Saving Baby Read online

  At home, Baby’s ankle lost its soreness, and he and I would go for rides together. I was nervous to get on him at first. He was a lot of horse at the track. Only certain exercise riders and jockeys could handle him, in fact. He was powerful and stubborn, wanting to do what he wanted to do. And not all racehorses know the difference between being at the track and being at home. They try to go as fast as they can no matter where they are, pulling the reins away as they run.

  Before I mounted him, I talked to him a lot and breathed into his nose. “It’s me. It’s Mommy. This is different. We’re going for a gentle ride.” I got on with no small amount of trepidation, but Baby moved off just beautifully. He responded to “Whoa” for me. He turned when I prompted him to. He never pulled or tried to go any faster than I wanted. It was more like, “What do you want to do next, Mom? You want to go over here? Okay.”

  Having the horse I held in my arms carrying me, moving as one with him—how much closer a bond can you have? Over the trails we’d make our way, trees bare save the pines, all quiet except for the sound of Baby’s hooves pressing onto snow lit by faint sunlight fading early from the winter sky. I’ve always said that if there aren’t any horses in heaven, don’t send me there. This was why.

  Later that winter, in March, I received a phone call from Belker, asking if we wanted him to keep training Baby. Now I was nervous all over again. Why put Baby through the risk of more injuries? Despite all that was said at the track about what a good runner he was, maybe this was a Reel On Reel progeny that was simply meant to be with me in my backyard. He wasn’t even three years old yet—still very young, still so playful. Pat loved watching him and Scarlett frolic. “Look at my little ones,” her expression seemed to say. Scarlett, too, was so happy because none of the other horses at home were young enough to play the way she enjoyed. Only Baby wanted to nip at her, to roughhouse.

  Also, here, I didn’t have to keep running back to Baby’s stall at the far end of the track to make sure he was okay, to break up the monotony of being confined to that small space twenty-three hours a day. Here he could just be a horse. I was happiest when he was home with me. I felt very hesitant.

  But Belker invited John and me out to his house to meet his wife, make us feel more comfortable with him, and we very much appreciated the gesture. Whereas Coburn had always been distant, cryptic even, Belker appeared warm and straightforward. He obviously had a warm, loving relationship with his wife. Pictures of his children and grandchildren were everywhere.

  At least as important, he brought out loose-leaf binder after binder of win pictures—the official photos taken at the track when your horse comes in first. Belker had been a trainer for a lot of years, decades even, stretching back to the Kennedy administration, so there was a great deal of history. John and I were both impressed. Belker wasn’t a leading trainer anymore—he was just doing it for fun. But we liked his experience combined with his hominess—his genuine friendliness. And he already knew that I was at the track all the time, which obviously didn’t put him off. So we rehired him, leaving his house feeling pretty confident that maybe we’d have an album of win pictures ourselves someday.

  We shipped Baby to the track a few days later, as spring training had already started, and races were going to begin that year in April. Again, those mixed feelings welled up. There were cries and whinnies from the other horses as the trailer left. “Where are you going? We thought you were home to stay.”

  Baby himself didn’t appear nervous. “I’ll be back,” he whinnied confidently. “Just gone for a bit—have to make my mark.” Of course, he would have rather stayed home with his herd. But I couldn’t afford to read that into his calls.

  For days after he left, Scarlett would look around for him. Pat was used to separation—she had had so many foals. But Scarlett wandered about, whinnying very loudly. “Where are you? Hellloooo—can you hear me?” It came from deep in her belly, then she’d grow very still waiting for a response. Finally, she gave up, and her ceasing to whinny was even sadder.

  “It’s okay, Scarlett,” I’d tell her. “He’s coming back.”

  As for me, despite my initial trepidation, I was now almost anxious for the season to start, my nurturing instinct giving way to my competitive nature. I was looking forward to Baby proving he was the horse everyone thought he was—a winner. Also, in certain ways, the track was the best place for someone who adored horses. Every single day I got to go where there were more than 1,000 horses of all colors and sizes. And everyone was always talking horses. At that level, I was really in my element.

