Prologue
Big rain last night, the first in three weeks, spiffing up the Great March Proliferation of azaleas and dogwoods that make this a special time of year in Florida. The two-year-olds, Juno, Elf and Wilson have moved to their new training facility and deemed it acceptable, although Wilson isn’t sure why there has to be a giant boulder on the path to the track. About a month from now, the two fillies will be ready for their first quarter-mile two-minute-lick, while Wilson will be held back a little due to his size and the likelihood his first race will be longer than those of the two girls. And Cosmic Song will be entered today for a Sunday race at Gulfstream after enjoying a short break.
Our two mares—yes, we’re down to two—Cosmic Light and Fortyninejules (Dot and Wanda, to you) are not long from foaling. Dot, in foal to Hear No Evil, is due the 30th of this month and Wanda, in foal to Juggernaut, is due on tax day, April 15. We didn’t name Wanda, by the way. Just wanted you to know. The “jules” in her name comes from an outstanding stallion of the same name who would have been heard from had he not died after only a few years at stud. We’re not sure where they got the “fortynine”.
A Day In The Life
Those of us who have ever had a heart issue must observe certain annual or biannual rituals to insure that we don’t have any more of them. And thus, last week it was time for the every-other-year Stress Test for Bill. These can be performed in either of two ways, either via exercising on a treadmill or by injection of (gulp!) radioactive material into your body. Personally, I’m up for the treadmill but my cardiologist says he gets more and better information from the other one, so guess who wins?
Actually, I was ready to turn down the usual scan out of concern that I’d been exposed to too much radiation in the past few years but Interventional Cardiologists in Gainesville, my crew, just installed a brand-spankin’-new PET Scan machine which, they promise, emits a lot less of it.
The PET Scan (that stands for Positron Emission Tomography, if you really want to know) uses a radioactive substance called a tracer to look for disease or poor blood flow in the heart. A PET Scan can tell your doctor whether areas of your heart muscle are receiving enough blood flow. It can also tell him whether areas of your heart are healthy or contain scar tissue.
I could have no caffeine 24 hours prior to the test and no food after midnight, so my usual jolly morning persona was somewhat muted. Then, I got my injection, always a happy occurrence. Then, I had to lie down in the big machine, put my arms back over my head and be funneled through the “doughnut hole.” Never mention doughnuts to a starving man. And, as is somehow the norm in rooms containing these scanning machines, through it all it was freezing. Oh, alright, they do give you a blanket, but it’s still cold. Maybe it’s partly the stuff they inject into your veins, who knows? They say the fussy machines work better in cold temperatures but I’m hoping somebody invents one that isn’t so temperamental before I have to go back next time.
Anyway, now the real fun begins, as you lay there with your arms back for the next forty-five minutes, taking care not to move much so the persnickety machine can produce clear images of your heart. The PET machine detects energy given off by the radioactive substance and changes it into three-dimensional pictures. The images are sent to a computer, where they are displayed on a monitor for the IC people to read. This whole mess takes about an hour, which doesn’t seem bad. I told the guys monitoring the scan they could improve matters tremendously, however, it they would secure a little TV to the part of the machine the testee lies there looking at for an hour. They said they’d get right to work on it.
When we were done, I asked them if they had gleaned any information from the proceedings. I already knew the answer to this question. Can’t tell anything until you look at the pictures. And even if you could, the doctor will kill you if you tell a patient anything. They smiled, wished me well and repeated the mantra: “No news is good news.” It’s three days later and there’s been no news. I have an appointment with the doctor next Monday to review the results. You’ll be the second to know.
The GOOD thing about PET Scan day is that after your test you get to go to McDonald’s and pick up your giant box of fries and your caramel frappe. Come on now, it’s not like I have any artery issues.
Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For The Other Guy
Well, our new governor has been in office only a short time now and he’s managed to piss off about everybody, even including his own Republicans. Rick Scott—recently dubbed “Governor Buckshot”—started out by turning down the federal government’s $2.4 billion dollar proffer for a high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa, thus infuriating all the politicos in those and neighboring towns. Then, he sold the state’s two airplanes, which the legislature says he’s not legally allowed to do. And now his party-mates are accusing him of treating Florida like his own personal kingdom instead of including the heavily Republican legislature in his plans. Like all other Republican governors, he’s also been duty-bound to infuriate the state’s public service employees, particularly the teachers, who are on the verge of rioting. Naturally, we’re not a bit surprised. We told you so. It’s obvious to anyone with good vision that this man is an alien who, in concert with others of his ilk, plans an imminent takeover of Earth, starting with Florida. It will be up to a rag-tag band of resisters to employ guerilla tactics to stem the tide. Isn’t this how Star Wars began?
Vaunted Vamp
We told you last week about Precisionist. Every racing family should own one. But if you can’t have a Precisionist maybe you can at least get a Vaunted Vamp.
Long, long ago on a planet far, far away, one of the local horse farms was going down the tubes. They gave one of their broodmares, named Peace and Quiet, to Siobhan, their vet at the time. (Siobhan says it was not her fault they went out of business.) She was going to use the mare as a riding horse, but, alas, she was not peaceful or quiet enough to serve the purpose. So I said I would take her.
