Tag: The Paddock

I was mulling over a bit of writing in my head. It was going to be super sassy, staggeringly well-researched, fantastically funny and just a little quirky. And then, as the Facebook meme goes, “THIS happened….”.

Charlotte, Anky, Carl — if you guys are reading this – exhale. Not because of the horse (obviously), but because of the rider, who is still trying to get to grips with the fabulousness that it is my privilege to partner.

If you were ever lucky enough to be of the generations that had mercury in your thermometers, you will know the wild fascination of holding quicksilver in your hands. It is there, it isn't, it's fascination, it is out of your frame of reference, it's desirable, it's wholly uncontrollable, and wholly out of your reach. I think this is what having children must feel like (if not, I apologise – it has not been my privilege).

The closest I've got – for a variety of reasons – is breeding my own horses. With six foals to my credit, I consider myself something of a veteran, but as with so many things in life, there's nothing quite like your first.

I suspect if one knew the inherent dangers – physical and emotional – of most things in life, it's likely that we'd give them a stealthy wide berth, instead of running headlong at them, laughing in the face of danger. I have found one's early to mid thirties about the best period for this, when you have too much in the way of means and too little in the way of common sense to help you know better.

This may not be everyone's journey, but so it was for me with breeding my first horse. My First Horse. The words still send little theatrical chills down my spine. I'd had horses before of course, but I wanted more than just buying one off an advertisement or inheriting a track hand-me-down with a free bucket of issues to go along with it. I wanted to make it myself (and yes, I realise what a total idiot I sound) and as a vague afterthought I made going to our first show together my ultimate goal.

I started out with a picture in my head of the final product and worked my way back from there. As it turns out, this is a pretty useful strategy for many things. Unfortunately it can rarely be applied to breeding. At least, not the first time round. So, the picture in my head was of a bright bay colt with black points and a star. That was my order to the universe. My heart horse, perfect in every way, if you please. I helped myself a little by starting with a bay mare. And then I read and researched and gathered as much information as I could on bloodlines and temperaments and conformation. I rang people up and asked for advice, I looked up previous generations and inspected existing progeny. Finally, after hours of agonizing, my prized (chestnut – cue alarm bells) selection was made, allowing for more hours of day dreaming of how all my chosen sire's best characteristics would transfer into my colt.

Send mare to stallion, effect successful conception, bake at body temperature for 11 months and voila, right? Not quite, but we did finally get my mare successfully in foal. Then, almost as an afterthought, I was recommended Phyllis Lose's Blessed Are The Broodmares. If you are considering breeding your mare, may I advise against reading it. It WILL give you sleepless nights about losing your mare, losing your foal and quite possibly losing your mind. If you have bred your mare, may I still advise against it as it will make you realise just how close you are sailing to the wind.

When the time came, being a responsible owner (and having had the bejeezus frightened out of me by Phyllis), I chose to send my mare to a maternity farm to receive expert care. We saw her just a few hours before the birth, and chatted to the farm manager about the mare, the pregnancy and what I was hoping for.

“Bay colt”, I reiterated firmly.

As is their habit, my mare waited for us to be safely an hour away sitting down to dinner before producing her prize. By the time we made it back, in the drizzle of a September KZN Midlands night, there was a little wet bundle on the ground.

The universe had got my order muddled and delivered a Chestnut. Filly. And about as rough and angular and far removed from my heart horse as it was possible to get.

But as they say, you may not get the horse you want, but you do get the horse you need. And as she stood up and wobbled around in the drizzle, that funny little long-eared orange bundle slipped right into a hole in my heart I didn't even know I had.

People talk about bonding with their horse. It wasn't something I thought about when I set out to do this. I just wanted a horse that was mine. A totally new, untouched little being that I could well, be with from the start. I wanted all of it. Every high, low, snot nose, awkward phase, growth spurt, winter coat, you name it. What I didn't realise is that when you choose to link your life so closely to a horse, you also become theirs. In a way that I couldn't even begin to process at the time, in that moment we made a connection. That funny, long-eared, chestnut filly (of all things), was MY horse. And I was hers.

And so started our adventures. From the ground, to the saddle and beyond. We have moved homes and yards, we have lost friends and family and gained new ones along the way. It hasn't all been a bed of roses. In fact, as one might expect with a large, wilful chestnut mare, and a small, equally wilful and not altogether fully prepared owner, probably very little of it has. We haven't always liked each other. She's put me in hospital and frightened the living daylights out of me and made me scream and cry and swear a lot more than I care to admit. But all along, no matter how revolting things got, that connection remained.

We did go to that first show together. She was appalling and tried to buck me off and flatten a judge. C'est la vie. She still has long ears and rough angles and thoroughly inelegant everything, but in that weird breakable / unbreakable way that quicksilver has, although we splinter apart from time to time, we are inexorably pulled back together again. We are always there for each other.

While there are still days that she makes me want to tear my hair out – and I have no doubt she feels the same – Oh my, on the days that she doesn't …

We recently had one (hence this column – ta-daaa). Having moved on from my naïve, energetic thirties, I'm now a little more blessed in the numerical department and from that lofty height, being flung off a 17hh wall of chestnut gets less appealing the further one climbs the ladder.