  Moreover, this time, going to the track felt like Old Home Week—big bear hugs and slaps on the back. I felt so much more at home than when I first arrived the previous spring. I felt like one of them.

  Better still, I didn’t have to worry about any of the orthopedic problems particular to two-year-old racehorses, or the fright that two-year-olds can feel in new situations. Baby was going to be three at the beginning of May.

  Belker put Baby in his first race of the season—a six-furlong run—on May fourth. Baby wasn’t at all disoriented. He knew the loudspeaker; he knew the whole routine. He knew that by being led to the track in the afternoon rather than the morning, he’d be allowed to run as fast as he could, as opposed to the measured runs of morning training. He was excited about running, even somewhat frenzied. Coming back to the track was Old Home Week for him, too.

  He came in fifth out of ten horses. Of course I would have liked to see him win, but because it was his first race in six months, I knew he had to get reacclimated to the speeds required. I didn’t see it as a major problem.

  Eleven days later, Baby ran again. He had the same jockey from when he came in third the previous year, so my hopes were higher, not just because he had done well with that jockey and not just because that jockey had a reputation for bringing the best out of a horse but also because it meant the jockey’s agent thought Baby was the right horse to ride. A good jockey’s agent is better than any track handicapper, picking horses for his client that he expects to win. The jockey gets 10 percent of what the owner gets, and the agent gets 10 percent of what the jockey gets, so picking the right horse is key.

  But Baby came in only fourth.

  Fifteen days later, on May 30th, Belker decided to try Baby at a mile rather than six furlongs. Baby didn’t have the build of a distance horse. Even Coburn had always told me he was meant for sprinting rather than distance. But a classic distance horse is an owner’s dream, so I wasn’t going to argue. Furthermore, someone in the Daily Racing Form picked Baby to come in second, so my hopes were high. The cherry on top was that he was going to be ridden by the top jockey at the Detroit Race Course, Terry Houghton. It was very difficult to get Terry. His agent, Frank Garoufalis, known universally as Frank the Greek, always had his pick. Frank also was keenly aware of which trainers had forty to sixty horses and therefore offered a lot of business and which had just a few, like Belker, and therefore didn’t require special tending or relationship-building. So the fact that Frank chose Baby for his jockey was a promising sign. Maybe Baby would surprise everyone and turn out to be a miler after all.

  As at every other race, I had all my friends and family there. I was feeling pretty confident that we’d all be going to a restaurant or bar to celebrate afterward. But Baby came in last—eighth out of eight, twelve lengths behind the winner.

  I was more than disappointed. I was confused. Baby was extremely fit and muscled, to the point that he was hard to handle; I couldn’t even walk him. And usually, that was a good signal. When a Thoroughbred takes on a “Don’t mess with me” attitude, it means he’s on his toes and ready to win.

  Belker said Baby just needed to build up the stamina for a mile race and scheduled him for another one late in June. “When he goes back to sprints,” Belker assured me, “it will be easier for him to win.”

  But Terry Houghton was not chosen as his jockey this time, and the newspaper picked him to come in fourth. If
only. Baby came in dead last again.

  On July 2nd, Baby entered his fifth race of the season, a six-furlong run. He lost that one, too, coming in sixth out of eleven.

  I didn’t doubt Baby’s ability. I had had too many people tell me by that point, “That horse is a runner.” They’d seen him in timed works. They’d seen the way he liked to gallop.

  What I was beginning to doubt was Belker’s ability. Baby was now running more slowly than he did with Coburn.

  My suspicions were fueled by comments like, “Is Belker still your trainer? What are you with that old coot for?” It wasn’t jibing with the fact that Belker had all those books of wins. What was Belker doing wrong, I wondered? Maybe he had a training style that worked way back when but that wasn’t keeping up with whatever trainers were doing now.

