She’s a first time starter, but she’s not the first first
timer I’ve ever had: we had E
Sveikata go in Florida a couple of years back as a two-year old and I was
able to break that one down just fine.
Elusive Edition is different.
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| Ellie's activity this morning on the Rhone barn white board - 'walk and a race'; haven't seen THAT one before! |
“Ellie”, as we call her, has taken a very long road to this
first start. We bought into her as she
was coming two. She was a bit small and
narrow, but correct and had a great attitude.
She loved to run which is something you simply can’t train into a
horse. With the agreement between the
Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community just hitting full stride it made sense to
invest in a Minnesota bred again, we knew that she would grow and develop so we
bought 75% and got her started.
All was well until we got to the track. Once she started training more regularly, her
shins started bothering her. This isn’t
unusual for 2-year olds so we watched her closely for a few days. Bernell backed off her a bit and she just
walked the barn for a bit. One evening
we went to go see her and she didn’t get up to greet us – well, she didn’t get
up to greet Heather, me she could care less about! Heather got in the stall and
lay with her, just petting and talking to her softly for an hour.
The next day we moved her off the track. We could have gone on with her but I have
seen too many young horses ruined by bad shins – physically and mentally. I did not want the track to be the place she
related to pain, so she was turned out and we decided we’d bring her back as a
3-year old.
The partners were great about it. They understood that we needed to do what is
best for the horse so, in the long run, the horse can do her best for us. I
wanted to have her ready for opening weekend but the Minnesota weather did not
cooperate and we were delayed again and again.
We got her over to the track and then we didn’t get her gate qualified
the first time so we had to try again!
We missed a shot at a start then as well.
Now we’re finally racing and I’m a wreck. I think she has potential but we haven’t asked
her for a ton so I really don’t know what we have in her. I don’t want her to be a disaster: for her
and for her partners. I would feel awful
and also be a bit surprised. It’s hard to break down a race when we don’t know
what we have in our own filly.We’ve all dumped money into her for 18 months. You’d like to think that it’s time to get some of that back; for the money to start flowing the other way, but in this business that’s never a certainty. I’ve hardly slept for three days and the anxiety isn’t going to get any better the next 9 – 10 hours.
Years of development and waiting come down to a little more than a minute over a possibly sloppy racetrack (though the morning has dawned gorgeous) and we’re flipping a two headed coin: patience could be rewarded or we could be reminded again how tough the racing game can be.
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