The first year I had Peace and Quiet, I bred her to a new stallion called Racing Star, who stood at Farnsworth Farm, an Ocala institution for years. Racing Star was a multiple stakes winner who could run on the dirt but was primarily known as a grass horse. Most of the farms in Ocala breed for the sales, many for the two-year-old sales, where speed is at a premium. Consignors work their horses either an eighth or a quarter of a mile and if they don’t get those distances in under 11 seconds (for an eighth) or under 22 (for a quarter), their chances of bringing a nice price are severely compromised. Grass horses are generally racing at a mile or more and needn’t display great early speed to be successful on the track. Breeders are often not willing to breed to these horses for obvious reasons. Since I breed to race, however, my horses are not under the gun to perform this way. The result of the breeding was Vaunted Vamp.
When driving through Marion County, you’ve probably seen many farms which hang buckets along the fenceline to feed their horses. This is certainly an economical way to do it, both in terms of time and money. The only problem is, the horses inevitably spill some of their food on the ground and continue to eat it—and the accompanying dirt—as long as there’s an oat left. Most of the time, it’s no problem, but occasionally horses develop sand colic from ingesting too much dirt, so I’ve never been a big fan of feeding this way. If it’s too cumbersome to take them inside to feed, pens are the best alternative. Simply install a few poles and two-by-eights and create little rectangular boxes for feeding pens. Leave an opening for a gate so the horse can get in and out and, voila, you’re done….and safer. This also gives you the opportunity to handle the horse twice a day and to inspect it. If you are a little lazy (like I was this particular year), you can use a chain instead of a gate to keep the horses in.
Except for Vaunted Vamp. She looked at the chain for a few days and decided, hmm, I don’t have to wait around in here for Bill to let me out if I just duck under the chain. So she did. Nobody had ever figured this out before, so I was impressed. I was less thrilled when she taught everybody else to do this, rendering my chains worthless and requiring their replacement with gates. Even so, a smart filly.
Vaunted Vamp trained forwardly, never taking long to learn her lessons. The first time we worked her, she stayed right with a filly who had already won a race, so we were hopeful. We sent her to a lug named Marty Wolfson, who was one of the most successful trainers at Calder. He sent her back on the next van, contending she had a virus which would infect the rest of his barn. Wolfson, though a good trainer, can be kind of a wacko. We don’t know what he saw, but he probably regretted sending her home every one of the many times she beat his horses in the next few years. We called Dominic Imprescia, retired now, and he recommended Jimmy Hatchett. We sent her to Jimmy, who also was on the verge of one of his many “retirements”. She worked great for Jimmy, but when placed in a 6 furlong allowance race the first time, she finished sixth. We tried the same thing another time. Sixth again.
“She wants to go further,” Jimmy said, “but she can win a $25,000 claimer at 6 furlongs and nobody will take her after the last two races.” He was right. She won easy on Jimmy’s last race before his retirement. We decided to keep her with Larry Pilotti, Jimmy’s right-hand man and a knowledgeable horseman in his own right. After finishing second in a 7 furlong allowance, Larry moved her up to a mile-and-a-sixteenth and she found her calling. Vaunted Vamp won 21 races and just under $420,000 over the next five years, placing second six times in stakes races. Jimmy came out of retirement and took her to Kentucky for a few races and returned to Calder a few months later, training her for the remainder of her career, which included a glorious 3-for-3 season at difficult Gulfstream Park.
Coming off that winning streak, we brought her back to Ocala to run in one of the stakes races Ocala Breeders’ Sales puts on at its adjacent racetrack one day a year. Siobhan desperately wanted to win one of the large Heisman-like OBS stakes trophies. Jorge Chavez, her rider at Gulfstream came up for the race. As in her previous three starts, Jorge let her sit in second a couple lengths back, while a 40-1 longshot took the lead. The track was rough that day after a siege of rainstorms, however, and the filly on the lead liked the going more than Vaunted Vamp did and we fell behind four lengths at the eighth pole. Then, she started moving, churning up the track and gaining on the leader with every stride. Just when it looked like she might prevail, the wire came up and cut her short by a nose. The next time we ran against the same horse, Vamp won by 30 lengths, but not this day, the day of Siobhan’s Heisman-like trophy. No soup for you, Siobhan.
Eventually, Vamp retired to the breeding shed and turned out serviceable, if not exceptional offspring, middle claimers for the most part. She coliced badly one day and we took her to the Peterson & Smith Clinic in Ocala, where, instead of performing the operation that was probably called for, the doctor on duty decided to treat her medically until it was too late to do otherwise. Vaunted Vamp is buried here at home. I can turn on my chair, as I just did, and see her grave from here.
When she was rolling up her great streak, one of Larry’s other clients, a Dr. Poulos, who showed up at all her races and in the winners’ circle after each victory, said to me, “Bill, I hope you know that you will never have another horse like this one.”
“Yeh, Doc….I know that,” I told him.
I’m not letting on to Dr. Poulos, but I’ll let you in on my little secret: I’m hoping we’re both wrong about that.
That’s all, folks……
