Everyone is familiar with Murphy and his annoying law that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
It's happened to all of us. Two days after the warranty expires, the car breaks down or the washing machine quits. For me, things always happen around 5:00 pm on Fridays. The starter or alternator goes out on the truck and the parts store tells me "it will be here first thing Monday morning". Monday morning?? I need it NOW!!! If I have a horse get sick or injured, you can better believe it will be just after the veterinarian has gone home for the day, or better yet, is out of town at a conference or something. The answering service tells me to call another vet. Guess what?? He's at the same conference.
One of my "favorites" is to come home after a grueling day, just dying for a hot shower and see water running out from under the house. You know it is right after the building supply store has closed for the weekend and I get to spend the next couple of days hauling water up from the barn. Such fun!
Murphy's Law will get you no matter how well prepared you are. I can not count the number of times I have had a young horse going through his early training and doing very well in his lessons. As soon as the horses' owner comes to see how well his future racehorse is progressing, that horse will promptly dump his rider, run across the field and jump the fence into the neighbors' cow pasture.
Our next entry in Mr. Murphy's endless book is One Tuff Lil Dude. This horse has been preparing for his upcoming race for five months now. He has been on a rigorous schedule, rain or shine, and has progressed better than we had ever hoped for. His work out times have been excellent, as well as his health. Until now. Just two days after drawing into this race that we carefully selected and trained him for, he comes down with a cold.
Five months of preparation without any problems whatsoever. Get him in a race and he gets sick. He will have to be withdrawn from the race and after he recovers, we'll just start all over again. I sure would like to find this Mr. Murphy and wipe his law right out of existance.
Every owner, trainer and jockey wishes for "the big horse" to come into their lives. Some people are blessed with several top notch horses but for the working class people who race in the minor leagues, those horses are few and far between. I've been lucky to have had a couple of decent runners who had been consistant money earners, but like any athlete, their careers quickly come to an end.
In the fall of 2006, a big gangly three year old gray gelding was brought to me. He had raced only once for his previous trainer, finishing last by 64 lengths. That's nearly two football fields. My job was to turn this horse, Bobbyn Bouie, into a winner.
A trainer's first job is to figure a horse out; get inside his head to know what he is thinking and what the horse needs to bring out the best in him. This horse was unlike any I had ever come across.
It would take me hours to go into all of the details of Bouie's past, all of the problems we had with him and how he finally got turned around. Over a period of several months, we were finally able to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. The two key factors in Bouie's turnaround were Anna Twinney and Lucy Burch.
When we began this project, Bouie was racing in the "bottom of the basement" claiming ranks, consistanly finishing last, if he finished the race at all. I was able to "read between the lines" and saw flashes of brilliance in this horse at times in some of his races. Once he began to figure things out, not only was he finishing in the top four in his races, he was moving up the ladder.
In horse racing, there are multiple levels of events. The lowly claimers, up to allowance contests to stakes races. The best of the best are the ones televised, like the Triple Crown and Breeder's Cup races.
In six months time, Bouie had made his way up from the $5,000 level to the $20,000 level. Given a brief rest at the first of the year, we decided to test him a little further. Last night, he competed in his first allowance race. Despite encountering multiple traffic problems, he finished a game fourth, beaten only a head for third.
Bouie is truly the working mans dream. He is honest and consistant, and like fine wine, getting better with age. It will be interesting to see just how far up the ladder he will go.
Have you ever wondered where some people get their license to drive? Or better yet, how they got the license? I often think there is a secret "blue light special" somewhere other than K-Mart that simply hands out driver's licenses.
I travel frequently with a loaded horse trailer and I do my best to drive defensively. Some people, however, have absolutely no consideration for anybody else.
There have been numerous times when I'm traveling along a two lane highway when Mr. Can't Think Past the End of His Nose, comes flying past me, signals to move over in front of me and hits his brakes. Wait!! He wasn't signaling to get back in the correct lane, he's making an abrupt turn in front of a truck pulling several tons that is doing about 60 miles per hour. Slamming on my brakes as I lay on my horn with the horses scrambling to stay on their feet, I notice a bumper sticker that reads, "Go ahead and hit me. I need the money". If I had hit him, he would have needed a tombstone.
As I made my way into New Orleans yesterday, I encountered a traffic jam a couple of miles before the 610 split. Where can so many people be going at noon on a Saturday? I always thought residents of the Big Easy stayed up all night and slept all day, sort of like vampires. There we were, stop and go, stop and go. It took 30 minutes to travel two miles and I was fortunate enough to get beside a young man in a brand new candy apple red Chevy short bed pickup with four full doors. He had all four windows down, apparently showing off his sound system. My windows were up and they were vibrating. Why can't people like this put their windows up and keep their noise to themselves? My horse wasn't very fond of it either!
This falls into the same category of aggravation as the people who leave their doors open or windows down will getting gas with the music blaring. I believe the reason they do this is because their windows will break from the vibrations if they were closed.
Then there are the slow poke drivers. The speed limit says 55. They are doing considerably less. If you ever manage to get around them, for some unknown reason, they will speed up, pass you and proceed to slow back down to whatever turtle pace they were going originally.
What is with driving on the interstate at night with the bright lights on?? I thought there was some law against that. Don't they realize that when their lights hit someone else's rearview mirrors it blinds them? Or maybe they just don't care, until it is done to them. Another irritation is caused by the tail-gaters, at night, with or without bright lights on. Some of them get so close that I can not see them in my mirrors. This is very upsetting to the horses. Isn't there a law against tail-gating? Where are the cops when all of this stuff goes on?
For those of you who have never driven in New Orleans, I must warn you that they have their very own set of rules for the road. I doubt these rules are written anywhere so here are a few that I have learned about during my last couple of trips into the Cresent City.
Rule #1: Left turn on red. If you are at a red light and there is no oncoming traffic, you need to go ahead and make the left turn because if you don't and there is a local behind you, you will probably be pushed out of the way.
Rule #2: Signaling to change lanes. Putting your signal on does not mean you can change lanes. It is a signal for someone behind you to gas it and get in the spot you were wanting.
Rule #3: Speed Limits. If the sign says 60, you need to consider doing about 75 or get off the road. More than likely you will get run over if you don't do one or the other.
Please be considerate of others while driving and remember that any truck pulling any type of load can not stop quickly. All we ask is that you give us a little space.