  On July 16th, he entered Baby in another six-furlong race, and while no one thought he would win, a handicapper in the Daily Racing Form did predict he would come in third. So even then, when Baby had already lost five races that season and three the season before, I was getting messages that he could race. But he finished seventh out of twelve, eight and a half lengths behind the winner.

  Now I knew something wasn’t right. In terms of soundness, Baby was perfectly fine. His legs were tight, he flexed just fine, and there was no swelling or heat after a race. But I did notice that when Belker cooled him down, he was thoroughly spent, exhausted. And I was able to start walking him again on my own; he had lost that tough-guy edge, as though there was no more fire in him. I saw, too, that he was losing weight. You should see no more than a hint of a horse’s ribs when he walks, and nothing at all when he’s standing still. But even when Baby was stationary, I could see rib outlines. Earlier in the season I saw that Baby was shedding some fat. But this had gone way beyond that.

  I started looking around. Baby’s grain looked good, and I knew he was getting vitamins. But I could see that the hay Belker was feeding was not high quality. Racehorses generally eat very good-quality hay, usually alfalfa. Baby’s hay had no alfalfa, however, and it was yellow rather than having a greenish cast, meaning it had not been baled at the right time and had lost its nutrients.

  I didn’t want to say to Belker, “Your hay is lousy.” I still felt deferential. I was loathe to interfere in a trainer’s tactics. But I did point out the weight loss.

  “Girl, he’s looking good,” Belker replied. “He’s looking racing lean. You don’t want a horse to carry around a bunch of extra weight.”

  “Racing lean” was a term used by some of the old timers. It wasn’t in vogue anymore, and certainly not for a naturally stocky, broadly built horse like Baby.

  “But his manner,” I pressed. “I can even walk him again.” He seemed dejected, too, keeping his head down and walking slowly. Baby’s morning training sessions were becoming more lackluster as well.

  But Belker blew me off. “Oh, it’s all in your head,” he said.

  I let it go. Belker always bedded Baby’s stall with deep straw, and he was always there, mucking away manure. He washed Baby himself, too, rather than leave that job to a groom. Also, as opposed to Coburn, Belker was such a truly nice man, almost fatherly at times, if a little condescending. One day, one of his sons, just a little younger than I was, dropped by at the track. “Hi ya, Dad,” he had said, and Belker introduced me, making pleasant small talk. Their warm, relaxed style charmed me, so different was it from Coburn’s weird, almost paranoid, way of interacting.

  So when Belker wanted to enter Baby in yet another race at the end of July, I let him, although not without some resistance. It was another mile-long run, and I felt Baby had already shown a mile wasn’t his kind of race.

  But Belker came up with an excuse, saying, “a mile will be easier for him. It’s harder for a sprinter to get to his top speed at a shorter distance. Besides, too much time will go by if we have to wait to pick up another six-furlong race.”

  So fifteen days later, Baby entered yet another mile race, albeit at a much lower level and with less impressive horses. I was okay with it because we really needed a win to start bringing in money and paying some of the bills, not just to Belker but also to the farrier and to the veterinarian, who injected Baby with his vitamins, with the bute he took the day before each race to guard against swelling, and with Lasix, which racehorses start taking at age three as a performance enhancer. “Need anything today?” the vet would call out as he came down the shedrow. Lasix was ten dollars a shot, bute, twelve dollars. At twenty-two dollars a horse and with more than 1,000 horses on the backstretch, a veterinary practice could pull in $150,000 to $200,000 a year, extremely good money for the mid-1990s. And that didn’t include all the money earned from administering vaccinations, diagnostic tests, and every other type of veterinary care.

  The newspaper predicted Baby would come in last, meaning that even in that cheap-purse race, the professional handicappers were giving up on him. He did not prove them wrong.

  I was crushed. I’m not much of a crier in front of other people, but walking back with Baby from the grandstand to his stall that day, anybody who looked right at me would have seen that my eyes were wet.

