Minnesota Nice - Equine Edition

From time to time in this space I drop in a post about a favorite horse, a major horse rescue effort or an organization trying to make headway in giving retired racehorses a chance at a new career. Today features one of those stories and one that is close to home for me. Standing in the Gap is a non-profit based in Minnesota to help horses in need. The video below, sent to me by Darla Jeffery (filmed by Leslie Morely) does a marvelous job chronicling one rescue story that took place right here at Canterbury Park.


As Darla does at the end of the video, I would also like to thank Max Henderson, trainer of Solo Tour, who made the one phone call in order to spare Solo an uncertain fate. I know that there are more like Max out there, and I'd like to thank each and everyone of you who have made that call and, maybe more importantly, have spoke to your fellow horsemen about making that call.


Please watch the video and visit Standing in the Gap and, if you can, give a little. especially the hundreds of Minnesotans that visit this blog each month. Even $5 or $10 from each of you will make a huge dent in their expenses.

Two Weeks Off

By the time this gets posted we'll be shuffling off to Buffalo. And Boston. And New York, Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper's Ferry and Springfield, IL before winding up home again. We'll be visiting Niagara Falls, family and historic sites not to mention anything else that happens to catch our fancy.

This also means that blogging frequency will be toned down sharply over the next two weeks. I'll be back regularly before the Claiming Crown. I have floated the idea of live blogging at the Claiming Crown but Canterbury Park has not responded to my request for some space there as of yet. I hope to still be able to do it, but the non-response is disappointing. That doesn't mean I won't be there, but I think it would have been cool to draw the attention of the folks that follow this blog to Canterbury and the Crown. There are still three weeks left, so we'll see.

Enjoy your Fourth of July weekend. Have fun and be safe.

A Visit, A Fade & A Change

Three of the five of us in Fizzy Pop's (Slew Gin Fizz-Pop Pop BB Gun-Red Ryder) ownership group took a ride down to Canterbury yesterday to check up on how our boy is doing. Sure, we could have just called our trainer, Bernell Rhone, and asked, but what fun is that? Besides, Laura needed to get her license anyhow in case our race filled this weekend and none of the rest of us that picked up our badges were around. So we worked hard in the office for an hour or two to get a bit ahead of the game and took an early lunch to go see our boy.

A trip to the backside when you only have one horse in training can be a bit anticlimactic. It ends up being a grand total of an hour and a half of drive time back and forth and you spend maybe 10 minutes with your horse. It's still 10 minutes very well spent, in my opinion. I'm sure Fizzy was disappointed as well because the last couple of times I've been by I brought peppermints and this time I had my wife's car so I didn't have any with me. I know he enjoys them, but better yet, I knew that Laura and Josh would have enjoyed feeding him a couple. A definite opportunity missed there.

The dogs were still up on the back side when we got there so we parked just inside the security gate and started to walk over to the Rhone barn. On the way we ran into Lianne Rhone (maybe Butler? I'm not sure if she uses Butler or not, mental note to ask next time) who rides Fiz from time to time in the morning and is basically an assistant trainer in the barn. She remarked at how well Fizzy worked Tuesday and how strong he is. She mentioned that Dean (jockey Butler) said he was striding great. Then the bad-ish news. When Bernell pulled up he said it didn't look like the race we were targeting was going to fill. He was right. It didn't and so we wait. In the interim we had a nice visit with Fizzy. I promised Laura I wouldn't put her picture up, but I made no such promise to Josh, so there he and Fiz are up on the the top of the page.

I Am Woman Fades to Fifth

I Am Woman tried to get off the snide at Pocono last night and all did not go well. It actually was hauntingly familiar. She came off the gate really well but got beat to the turn by Allamerican Excel who was dropping in from $7000. It was a change in tactic for Andrew McCarthy driving Allamerican Excel as she's been trying to come off the pace from the outside posts she's been saddled with. The change in tactics worked as once she got the lead from our gal, she wired the field and won drawing off by 7 3/4 lengths in 1:53.3. Fifth, where I Am Woman finished, was clocked at 1:55.2, or .1 out of second. If you were a glass half empty person, she was also only .2 out of 8th.

The positive here is that she paced faster then she ever has and her last quarter was :30 flat, better than her previous efforts. A few big negatives: she once again was passed in the stretch, which is disheartening; and while it may have been her fastest mile to date, it was only by a tenth of a second. I don't call the shots with her, so I'm not sure what's next. While the purse money in PA is great, it's not that great if you never win any of it. That said, shipping her all over creation is expensive and counter-productive as well. Her pedigree is nice enough (Blissful Hall-Wild Proposition-Laag) but without much of anything distinguishing her on the racetrack, it's tough to make a case for breeding her.

Borel Off of Mine That Bird. Period.

After learning that Clavin Borel may opt off Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird in the West Virginia Derby (Gr. II) for a ride in the Jim Dandy (Gr. II) on the same day, trainer Chip Woolley asked Calvin to commit to his horse for the season. Borel apparently could not do that and that sent Woolley looking for a new rider. I can understand Woolley's point. I have a Derby winner and Triple Crown contender and you only want to ride him when you have nothing better going on? You'd think the Kentucky Derby winner - and the only horse to hit the board in all three Triple Crown races - would get a little more respect than that.

I kind of look at it this way: I understand the Rachel Alexandra deal. She is a special, once in a lifetime kind of horse. Mine That Bird is not. That said, I don't believe he is the flash in the pan that I thought he was after the Derby either. The fact that he is a gelding and could race in the major handicap races over the next two to three years should be a factor in Borel's decision. Sure, one bad step and that's that, but I'm not sure if he has to "live for the moment" in this spot. Again, I can understand taking the ride on Rachel, but to leave the Derby winner for Warrior's Reward? I don't see it.