(no subject)
It has been a full year since my first hands-on experience with racehorses. That was back at the Mexican match races, having lied about knowing a shit and resultingly falling off of three out of five horses on my worst day and letting the rest run off. My breif stint at FedEx. To work for Monk and Lynda the following March.
At my last update I had just left the shelter of Monk's wing to begin freelance galloping at Arapahoe Park. He was still my first-call barn, of course, but the fewer horses I rode for him, the better (more mounts) a day I seemed to have. Still never did better than nine except for the day I took two more up The Hill after the track closed. I only came off one more horse in the course of the season after the two-year-oldthat pitched me three times in one day and the older horse I mentioned last time. That was the result of a near head-on collision with a loose horse that ultimately turned my saddle upside down and slung me under the rail onto the infield. Such outstanding luck to avoid hitting it on my way down, and also to avoid getting in a tangle with the horse that caused it. They touched forelocks, it was that close. I'll bet those dumbass outriders wished they'd both been at the track instead of alternating days after I let the second one loose. Whoops.
My next meet was in Kansas City after a short layover in Dodge CShitty, where Santana and the baby (I think his name will be Denver) had already been shipped off to. I made the mistake of making Mark (a guy I started galloping for at ArP) my first call barn, not yet having figured out that he is really in to free labor and kind of a dickhead in addition to being a pretty good horseman. I got stuck tacking my own horses and at his mercy to run back and forth between barns when the walker backed up on them. Wasting time, my best day after the first two (nine and eight) was seven, and often only took five or six. The whole meet was basically a struggle for me, between my own brain and body problems and a lot of the same horses I'd been galloping in Denver getting inexplicably harder to hold back. I had one run off with me really bad. Seriously, almost two miles full tilt with me doing everything I could think of to stop her. *cringes* The outrider finally stopped us. That's why there are supposed to be two on the track, one at the gap and one at the six furlong pole. I didn't holler for help our first time by, thinking, "Surely she'll pull up after the wire." Had there been an outrider at the six furlong pole when I realized my calculation had been way off, we might have only gone one mile. What killed me was that I'd been on the horse twice before, both times to work 3/8. The first time I had almost lost her by the 5/8, and about the time I finally got her back down to loping speed we were coming to the pole we were actually supposed to work from. You're supposed to take a running start at them, plus the horse was already a little tired from the fight we had and galloping too fast, so the work was almost too slow to record. The second time I was on her was the same drill and I had no trouble. In hindsight, I suppose, it was her first gallop back after her first race of the season, having four days off in between, knowing I'd had a hard time with her once before, knowing I'd had a hard time with another horse it's first time back after running that was normally a piece of cake, and knowing that the horse knew I'd only been on her to work, it was probably not the best idea. But the clocker had given the five-til-closing call and Mark had already gone out on a horse I was never allowed on, so I trusted his judgement that I could do it. Allegedly it happens to everyone. But I struggled with a lot of horses that month.
Another one fainted and rolled over me. Thank Someone the track was so deep and it happened right at the quarter pole where there was help close by. Sometimes when horses race, because they're such large animals and therefore require astounding volumes of oxygen, the extreme exertion causes their lungs to over-expand and get small tears, which then bleed. I guess this horse had bled pretty bad in her last race, then the track was closed for five days due to rain, and when she finally got out to gallop again in the humidity the scabs in her lungs opened, her lungs filled with blood instead of air, and the result was passing out. In my heart I still question Mark's horsemanship about sending her out at all, but I suppose I have to give him the benefit of the doubt; I didn't know she'd bled; I thought she just hadn't run very well. It's plausible he didn't know, either. One minute she was in the bit, pulling around the turn right where she always did, the next she was roaring, (which she did sometimes anyway, but never like that) falling right out of my hands, (which she often did at the head of the lane anyway, having passed all the poles we might have been working from, but never so abruptly) making a beeline for the outside rail, (highly unusual) nearly colliding with a horse we'd just passed, (yikes) took three funny steps (red flag, Red Flag, RED FLAG) and the next thing I knew we were on the track. Somehow or another I got both feet on the same side of the horse. If I hadn't I likely would have had my back, pelvis, femur and lots of other fun things broken when she did a full somersault over me. The last sight I remember before finding myself face down in the dirt with front feet to my left, hind feet to my right, and my own feet trapped somewhere in between was Tim Gleason's gallop boy looking at me as he barely squeaked between my horse and the outside rail. At that point we were already halfway to the ground. "What happened?!" Someone said something about a heart attack but it didn't register because I had realized my predicament and was having a moment of serious panic. I didn't know at that time why she'd fallen; the way it felt I thought she might have broken a shoulder (which later seemed stupid because she'd never taken a lame step and hadn't really galloped very hard). If you've ever seen a horse trying to get back up with a broken shoulder you will understand my apprehension at being stuck underneath it. I remember seeing someone (the outrider, I later found out) at her head and telling or hollering (over the blood rushing my ears everything else is very quiet to me in the memory) to sit on her head. "Don't let her get up while I'm under here!" I didn't know the horse had no imediate intentions of getting up and was trying to quickly pull myself out from under her. Later, this also seemed rather stupid. 120lb girl under 1200lb horse thinking she's going to pull herself out how? "I'm stuck." No shit. Watching Mark, who'd been my company, gallop away down the stretch, incredulous. I stopped expecting him to give a shit about me awhile back, but that was his horse laying on the track (and on ME). Not that he could have done much with his own mount to look after, but still. Why wasn't the horse trying to get up yet? Why was I still alive? Was she dead?! "Is she okay?!" The outrider looks at me, incredulous. "Let's get you out first before we worry about her." Oh, God, she was dead! Matt was there. "Are you okay?" Wide-eyed. "Yeah, I'm fine. Can you roll her over or something?" He lifted her hind legs, rolled her up high enough to allow me to free myself. I was on my feet. "Are you okay?" The horse's sides were heaving for breath and there was a pool of blood around her muzzle. "Yeah." Matt was at the billet straps. The meat wagon horse ambulance was on the track. The meat wagon human ambulance was in motion. The outrider was on the radio. "Get that ambulance out of here; the rider's fine. Close the track until we get this horse out of here. Hold off on the tractor until we get the horses cleared off of here. And turn those fucking lights off!" Horses going by. The clocker on the loudspeaker. Missy on her feet, still heaving but walking off the track. "We don't need the ambulance." Up the hill. Taking tack from Matt, who was leading the horse, as an afterthought. The clocker on the loudspeakers again reopening the track. Mark riding back up to the barn. "What happened?" The vet. The mare in her stall, head over the gate resting the front of her face against my chest. Matt. Always Matt there. Turnpike. Chocolate. Some others. I almost had a loose horse run into me at the exact same spot on the track later that same morning. Turnpike, ever after, chose that same spot to do her little bucky-spinny-roundy deal that she does when she's nervous about going to the track. Over the rest of the season several horses gave me a hard time at the quarter pole. Spooks on the track. Not kind to me. I saw a chiropractor that afternoon and all has been well aside from the expected soreness for a few days afterward. Such incredible luck I have. Such incredible gratitude to who or whatever has my back out there.
More later.