Saving Baby Read online

  I could barely get through the short speech, so hard was I crying, for the first time not trying to hide my emotions about Baby in public. I was thankful to see eyes glistening throughout the audience. It was a wonderful reprieve from my daily, incessant routine of trying to find horses homes, so often working against prevailing sentiment.

  Back at the track, we were now between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The gate to the backstretch was going to be padlocked for good before a developer came in and razed the grandstand, the shedrows, and all else to make way for another industry on that spot. What, none of us knew. We had heard condos, restaurants, stores.

  I took a look around where I had spent almost every single day for the better part of a decade and was about to leave for good when a security guard to whom I had given dozens of chocolate chip cookies over the years advised me to check every single stall. “It’s possible some trainers will simply take off, leaving a horse behind,” he said.

  I took him up on his suggestion, spending hours looking deep into each of the 1,200 stalls. The entire backstretch, once busy with horses prancing to and from the racecourse, people walking, bicycling, or driving golf carts, the sounds of hundreds of whinnies blending with talking, shouting, music blaring, was deserted, a spooky horse ghost town. Alone, a spirit myself who now belonged somewhere else but with unfinished business here had not yet crossed to the next place, I made my way, silent, hollow, along the acres and acres.

  It had by that point been two and a half years since Baby’s death. In all that time, with all my cajoling trainers up and down the rows to sell their horses to nonracing people rather than to the kill buyers, I never was able to bring myself to walk down the road containing the block of shedrows where Baby and Scarlett spent their racing days. Now I knew I must.

  I don’t know how long I remained there. Time kind of went away. I just remember sitting on Baby’s stall floor, sobbing, whispering his name between gasps and repeatedly begging forgiveness. “I’m sorry, Baby,” I said to him. “I’m so sorry. I will find a way to make this up to you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It turned out the new track would be opening on the far west side of the state, in Muskegon, nearly three hours away. And it was going to open that very spring, not take a full year, as I had anticipated. The owners were going to use a vacated Standardbred track, which was still in excellent condition. The grandstand and restaurants were almost new, in fact. All that needed to be built were shedrows, since Standardbreds are shipped in for their races rather than kept in stalls on the grounds, like Thoroughbreds, and apartments for the grooms.

  I was frantic. I had made a promise to myself, to Baby, even before Christmas that never again would I leave a horse behind. It was a vow, really. Whenever the new track opened, I would not lose another horse to slaughter, the way I lost that little chestnut with the big blaze, because I didn’t have enough money to buy it right then and there or couldn’t get hold of somebody to take it before the kill buyer did. Somehow, in each instance, I’d find a way.

  I had to make that decision. I simply wasn’t strong enough to come home to the barn and sob anymore. I could still see the fear on the face of every horse led into a trailer that would take it to its death. No more could I look into the eyes of a horse that needed help, touch its swollen leg or ankles, and walk away. No more could I say “No” to Baby, which was what I felt I was doing each time a horse destroyed by racing looked at me with trust and fright before going on to meet a brutal end. It was too painful to betray him like that.

  Money wasn’t going to be an issue. John said I could use all the pay from my court reporting work to do what I had to do, and I was still receiving donations from people who had watched one of the news broadcasts or read about CANTER in the paper. I had also written some personal letters over the winter in addition to sending out e-mails to people reminding them that CANTER would need funds to save spent racehorses when the new track did open.

  I wasn’t going to let space be an issue, either. I’d keep horses in my garage if I had to.

  But I couldn’t do this by myself from the eastern end of the state, just north of Ohio, when the new track was going to open a couple of hours north of Indiana.

  I had no time to lose. I had spent the winter quietly, enjoying my own horses in the barn once more and also getting Scarlett situated with a new eventing trainer. I had never become comfortable with the fact that at her old facility, while her trainer was a terrific rider and knew horses well, there was no grass to munch on during turnout. In her natural state, a horse will graze 60 percent of the day. Also, I had concerns about the fencing—metal piping with sharp edges on which she could hurt herself.

  Scarlett’s new training site, ten minutes closer to my house than the other, had grass pastures instead of dirt paddocks, and trees here and there, which would provide some shade in the summer heat and protection from flies. And the stalls were bright and clean, always, with no odor of urine. Better still, the people who ran the place paid attention to which horses got on with which, and they made sure to turn out “friends” at the same time.

  I was thrilled with the trainer, too. Jennifer Merrick-Brooks, a well-known eventing professional, was respected on a national level both in the U.S. and Canada for her activities in the Pony Club—an organization for serious equestrians in which she had achieved the highest level of learning about horses. She also loved working with ex-racehorses. What could be better?

  Scarlett took to her new trainer and new surroundings without hesitation, letting down and acting comfortable right away. Horses tend not to do that, remaining a little on edge for a while when they’re new to a setting. But her pleasure in this facility was almost like a sigh. “I really like this place. I think I’d like to hang out here a while. And Mom comes many times a week to complete the picture.”

  I did enjoy coming often that winter and watching her buddy up with horses she really liked. I enjoyed watching her run toward me when I clapped my hands, put her head over the gate so we could breathe into each other’s noses, then wait for her treat of carrots. And I loved that there was an airy indoor arena and indoor shower with warm water so she could clean off comfortably after working out in the winter cold.

