Regiment: Faith

We covered some rugged terrain in the last blog, skirting the border between fantasy and fact, exploring the bizarre terrain of quantum reality, bounding over the towering virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. It was a wild ride. But there’s a method to my madness. I wanted to explain, (and probably justify) the curious mixture of vision, drive, and credulity it takes to run a non profit organization for reschooling Thoroughbreds. 

I am speaking from my own narrow perspective. No doubt all non profit leaders rely on those attributes. I just know that to do my job, I have to nurture dreams and work diligently and daily on realizing them. Actualizing a vision in an unimaginative, flaccid-willed, naysaying world takes faith. And faith, as anyone who has tried to keep a promise, practice a discipline, or stay on a diet knows, is fragile and fleeting. It’s the at times seemingly stupid unflinching adherence to the expectation of the imagined and the unproven. Faith is not for wimps.

Every time I accept a horse into the MMSC program, I have to draw from my faith stash. I see many horses that are racing fit—as tucked up aand leggy as super models—some gleaming with health, others showing signs of the wear and tear of their athletic campaigns, a tad mangy, with stiffened joints and dull coats. I seek out the inherent physics of their infrastructure. It’s just a matter of angles, clearly visible in the skeletal layout, and calculating the inherent potential for thrust, pull, and leverage.

I look long and hard at the expression in the horse’s eyes. Intelligence, magnanimity, courage, spunk, confidence, naiveté, those qualities or the lack thereof are evident. I watch how the horse moves, even or uneven, springy or scopey; how it acts in relation to its handler, to its surroundings, to its onlookers. I weigh my thoughts and impressions on any given horse, and then, last but not least, check in with my gut. After all, as I said in an earlier blog, logic should be on tap, not or top.

Every decision—whether I accept the horse into our program or not— takes a leap of faith. Racehorses change hands a lot. Paper trails can be hard to come by. There are lots of unknowns: injuries, habits, vices which might surface at the MMSC. Those slow down the reschooling process.  Sometimes they arrest the process outright. In either case I hear the silent daily “cha-ching” as expenses add up. As they do, my decision seems less and less “cents-able.”

Every year, there’s always one horse that taxes my faith to breaking point:

This year it’s Reggie.

Regiment by Indian Charlie out of Beaucette by Mr. Prospector was regally bred by Gainesway Farm and sold at the August 2011 Saratoga yearling sale for $450,000. He ran in two races, came in third once with a career earnings total of  $6,450. Last September, he strained the suspensory in his left front leg.  When I saw him in November, he had been hand walking for two months. The swelling was minimal and there was no heat but his owners had decided nonetheless to rehome him.

Reggie was a plain bay with a knot just below his eyes where he had banged his head on the stall door sill. His frame, although tall, was narrow and his eyes harbored a look of arrogance. On the  positive side his shoulder was nice, his hind end even better, and he had a beautiful ground covering walk. My gut told me he would be an athlete, an eventer in fact, and a good one at that.

He arrived at the end of February after healing up from castration. His first week was spent settling in, getting “spa treatment,” and being beautified from head to toe.

A week later, he began Natural Horsemanship games and bomb-proofing exercises and handled all with poise. The next week we started riding him.

I was impressed. He was a lovely mover, with lofty gaits and regular cadence. He had a nice jump, too. He felt great under saddle, naturally balanced and powerful. He still held a somewhat disdainful look in his eye, but he was always polite.

I was excited and called someone I knew in Virginia who was looking for such a horse. When she came in early April to try him, she fell in love, and wanted to adopt him. But I didn’t like what I saw: Reggie wasn’t himself.  His jaw was stiff, his poll locked. His lovely, lengthy trot was choppy.  

I ran my hands over him and could feel that he was out in his neck. He had a few ribs out too. I told the prospective adopter that he needed a chiropractic adjustment prior to any pre-purchase exam. 

That was the first test of faith. What ensued over the next 12 weeks defies reason. Whenever we scheduled a pre-purchase exam or a date with a prospective adopter, Reggie managed the morning of  to come up lame: A hoof bruise, a swelling of the old suspensory, getting cast and twisting himself out of alignment, discouraging any potential adopter from taking him home.

We x-rayed, we ultra sounded. We hosed. We poulticed. Nothing special showed up. We kept him shod, or at least tried to-he never kept shoes on for longer than 48 hours, whether nailed or glued,  steel or aluminum. He got hives, and then skin disease. He grew grumpy and impolite, pinning his ears whenever someone entered his stall, and flashing his teeth when groomed. Although not off anywhere, he was surly when worked. He bullied his four legged pasture mates when out, and glowered with contempt at his two legged handlers when in.

Every day, I grew increasingly dismayed by my inability to figure him out. My faith was waning. Should I call his original owners?  Send him back? I couldn’t!  He was too nice. I had to hold on and figure out what was going on. Every test of faith was an opportunity to grow.

Shortly thereafter our acupuncturist discovered a nascent case of herpes, which although pesky, was treatable.With oral lysine, herbs, and soothing baths, Reggie, started to come around. The intermittent flaring up of the left front suspensory abated too, which the acupuncturist said was a common and curious symptom of herpes due to the placement of meridians. But he still refused to keep shoes on and came up constantly with bruises and gravels.

