Testing God - More Bad News

I’m sure it seemed to Joe that all news from his new trainer was bad news. With Hamilton’s dismal race record and now refusal to train, we told Joe that we wouldn’t keep him in training any longer.

Of Joe’s other race-ready horses in training with us, Digger had shown no inclination to find his way to the winner’s circle over the winter, and the grass season was many training bills away. The hope that racing on the turf and covering more ground would actually turn Digger into a winner was a longshot at best.

The first filly Joe sent us, Retirement Plus, had problems of her own. A wiry little thing, she came to us labeled a “head case.” She had gotten to the point where she couldn’t be galloped in the morning—she bolted and ran off with her exercise riders—so the first trainer washed his hands of this one, too.

Not only did Retirement Plus (if there is a nickname for that name, I never figured it out!) exhibit erratic behavior on the track, but in the stall she looked like a ping pong ball on crack.

Luckily, with some turnout time in the round pen and paddock, the filly began to calm down a bit in the stall. But on the racetrack, we had to employ a new strategy. Her exercise rider would take her the wrong way around the track, and it seemed to confuse her enough that she forgot about running off. This particular rider was generally “riding under the influence.” Common sense would tell you that it’s a bad idea to put someone that’s a little loopy on a horse that’s a lot loopy, but it seemed his mellowness mellowed the filly out a bit.

Retirement Plus ran a few times for us, generally making a run from behind and stopping mid-pack. Jerry, exasperated, wondered out loud if burying herself among all the other horses somehow made her feel more secure.

In addition to all the newly purchased yearlings on the farm, we had three more fillies of Joe’s from the other trainer. The first, Lemhi Lightning, came to us for training but Jerry found a tiny bit of heat and filling in a knee right off the bat. More bad news for Joe—xrays showed an area that, if she continued to train, would eventually chip off.

The vet gave two options—inject the knee and go ahead and run the filly, or turn her out and give it time to heal. Option number one was not an option for us, so to the farm she went.

In retrospect, I suppose most other trainers would have left it to the owner to decide what to do. In our first meeting with Joe, Jerry told him that he absolutely would not, under any circumstance, run a horse that he knew had a problem, so I guess Jerry figured that the decision was already made.

The other two fillies were on the injured list as well. The weird thing about them is that no one had a clue what was the matter. The vets that had looked at them for the other trainer were baffled, so the general consensus was to turn them out and let time do its thing.

Soon after came Value Driver, Joe’s colt that had recently had a chip surgically removed and needed rehab before returning to training. Our farm was quickly becoming a lay-up facility, and I was having flashbacks to our ReRun days.

The financial pressure on Joe was mounting, and his theory on racehorse ownership was being sorely tested. But there were still some bright spots, as Joe had three fillies with the other trainer that seemed fairly promising.

As for our rag-tag stable, the heat was increasingly being turned up by Joe to produce results with The Unbelievable—at one time (according to the other trainer) his most promising horse.

Daily Notes: If I’m being honest, (and I really am trying to be) I’ve had a bad few days as far as being a better-than-I normally-am kind of person. I haven’t done anything horrible (rob a bank, trip a little old lady or smack a kid) but I had the perfect opportunity to do a good thing for someone, and I didn’t. And of course, I had the perfect excuse—it would have made us late for Jerry’s sort of emergency dental appointment. But not that late.

So there we were in the grocery, and this fellow came in right behind us. He was pushing a cart, but seemed to be using it more to hold himself up than for groceries. He caught my gaze and held it a little longer than usual, but I looked away and continued grabbing the few items that we had come in for. I did look at him long enough to notice that he was a little, well, disheveled.

I reached in the dairy case to get sour cream, and when I turned around, there he was again. Again, our eyes met and again I looked away.

We were unloading our cart at the register, and when I looked back, he was directly behind me in line. He was again looking at me, but not in a stalker kind of way—it was more in a “my presence here is no accident” sort of way. We paid for our groceries, and moved to the area for bagging.

I heard the cashier ask him if he needed help to his car, and he answered that no, he didn’t have a car—he had walked to the grocery, despite his emphysema, to get a few needed items before the forecast snowstorm hit.

As he pushed his cart (which I noticed included a sack of potatoes) past us, he again caught my eye. I just knew we should offer him a ride home. Jerry was with me, so I wouldn’t have needed to worry about safety, but I just watched him walk out the automatic door and head for the cart corral.

We finished bagging our stuff and headed for the door. As we approached the corral, I heard the mystery man conversing with another fellow who was just heading into the store. The second man asked where the first man was headed, and he pointed to some apartments not far from the store. He explained that because he was hauling groceries, he would have to take the long way around. The man heading into the store said that he wouldn’t be long, and that he would be happy to give the mystery man a lift home.

“Whew,” I thought. “No need to feel guilty now.” But yet I did. You no doubt know the saying about “entertaining angels unawares.” It reminded me of a show a few years back called Joan of Arcadia. The premise was that God was tooling around down here, and would randomly show up to challenge Joan. She never knew how God would appear—male or female, old or young, rich or poor, but it was never what you would expect.

It’s almost like God was giving me a pop quiz to test just how far I’ve come in my nearly month-long journey, and guess what? I failed.

And that’s why I’ve skipped a couple days posting—because failure is hard for me to admit. But I promised to tell the bad with the good, so I’m pressing on. But it’s a big goose egg for the RAKs, and that’s a shame.