “picking up” one horse after the other. Head after head after head, Baby edged forward, until finally coming out almost right at the front of the pack. One more furlong to the race, and he might very well have won.

The third race appropriate for Baby was slated to take place on November 5th—exactly two weeks away and also a perfect amount of time for him to rest up before giving it his all once again. “You're sitting on a win,” people said to me.” “Next time out!”

But when I spoke to Coburn about it, he seemed hesitant. “We'll see,” he said.

“Why is it, ‘we'll see,'” I answered. “Baby came out of this race fine. Is there something wrong, something I should know?”

“Oh, he's fine,” Coburn countered. “But when he races is my decision.”

I soon pulled it together. Coburn had taken on a second client in September, and that man had two horses in training and a third to start soon, meaning that Coburn stood to make two to three times the money off him as he made from training Baby. The man wanted one of his own horses entered into the race, and at that time in Michigan, one trainer couldn't race two horses at once. There was the chance he'd use one to create a traffic jam for others in the race while creating a clearer path to the finish line for the second horse. Coburn, I believed, no doubt wanted to accommodate the other owner's wish to race one of his own horses, since that man was paying Coburn more money.

Coburn's patient way with Baby notwithstanding, I had already become wary of him because I found out that he had been lying to me. Mike was supposed to ride Baby every day for training; 20 percent of the more than $1,000 I was paying Coburn each month once Baby arrived at the track was supposed to go to pay Mike to take him for a run, and on days I didn't see him go, Coburn assured me that he had been out before I arrived. But Mike gave some clues inadvertently that that wasn't always so. Now Coburn was refusing to race Baby when his chances for winning were so high. That was the tipping point.

After much back and forth, without letting on that I was aware of his subterfuge, I took matters into my own hands. Across the aisle from Baby's stall was Julian Belker, an older trainer in his sixties who had never asked me outright if he could train Baby instead of Coburn. I liked that. Others had made it clear that they were eager for the money to train such a promising horse. I liked the way Belker teased me, too. “I don't know about you, Girl,” he'd say. “Don't you have anything else to do? You're here all the time.”

“I've decided to fire Lyle Coburn,” I said. “Would you take over?”

“Sure, I'd be glad to,” Belker answered.

With the race two days away, the
Daily Racing Form
predicted that Baby would come in second.

Once again, however, he came in dead last, this time by 19¾ lengths. In the final drive for the finish line, he bolted straight for the bleachers rather than rounding the turn.

“What happened?” I asked Belker when I reached Baby's stall afterward.

“Let me show you something,” Belker said, and he took his fingers to make an OK sign with his thumb and middle finger, getting ready to flick them against something. He then bent down on one knee and flicked the front of Baby's left ankle, and Baby pulled his leg right up. He did the same thing to the other leg, and Baby didn't move.

The leg that Baby had moved out of the way had a green osselet. He was in too much pain to put pressure on the ankle when turning curves, so he tried to run straight.

It was time to take Baby home. There were only three more weeks left to racing season, and his ankle wasn't going to heal in that time.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

I figured that Coburn knew about the osselet but didn't tell me because then I would have taken Baby home for the entire month of November, and he would have lost more than $1,000 in training fees. I was angry, but I felt much more guilty than angry. If I had insisted the previous year that Baby come home for the winter despite Coburn's talk about his stubborn streak, he would have had a chance to rest up, be a horse again, and not be prone to the osselet. I had known better than to let him stay at Coburn's training facility and not have any break whatsoever before he went to the track, and my remorse was only compounded by the fact that I now knew two-year-olds had no business racing in the first place because of the unique dangers to their legs, not to mention their minds. If I had only just let him come home and finish growing up first.

But Baby
was
finally home now after more than a year away, and what a terrific homecoming it was. As soon as his trailer pulled up to the house, Beauty, Pumpkin, Pat, and Scarlett started whinnying, and Baby recognized their calls and whinnied right back in his honking fashion. His mother and sister ran around joyously, and he was so excited that he was pulling to get down to the barn and smell everyone. The five of them together formed a herd, and now they were reunited, like a family unit. Baby and Scarlett, in particular, were wonderful to watch together. They were still young and mischievous enough to play halter tag, a game in which they pulled at each other's halters teasingly with their teeth in a tug of war that brought them off their front legs, literally standing. Then one would give up and run off, and the other was “it” and had to chase; it was hilarious, and wonderful to watch. They also loved to roll in snow, then walk up to the back door looking like white ghost horses coming around for tasty handouts.

The best news was that Baby's ankle was okay. I had my own vet check him out, and all Baby needed was some time to heal plus some bute to ease the pain and reduce swelling. He had no pain walking, only galloping, which flexes the ankle to a greater degree than walking.

Everything was as it should be again. Everybody was there, and their munching on their hay at night soothed me at last check, before I settled down for the night. I didn't have to worry.