  But now I had to make up for the months I lost taking pleasure in her new comfort as well as tending to Beauty, Pumpkin, Pat, and Sissy back home. E-mailing Jeremy, I asked if he could put on the home page of the Web site a call for CANTER volunteers at the new track, which was going to be called Great Lakes Downs. I needed people to take pictures of horses at the track, volunteers to trailer horses away from the backstretch, homes for fostering horses with no immediate buyers, and so on. The only way I was going to be able to make good on my promise to Baby was to enlist the help of others.

  Within minutes of the posting, e-mails started coming in. The first was from a woman named Judy Gutierrez, who lived fewer than five miles from the new track, closer than I lived to the Detroit Race Course. We spoke on the phone, and I could tell immediately that she was horse savvy. Not only did she own her own horses, she also had an indoor arena and knew everything about basic injury. She knew about Thoroughbred racing and horse slaughter, too.

  From that first phone call I felt confident that everything would be okay, that I’d be able to line up a team of volunteers and be more successful saving horses than I had been the previous year, even though I lived on the other side of the state.

  I was right. Within just a couple of weeks, I had a bevy of volunteers willing to do everything from take pictures of horses for sale to transport horses who needed a “safe house” between being saved from the kill buyer and getting chosen for adoption. One of the new volunteers even had a digital camera, which would really speed up getting photos to Jeremy, not to mention save money on film development and overnight deliveries.

  Along with showing CANTER’s new volunteers the ropes, I needed to retrain the trainers trying to unload their horses. While 20 percent of them were new to
me, coming up from Indiana and Illinois, both on Michigan’s western side, 80 percent of them knew me from the Detroit Race Course, and they were used to getting hold of me whenever they wanted. But no longer could I come every single day. It was close to six hours round trip. I made it clear that CANTER would be at the new track during Saturday morning training only and that if they had a horse they wanted to list, they needed to leave their name at the stable gate. That didn’t relieve me of having to walk up and down the shedrows for hours looking for more horses to save, but it at least insured that those who knew ahead of time that they wanted to unload a horse wouldn’t be overlooked.

  I also became savvier myself about how to go about saving horses for the least amount of money possible, horses that would be going on the truck if I didn’t take them right away. I’d go to the bank and withdraw cash in all different small denominations—fives, tens, twenties. Then I’d put varying amounts of money in my four jeans pockets—$200 in one, $300 in another, and so on. When someone said he wanted $400 for a horse, I’d go into my $300 pocket and count out the bills very carefully, as if I were spending my last dollar.

  “Well, I’ve got three hundred dollars,” I’d say. “I’m going to have to have the horse transported. And I can see he has an ankle,” track lingo for “fractured ankle” or “swollen ankle,” the implication being that it would cost money to fix it. Sometimes it would work, affording CANTER $100 to spend saving another horse.

  The season started out slow—most trainers weren’t ready to get rid of their horses in April, May, and June because they still believed all of their charges might prove winners—but even so, I fostered a horse during that period. He had run his last race the previous season and ended up in Ohio, closer to me on the eastern side of the state than to the new volunteers. His experience at my house had a powerful impact, making me realize close up just how much horses missed when their lives were relegated to racing.

  Named River Wolf, he was a beautiful chestnut, meaning reddish in color, with what I recall as a small star on his forehead that had a strip coming down, a four-inch comma that looked like it was applied with the side of a paint brush that had been dabbed in bright white.

  River Wolf was twelve, old for a Thoroughbred to still be racing. In fact, he had run for a total of eleven years in a punishing total of 170 races, having won his various trainers and owners more than $200,000. His relatively early and middle years had been his best. He even set a new track record at Philadelphia Park. By the time he was slated for the slaughterhouse, however, he had earned only a little more than $3,000 for the whole previous season, whereas in earlier years he made anywhere from $15,000 to almost $50,000.

  As they always did whenever a new horse came to our house, Beauty, Pat, Pumpkin, and Sissy whinnied at the sight of the trailer. They were out in the pasture, jockeying to see who would exchange breaths with the horse before any of the others, although it was a foregone conclusion as Beauty, boss mare over the others, always had first dibs.

  When River Wolf stepped off the trailer, I let him stop and look around, smell the air, and whinny back. Horses are always in fight-or-flight mode when they first approach a new herd, not knowing what to expect, and you have to pretty much leave it to them to decide how quickly they want to exhale into the nostrils of the horses already there. They tend to stand frozen at first, some longer than others as they need more time to assess the situation.

  While River Wolf was getting his footing, Sissy was trying to come out in front of Beauty and Pat. She always did. Though skittish around people, she was starved for the friendship of another young horse who would be willing to play with her and remained forever hopeful about new companions. It was her aim to be the Greeting Committee.

  But Beauty would have none of it, and neither would Pat. As Sissy’s mother, Pat needed to make sure the new horse was suitable for her child.