Time in the saddle is supposed to be sacred, a meditation between you and your horse, free from all the detritus of mundane, A to B, one foot in front of the other of life. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way and life frequently follows you into the tack room, onto the mounting block and right into the saddle, getting between you and your partner. Somehow all the things that you used to arrange neatly around your riding time won't fit so neatly in their allocated spaces anymore. They threaten to reach up and choke you if you don't keep feeding them and time at the stables is reduced to 'once this is finished,' 'just another half an hour,' or 'oh well, maybe tomorrow.' If you're not careful, it's enough to fling you right off your horse.

So there I was last Saturday. I hadn't put any work in during the week and knew I didn't have any right to lower my sorry behind into the saddle and demand a good ride. And yet, when I did, there was my friend. Waiting patiently to see what we were going to do today and doing her best to make her huge chestnut self as small and smooth and soft as she could. I guess it just hit home that my funny little awkward bundle was all grown up in so many ways and that when it matters most, my horse, MY horse, really does carry me.

The post Louw: As A Breeder, You Don’t Always Get The Horse You Want, But You Get The One You Need appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.

As we approach the 53rd anniversary of the first moon landing, I find myself staring at the glowing orb in the night sky with a furrowed brow and wondering if it's time for a change.

Historically, the moon has been the greatest frontier that our species has traversed, reserved for the very best among us. The 238,900 miles from Earth's surface to the moon is by far the greatest distance any human will travel in their lifetime, requiring a level of training that would cause most of us to crumble into dust. In exchange, the names of the 12 men that have set foot on the moon are woven into the fabric of humanity's story. This is the greatest thing they, and perhaps any person, will achieve.

Here's the problem: We haven't put a man on the moon since 1972. America regularly has astronauts on the International Space Station, and programs like SpaceX have made the opportunity for civilians to reach the boundaries of our planet's atmosphere more available than ever, but people just aren't going to the moon anymore.

The rigorous physical and technical training necessary to do it is just too great for all but the most elite specimens to stay the trip, which can be discouraging, and hard to accept – especially if you just paid $55 million for a seat on a spacecraft.

Moon travel is at a crossroads, and if something isn't done soon, humanity could lose interest in going to space altogether.

Don't worry. I have a plan.

To increase public interest in the moon and reflect the modern state of space travel, we need to bring its orbit closer to the Earth.

The International Space Station orbits at about 240 miles from Earth, and SpaceX's Inspiration 4 mission reached an orbit of about 363 miles, which is the farthest a civilian has traveled from Earth. If we adjusted the distance between Earth and the moon to 300 miles, this would reflect the current investment focuses of space travel, and make this monumental achievement much more obtainable.

In the past, it was accepted that going to the moon was supposed to be difficult. The names of the 12 men that have set foot there are not just major figures within their own sphere, but household names among the general public. The story of America can't be told without names like Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin, and Alan Bean.

On the same note, many of us revere the ones that almost made it to the moon, like Michael Collins, who had to watch from orbit during the Apollo 11 mission as Armstrong and Aldrin grabbed the glory. For all the fame that the moonwalkers achieved, the sympathy we feel for the astronauts that got so close without touching it is why many of us took interest in space travel in the first place.

Here's the thing: While we might revere those names, and we're happy to name streets and museums after them, they don't reflect the modern space traveler. NASA, and other space-related organizations, clearly aren't interested in recruiting the kind of astronaut that would have thrived in the 1960s. We shouldn't base our priorities on the decades-old idealized image of an astronaut. The vocation and its participants have changed. Times change.

The current state of space travel commands its astronauts to lean less toward being an explorer of uncharted lands and more toward being a commercial pilot, bringing their passengers up and down safely.

Because we haven't sent anyone to the moon in decades, there obviously isn't a public demand for someone with those skills, and we shouldn't bother catering toward people who strive to achieve that status through physical toil and unmatched technical skill. If they want to try that with another country's program, which might be more geared toward long-distance space travel, I say let them.

When the moon is closer to us, that handful of astronauts will instead train to pilot shorter-distanced spacecraft, and conform to the modern commercial space travel market.

Investors pour billions into commercial space travel every year. It shouldn't be their fault that the spacecraft they buy and build aren't designed to go the distance necessary to reach the destination. Their perception is reality in that marketplace, and if they want the moon to be closer so their rockets can reach it, we shouldn't be so precious about its location.

Stuffy traditionalists might argue that the moon has always been 238,900 miles from the Earth, and that distance shouldn't change on a whim. What they don't realize is that 1.4 billion years ago, the moon was 33,143 miles closer to the Earth than it is today, and everything was fine. Bringing the moon closer would not be a new idea.

I can also hear the armchair scientists clutching their spectacles about the effect that a closer moon would have on the environment.

Yes, the tides would change drastically, and forever alter the makeup of the human race after much of the planet is covered in water.  What happens to individuals not interested in going to the new, closer moon is not my concern. The people that remain would be singularly focused on getting to the moon, which would be more accessible than ever.

Other diversions will fall by the wayside as people pile into rocket ships, and our crisis of interest in moon travel will be solved.

Anyway, enjoy the Belmont Stakes this weekend; one of the last great moonshots that North American horse racing has left.

The post Making Claims: Is The Moon Too Far Away To Matter In Today’s Marketplace? appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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