It wasn't that I didn't feel Baby loved being out on the track. He did. He didn't know he was racing—a horse has no idea that there's a white post with the word “Finish” on it—but he clearly enjoyed running with other horses. And despite the fact that he hadn't won any races yet, he was good at it. And I was proud of that. I wanted him to win, the way I wanted my daughters to win the medal or the dance trophy.

As for the sinister things I had glimpsed—the overfeeding of one horse, the whipping of another—they were awful, of course, but they were aberrations. Even the so-called trainer who lacked a license seemed a rarity. Thus, by that point, most of what I had been seeing was peeling paint and pockmarked roads. I still believed the track was at its core an upstanding institution. After all, you could at any point have your purse or vehicle searched for drugs that were allowed to be prescribed only by the veterinarians on the grounds. You couldn't have a syringe in your possession unless you had, say, diabetes and had received clearance. All seemed pretty strictly regulated.

As for Baby's osselet, for which I blamed myself, I saw it as a compromise I needed to make for him in order to let him enjoy the freedom to just run. How many times had Jessica split open her chin learning to jump while ice skating? How nervous might Rebecca have been when I started to send her to ballet camps out of state at age twelve, and she had to fly by herself, hail her own cabs, figure out how much to tip the driver?

The bottom line was that I didn't at that point have major doubts about Baby's racing. Besides, I had made that promise to Don Shouse. And in those days, races were listed in the newspaper. It would have been very easy for him to check whether I was sticking to our bargain.

About two months after Baby arrived home, in January of 1994, I became installed as a director on the board of the Michigan branch of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, M-TOBA. I had been voted in during the fall. It meant that even though Baby was home, I was still very much involved in racing, still going to the track for meetings. I liked the camaraderie and, just as important, it was a good way to meet other owners. I was in the unusual position of being an owner who knew the trainers, since I was at the track all the time, but I didn't know most of my fellow owners. And getting to know other owners was important because it was my aim to leverage my position on M-TOBA to get myself elected to the Horsemen's Benevolent & Protective Association, which had a lot more power to effect change. Owners, in addition to trainers, voted for the members of that board.

At home, Baby's ankle lost its soreness, and he and I would go for rides together. I was nervous to get on him at first. He was a lot of horse at the track. Only certain exercise riders and jockeys could handle him, in fact. He was powerful and stubborn, wanting to do what he wanted to do. And not all racehorses know the difference between being at the track and being at home. They try to go as fast as they can no matter where they are, pulling the reins away as they run.

Before I mounted him, I talked to him a lot and breathed into his nose. “It's me. It's Mommy. This is different. We're going for a gentle ride.” I got on with no small amount of trepidation, but Baby moved off just beautifully. He responded to “Whoa” for me. He turned when I prompted him to. He never pulled or tried to go any faster than I wanted. It was more like, “What do you want to do next, Mom? You want to go over here? Okay.”

Having the horse I held in my arms carrying me, moving as one with him—how much closer a bond can you have? Over the trails we'd make our way, trees bare save the pines, all quiet except for the sound of Baby's hooves pressing onto snow lit by faint sunlight fading early from the winter sky. I've always said that if there aren't any horses in heaven, don't send me there. This was why.

Later that winter, in March, I received a phone call from Belker, asking if we wanted him to keep training Baby. Now I was nervous all over again. Why put Baby through the risk of more injuries? Despite all that was said at the track about what a good runner he was, maybe this was a Reel On Reel progeny that was simply meant to be with me in my backyard. He wasn't even three years old yet—still very young, still so playful. Pat loved watching him and Scarlett frolic. “Look at my little ones,” her expression seemed to say. Scarlett, too, was so happy because none of the other horses at home were young enough to play the way she enjoyed. Only Baby wanted to nip at her, to roughhouse.

Also, here, I didn't have to keep running back to Baby's stall at the far end of the track to make sure he was okay, to break up the monotony of being confined to that small space twenty-three hours a day. Here he could just be a horse. I was happiest when he was home with me. I felt very hesitant.

But Belker invited John and me out to his house to meet his wife, make us feel more comfortable with him, and we very much appreciated the gesture. Whereas Coburn had always been distant, cryptic even, Belker appeared warm and straightforward. He obviously had a warm, loving relationship with his wife. Pictures of his children and grandchildren were everywhere.

At least as important, he brought out loose-leaf binder after binder of win pictures—the official photos taken at the track when your horse comes in first. Belker had been a trainer for a lot of years, decades even, stretching back to the Kennedy administration, so there was a great deal of history. John and I were both impressed. Belker wasn't a leading trainer anymore—he was just doing it for fun. But we liked his experience combined with his hominess—his genuine friendliness. And he already knew that I was at the track all the time, which obviously didn't put him off. So we rehired him, leaving his house feeling pretty confident that maybe we'd have an album of win pictures ourselves someday.