  With River Wolf, as with most of the other horses we eventually fostered, Beauty put her ears back and kind of flattened her head outward like a snake’s head as she went nostril to nostril. “You don’t want to mess with me,” her body language was saying. “I’m in charge. Don’t get any ideas.” Sissy, impatient, tried to push her way in, but Beauty had only to turn her snake head toward her. “I’m not done yet.”

  Pat’s reaction was typically anxious, although friendly. She put her ears back but did not make any aggressive movements. After a short initial wariness at first breath, she was ready to get along.

  Poor Pumpkin, so retiring, never really would have a chance to say hello. She hung back, probably thinking, “It’s the three of them and the new horse. I’m not about to get in the middle of that.” She also by that point had Cushing’s disease, an endocrine disorder, and was unsteady on her feet, having lost a lot of muscle control in her hind quarters. That allowed Sissy to finally succeed in shoving herself forward, ears pricked and ready to be “new best friends.”

  Once I let the herd smell River Wolf over the fence (you never know if horses new to each other will start biting and kicking), I led him into the barn and gave him the end stall so he could look outside whenever he wanted. He liked me, as well as other people, very much. Even though I was a complete stranger, I could go into his stall without his backing away or running into a corner. He enjoyed smelling my arm and letting me scratch his neck.

  But he was terrified to leave the stall. I could leave the stall door open and walk away, and he still wouldn’t come out. He had spent his entire life alone in stalls, never in pastures with other horses, and he was scared to death. It took days for him just to walk out of the barn to graze in the lush grass, and then only after he had made sure that none of the other horses were out there. It was the equivalent of a child’s being afraid to dig into a big bowl of his favorite flavor of ice cream in the company of other children.

  After about a week, I decided to lead Sissy to the pasture when River Wolf was already grazing. She tended to be the one who got put out with a new horse first because of her eager friendliness. Also, huge as she was, she still clacked submissively, opening and closing her mouth repeatedly while her teeth clicked together, a don’t-hurt-me habit most horses outgrow when they’re still weanlings. There was no way another horse could misinterpret her intentions. Still, River Wolf froze when he saw her. You’d have thought she was a mountain lion ready to attack.

  Sissy was oblivious. She walked briskly over to him to “say” hi and find out if he wanted to play. At racing speed, as though Sissy were going to kill him, River Wolf ran to the farthest corner of the pasture. Sissy, still completely unaware of his terror, walked gamely toward him again, almost running the last few steps, the way a person might who hadn’t seen somebody they cared about in a long time, sprinting toward their friend as they came closer in order to give a big hug.

  Again, River Wolf ran to the farthest corner.

  “Oh, is that the game?” I could see Sissy wondering, as she chased him in that direction, too. This went on and on until finally, giving up, she put her head down in the middle of the pasture and began to graze.

  River Wolf stared at her for five minutes straight, not budging, every muscle in his body tensed. Then, gingerly, and still keeping his eye on her, he began grazing in the corner himself.

  For two days, he kept as far from Sissy as he could get. On the third day, however, the two ate side by side, walking and grazing, walking and grazing. It broke my heart. I could see so plainly in River Wolf’s behavior what an unnatural thing racing was for horses. Cooped up in stalls and run ragged his whole life, he literally had no idea what it was to be a horse, utterly unable to read the body language of another one, and had to learn by degrees.

  But he did. It wasn’t long before Sissy and River Wolf were playing halter tag, the way Baby and Scarlett had, and nipping lightly at each other’s legs, then kicking up their heels and running off, finally grooming each other like tired puppies. Although twelve, River Wolf was actually playing like a weanling, enjoying the childhoo
d he had missed.

  Sissy hated to see him go about a month later, when he was adopted by someone who wanted to do Western trail riding, which would allow him to lead a much better life than at the track. So did I. It was always wondrous to see a herd shaping and reshaping. Horses, like people, have their favorites, their friends that they like instantly, and those that they can get along with but for whom they don’t feel an immediate affinity. Even Beauty, once in a great while, would take right away to a new horse, pricking her ears in friendship, and the two of them would choose each other as grazing/grooming partners.

  Things were proceeding as smoothly at the new track as they had for River Wolf. I even enjoyed my Saturday drives out there. It was a straight shot on I-96 from the Detroit suburbs on the east to Lake Michigan on the west, which was just a few miles from the new track. Starting out before the sun rose at 5:15 on a weekend morning after spending about forty-five minutes taking care of my horses down at the barn, I could go for the longest time and not see another car. Except for the loop around Lansing, trees surrounded the flat highway on both sides, and, the car in cruise control, I relished my private time.

  I had by that point quit the HBPA board. There was nothing acrimonious in it; the new board president was disappointed to see me resign, in fact. But knowing that I would never race a horse again, I realized that I didn’t have a right to vote on issues that would affect the livelihoods of those still involved.

  I had also by that time been voted vice president of the Michigan Eventing Association. Life was to some degree spinning in a different direction.

  One thing I was glad to finally put behind me was the lawsuit. Back in the previous December, it had gone to mediation, with a suggestion handed down that both sides settle for $12,500, splitting the difference between Baby’s $25,000 valuation and no money whatsoever, which was what the track wanted to pay.