Testing God - Post Eleven

“OK, I have a couple ideas,” I told Jerry. “And please let me finish before you roll your eyes.”

Because we knew UB’s main problem was the noise associated with the race-time starting gate, it seemed that muffling the sound would help his nerves. My mind flashed to another famous racehorse that had a problem with noise—Gate Dancer. The solution for this horse had been to run with a set of horsey “ear muffs.” I figured we could do the same thing for UB, by stuffing his ears with cotton and covering them with mesh ear covers designed to keep flies away in the summer.

Jerry and I began making the rounds of tack stores all over Lexington looking for the ear nets. We were striking out store by store, until we got to the tack store that services the Red Mile, a Standardbred track.

According to the lady behind the counter, many trotters and pacers are bothered by noise—so many that a product has been designed to deal with the problem. A set of ear plugs on a long, long string allowed drivers to keep their horses in relative silence for the first part of the race, and then yank the string mid-stretch, popping the ear plugs free. That’s when the cheers and hoots and hollers from the stands would frighten their steeds home. Or so the theory went.

Jerry and I gave each other a “wtf?” look. But since the ear plugs were designed to fit down in the ear canal, I figured we could lose the long strings and proceed with our plan.

A bit more problematic was what to do about the nose chain, which Jeremy the starter was insisting be used.

We had a dropped nose band that several of our horses went to the track in, and as I was looking at it, I had an idea. We went to PetsMart and found a dog collar—the choker type—that looked big enough to fit around a horse’s nose, but not so big that there was too much slack. Then we took the both pieces to the tack shop and explained that we wanted the chain suspended loosely by small leather straps just below the noseband. The leatherworker worked his magic, and UB’s new “head gear” ensemble was born. If there was an equine short bus, UB would be on it!

Daily Notes: I don’t know what I expected when I started this project, but I know that I didn’t expect that nothing would happen. I realize that I’m less than two weeks into it, and it’s a bit impatient of me to expect that something grand would have happened by now. But a little part of me is worried, and a little voice in my head keeps saying “What if it never does? What if, at the end of it all, you just look like an idiot?”

Ah, well. I’ve looked like an idiot before, and no doubt I will again. And again.

But now, my BIG dilemma must be dealt with.

The dilemma is this…to accurately convey my story, I have to introduce into the cast of characters the owner that up until now I’ve only mentioned, in passing, as “the owner.”

To do this may open up a whole Christian can of worms. But if there is anyone out there reading along that thinks that they can paint us all (Christians, that is) with the same broad brush, I may just shoot a big hole in that theory. I have prayed that God will help me to truthfully and accurately paint the picture of what happened, because in the end, this story isn’t as much about the humans and the equines, but rather what God accomplished through the whole messed up mess of us.