  “I’m going to get going, Girl,” Belker said to me after he fed all his horses some grain and left each of them a few flakes of hay. “I’ve got a long ride home.”

  “I’m going to be leaving in a minute, too,” I answered. “I’m just going to hang around for a little bit.”

  It was quiet in the barn, and I sat down on a bale of straw and just watched Baby for a while. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, he ate his grain, which horses love, after which they switch to their hay. But Baby only pushed his hay around with his nose. He wasn’t eating it. Then he did something I had never seen a horse do before. He started eating the straw with which his stall was bedded. A horse’s muzzle is very tactilely attuned, and Baby was picking around for single blades that he would enjoy even with a whole pile of hay right beside him.

  “You poor thing,” I thought, kissing Baby’s muzzle and rubbing my face between his nostrils, the spot on a horse where it feels like velvet. I had been right. There was something wrong with the hay. It may have even had mold. A horse will usually turn up his nose at moldy hay, which is a good thing because mold will make horses very sick. Whatever the problem with the hay, Baby was not getting the proper nutrition for all he was being asked to do—run as fast as a car, run so fast that his lungs could bleed.

  When I saw Belker the next day, I said, “You know what happened when I lingered yesterday?”

  “What?” Belker replied, going about his business.

  “Well, he got done with his grain, and remember I was telling you he’s getting too thin?”

  “Yeah,” Belker said, still not paying complete attention to me.

  “Well, he didn’t eat his hay when he finished his grain. He started eating his straw.”

  “That’s your silly horse,” Belker responded, pooh-poohing me, as he always did when I tried to disagree with him.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said, holding my ground. “He shouldn’t be eating his straw. There’s no nutrition in straw.”

  “Well, his hay is gone now, isn’t it?” Belker asked, looking at the spot in which he had left the hay the day before.

  “Yes,” I answered, “but for him to first pick through his bedding and then only finally get around to eating his hay—”

  “Girl, I can’t believe the things you worry about,” he replied, interrupting me. “You look for something to worry about.”

  “But this is why he’s so thin,” I said. “This is why his ribs are showing.” By that point I was even starting to see Baby’s hip bones.

  “I’m telling you,” Belker went on, not missing a beat, “he’s racing lean. You make him carry a bunch of extra weight, and it’s just going to put more stress on his joints.” He then said quickly, “I have a race picked out. There’s another one on August 12th. Not a mile. He really doesn’t like a mile. Six furlon
gs. That’s where he really belongs.”

  Belker was playing me. He knew I wanted so badly for Baby to win—I had now been at this too long—and he knew I and others didn’t think Baby was a miler. I went for it.

  “Okay, that makes sense,” I said. I figured I’d try this one more time. But Baby came in sixth out of nine, nine lengths behind the winner. He had now run eleven races altogether—three with Coburn and eight with Belker—and had not won a single one.

  After the race, the groom who had taken Baby to the track said to me, “I have always had horses dragging me to the post. I have never had one that I had to drag. He did not want to go.”

  The next day, the track vet, Larry Wales, came down the aisle of the barn with his usual “Need anything today?” and I said, “Yeah,” which took both him and Belker by surprise. The vets never even make eye contact with the owners, even though the owners pay all the vet bills. They speak directly with the trainers.

  “I just want your opinion on something,” I continued. “Would you look at my horse and tell me if he needs to gain weight?”

  The vet then looked at Baby—he, Belker, and I were standing right in front of his stall, and he said, “Yes.”

  “You see?” I said to Belker. “How much weight?” I then asked the vet.

  “A hundred pounds,” he answered. And then he left. Vets don’t want to get into arguments with trainers, on whom they depend for their living at the track.

  “You see that?” I said to Belker. “It’s not racing lean. This is a big-boned, broad, stocky horse. He’s supposed to carry all that weight. When he did, he did well. Now, the vet just said it. It’s not me making something up. He’s not that style of Thoroughbred, who races all tucked up, racing lean. He’s just not that body style.”