Arlington Million 33

Every year since I've worked at ABR, the middle of August has been circled in red. The weekend of the 15th is my favorite U.S. racemeet of the year, the Arlington Million.

While this year's International Festival of Racing races don't really have any huge stand outs, they are very competitive this year. When writing a piece that will go up later in the week on ABR I had a hard time cutting the field down to three horses each because they are so competitive. 

One thing that I always love about the Million day races is that it brings in some horses that I really like over in Europe (in past years, horses like Side Glance and Dandino) and this year is no different.

Dandino

Side Glance

Three horses that I am really excited about seeing are the tough Panama Hat, the brilliant (yet inconsistent) Highland Reel, and the progressive Wedding Vow. All three are horses whose careers I have followed closely for over a year (or in the case of two of them, since they debuted as 2-year-olds). 

But Million week won't just be about those three.

While my favorite regulars (see photo above, ha) won't be showing up, there will be some familiar faces that I have seen multiple times at other tracks. One of those is Big Blue Kitten. The big goofball has been around for a long time and will be running in the Million on Saturday. If he wins the Million, he'll be the first horse in over 20 years to do the United Nations-Million double.

Then you have horses like Hyper. While I've never seen Hyper in person, I remember 2013 when Ken Ramsey was talking the horse up after he won the Arlington Million with Real Solution. According to Ramsey, trainer Chad Brown has been very high on this older horse so it will be fun to see how he does in the American St. Leger.

Team Valor is sending Euro Charline back over this year in what looks to be another cracking renewal of the Beverly D. While the race doesn't look as strong as last year's (which was a freak of a race for a non-Breeders' Cup event) she'll still have to face some strong fillies if she wants to go on and win her second Beverly D. If the filly wins this year's race, she'll be the first one to win two renewals of the Beverly D.

If you're in the Chicago area on Saturday, I highly recommend you stop by the track to watch some high quality racing. If you aren't but want to watch the races, you can catch them on the internet on a bunch of different betting sites and I believe one of the racing channels (HRTV/TVG) will also be showing them live. Good luck!

Summer Lessons Learned From Broodmares

I'm about a month in to working the summer season with the foals and broodmares and it has been quite the humbling journey.

I started back at the farm after the Triple Crown and was riding on a high. I think my strength in life is definitely photography (at least that is where I am most confident) so spending three and a half weeks photographing American Pharoah's Triple Crown preparations followed by his post-victory movements had my head a little inflated. 

Me when returning to the farm after a successful Triple Crown season.

But when he shipped out and I didn't have journeys to Churchill to make a few times a week I returned to what I call my "happy place." I absolutely love the farm and if I'm in a bad mood, just being with the horses makes me feel better. But as I learned during both yearling prep season last year and foaling season this year, the horses can quickly humble me. 

From just a general "everyone will understand" viewpoint, I thought I was in pretty decent shape this year when starting back at the farm. While I was much more prepared than when starting yearling prep season last year, I'm only half joking when I say that instead of spending thousands of dollars on weight loss camps, people should get a month long job on a farm. You kind of know how hard cleaning stalls is but you don't realize how much you work your muscles cleaning buckets until you get to the final barn and your arms don't want to move. But it is much more fun than working out at a gym so it's a win-win there.

Wrangling foals is also a workout in itself. Perhaps weirdly, getting pulled around by foals is fun to me because I feel like I've accomplished something when I finally get them to stand in one place somewhat calmly. Plus, this usually leads to me learning something so it's a double perk. Honestly, most people say they hate school and learning but I'm always trying to pick brains at the farm to learn more and when I'm recruited to hold a foal or mare I always take the opportunity to soak in everything going on. I'd be fine holding foals/broodmares all day if it led to me learning more about their care and how/why things happen with them. 

Possibly the most challenging part of this season hasn't been the physical part of working with the horses but the administrative part. 

I've never really voiced my desire to learn more about the office and non-horse handling tasks but it is definitely something I am interested in. Booking mares, picking stallions, turning in live foal reports, ect ect has always been a major curiosity to me and something that I think I may be really interested in doing more of. 

This summer, I've been given the task of registering the markings for all the foals and I've made it more complicated than it should be. I've registered horses with other registries but The Jockey Club is more thorough then those and ask for things I've never thought of before. One example is the cowlicks on horses.

I've never really thought about them in the past but as it was explained to me, they are like a horse's "finger prints." I'm sure I have frustrated the man going over the cowlicks I put in because I went from not knowing that horses have cowlicks on both sides of their neck in addition to on their head (there's your random fact of the day) to overexplaining the cowlicks because I was afraid of giving too little detail. 

I've also explained markings more thoroughly than they have to be so it's taken me three weeks to relax on the information I fill in for markings and not put in exact details like a star slightly caving in on one side but popping back out a little higher. That learning curve has definitely been stressful and caused my confidence to waver  over the past few weeks. But I'm hoping that now that I've gotten it down, the rest of the horses will go smoothly and I can stop raising the blood pressures of those who have to deal with the stuff I enter (sorry, guys!)

Next up on my task list is getting foal photos and I am psyched about that. Like I said earlier, taking pictures gives me a lot of confidence so I'm excited. I'm still in awe that I am getting a chance to do all of this stuff on the farm and learn everything that goes into setting the next generation of racehorses up for success, both in the barn and the "office." It's literally something I dreamed of doing for years and I'm so thankful to those who are giving me the opportunity.

Lessons Learned From Mares and Foals

This winter I jumped into the breeding side of the Thoroughbred industry with both feet when I was offered a Saturday night job foal watching at the same farm I'd prepped yearlings last summer. 

While there were some really cold nights in the barn (and quite a few were the mares decided that foaling on any nights but Saturdays were the best), I absolutely loved it.

I've always been extremely interested in the breeding aspect of the sport so getting a chance to be involved with it from the inside was the coolest thing I've experienced in my Thoroughbred industry adventures so far. But in addition to helping bring the next generation of racehorses into the world, I learned some lessons about myself and the industry. 

So without farther ado, here are the things you (well I) learn during foaling season:

1) If you really want to know something, ask: The first few weeks I foal watched, I was shy about asking questions even though I had a ton of them. But I quickly learned that if I had one, even when it didn't have to do with foaling out a mare, everyone I worked with was willing to answer it. I learned more  about many different topics from chats during mare checks than I've learned in the last year.

2) You can't always be a control freak: I like to know exactly what is going to happen before it happens so I know what to expect. While things such as the nightly routine and basic behaviors stayed the same in nearly all the mares, each mare is a little different. Some of them will really make you think they are about to foal (looking at you Bromelia) then wait two days, whereas others will give no signs until you hear their water break (ahem, Daughter). So basically, expect the unexpected.

3) Getting up early isn't so hard: I have been a notorious late sleeper for years. My days off included sleeping past 10 and every morning I timed my routine down to the minute so I knew how late I could sleep without being late for work. But this winter that has gone out the window. Five a.m. alarms easily wake me up when I know that I'm about to head to the farm for vet work. I still love sunsets more than sunrises, but sunrises aren't too shabby either.

4) It is okay to have favorites: Throughout university, it was always pounded into our heads that you must remain unbiased. I've bent that rule a bit with the racehorses but with the foals, that rule is a goner. There are mares you will like a lot more than others and foals who just blow your socks off. I have my lists of both mares and foals I would gladly let live with me because I love them so much.

5) There will be disappointments but you have to move on: Everyone knows that horses aren't always sunshine and rainbows. Things can go bad and you can't always correct it. One such event shook me to the core but I did learn from the experience and figure out what helped me move on from it so there was at least a good side of it.

6) I am stronger than I think I am: The "bad" (there is really nothing about about foal watching, in my opinion) thing about my shift is that I worked the following day at my normal job so sleeping on Sundays was basically a three hour nap. It was an even more challenging event when I had to work my regular job on Saturdays as well as foal watch. While I told myself that I would be fine, it took these shifts to show myself that I am actually stronger than I think I am.

7) Find the good in every day: You may be locked in your stall for a few extra hours because of bad weather, but there's always something worth being happy about, even if it is just getting away with something you shouldn't have.

Our last foal was born earlier this week so there won't be anymore nights waiting for foals. I've been dreading the end of foaling season because it's literally my favorite part of what I do but I was told today that I can move over to working with the broodmares and foals during the day. So I'm really looking forward to starting that part of my adventure, and being able to continue working with my girls and kids, in the coming weeks!

Z Dager

Today I got to visit Z Dager at Old Friends. Who is Z Dager, you ask? (Don't worry, a lot of people do). Well sit back, I'm about to tell you his story.

I was given a tip by someone (who is now one of my big bosses) that Steve Asmussen had a horse he was aiming for the Derby and that I should write a story about the horse on Bleacher Report. I can't remember the horse's name and when I looked him up, he sucked but a horse from the same connections named Z Dager caught my eye so I switched over to a story about him.

Asmussen isn’t the easiest guy to interview but I wasn’t aware of that going into my phone call, which was my first one-on-one interview ever with a racehorse trainer. Asmussen wasn’t all that eager to talk and didn’t really seem all that hopeful about the horse’s chances as a Derby winner. But even with the not-so-great interview, I was hooked on making horses my career.

Z Dager ran in three prep races on the 2012 Derby trail but even though he placed in two of them, he really wasn’t all that good and dropped down to the allowance levels. I followed his career closely and he was claimed in a start at Saratoga by David Jacobson in 2013. After that, he disappeared and even after making some inquiries, I couldn’t find him. It always haunted me that he just disappeared because he meant quite a bit to me due to his part in my professional career.

So imagine my surprise over a year later when I went to Old Friend’s site for something completely different and saw his name on their roster. During a trip there today to talk to Michael for a few stories, I told him about what Z Dager had done for me and asked if he was at the Kentucky or New York branch. Michael not only said he was at the Kentucky branch but at the end of the interview took me over to see him and said I could stop by any time.

I can’t express how thankful (because my 400+ word post doesn't do it justice) I am that Old Friends not only took the horse in but that Michael drove me over to visit a horse who isn't exactly well known or in an easy paddock to get to.