“Why do you keep pulling off your shoes, Reggie!?!!,” I sputtered out loud to him in exasperation one day. The next instant, a picture of how his shoes needed to be placed on his feet flashed into my brain. I picked up his right front foot. What I saw there was very different from the picture in my mind.  When I shared the information with my farrier, he scoffed, “Ok.  I’ll do what you say but it won’t work.”

 Reggie hasn’t lost a shoe since.

Intrigued by  this experience, I started asking Reggie if I might come in his stall when I opened the door. When I did he welcomed me politely.

I told everyone in the barn to verbally ask his permission for things—to pick up his feet, to be groomed, to stand still. Without exception, and without being touched, he responded with no recalcitrance. The more we experimented, the more Reggie surprised us all with his seeming ability to understand.  So we took this experiment into the riding arena, and there, too, we got responses. The old Reggie was back!  Sound and training better than ever. His expression grew less contemptuous. I even got a friendly nuzzle every so often.

Emboldened by this, recently I decided to pop the question.

Slipping into his stall, (after being granted permission of course), I asked quietly. “Reggie,Why are you always lame on pre purchase exams or when a prospective adopter comes to try you?”

The image of a male rider flooded my brain.

I suddenly realized that everyone who had tried Reggie thus far had been female.

“A guy, Reggie?  You want to go home with a GUY?”

He lifted his head from his hay and stared unflinchingly at me.

“Ok! Ok!  I’ll find you a guy.”

He put his head down and went back to eating hay.

I stood with my back against the stall wall, looking at him and let out a sigh.

“OMG!!!…. Am I nuts?”

“Absolutely not!,” my gut resounded

“Most likely,” sniggered my brain.

Wow! If I am to believe what just happened, I am supposed to find Reggie a guy? How am I going to do that?

No idea. 

 Let go and let God, I guess.

 Isn’t that what faith is about?

OYE! 

As I said, faith is not for wimps!!!!

Cheery bye,

Susanna

Wild Ride

Horse people,  grab your safety (a.k.a. your S.O.S/OH SH!&*T!) straps.  

The rest of you, fasten your seat belts. 

We are going on a wild ride. First we will lope through the 17th century; then gallop through the weird world of quantum mechanics; leap over the three theological virtues of FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE, and pull up at that most idyllic of places, the MMSC barn.

Ready? 

 We’re off!

It’s 1605.  Queen Elizabeth has recently passed away. Her first cousin twice removed, King James I is on the throne (working on the King James Bible, by the way). Shakespeare has just written Othello. A bunch of venture capitalists are collecting funds to set out for the New World where they will found a colony and name it Jamestown. France is ruled by Henri IV;  Spain by Philip III. His subject, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra publishes a raucous, ribald, spoof of chivalric literature: Don Quixote de la Mancha that will become an instant success and an international classic down through the ages.

We all know the story: Crazy old man sets out on a nag accompanied by a fat peasant astride a donkey to live the life of a medieval knight, righting wrongs, defending church, country, and virginal ladies. Trouble is he is about 200 hundred years too late.The Age of Chivalry is dead. Nobody crusades any more. Instead, they slog along trying to defend their status, their savings, and their stuff.

 What most of us don’t know either because we’ve never read the book, or we read it so long ago when we were young and naive, is that this is a scathing satire of sheer genius on just about everything in Spain in the early 17th century: Society, politics, religion, culture. Cervantes was the John Stewart of his day. Observant, clever, naughty, and really, really funny.

But it has a deeper level too: To Dream the Impossible Dream level. It’s the tale of clashing realities. To Don Quixote, windmills are giants menacing the countryside. Sheep herds churning up dust clouds are Moorish armies on the march to be conquered. He is not delusional. He is on a noble quest of service and purpose. Yet he slams time and again into the pedestrian backdrop of daily living.

Those who think out of the box are familiar with these collisions. Fantasy against reality.

That’s where quantum mechanics comes in.

It is 1900 and Max Planck develops a “theory of quanta,” rocking the foundation of the three hundred year old Newtonian world of physics. In 1905, Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity. Six years later, the nucleus of an atom is found, followed in 1915 by Einstein’s proposal of a general theory of

relativity. In 1924, matter waves are discovered. Schrodinger comes up with that pesky “thought experiment” leaving us all wondering if the cat in the box is dead or alive or both.

Over the next six decades, the world of quantum mechanics explodes with neutrons, positrons, masons, quasars, quarks, all bursting out of the minds of the 20th century physicists. And the world is getting weirder and weirder. Matter is both a particle AND a wave. Time speeds up or slows down, depending. Age may not be chronological but simultaneous. And reality may not exist on its own. 

So the tree falling in the forest only makes a sound if someone hears it? Maybe so. It also could be that the tree only falls if someone perceives it having done so!

“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon,” said Princeton professor John Wheeler, who worked on the Manhattan Project and later coined the term “black hole,” those matter hogs in space. Hailed as  a “physics super hero” of the latter 20th century, Wheeler totally blew apart the Newtonian idea that the world existed in a defined, objective way. Instead, he argued, that the universe was subjective and interactive, and advanced the theory of genesis by observership. 

Another way of saying this in a more intelligible, albeit “woo-woo” way, is: Read The Secret, the 2006 bestseller that talks about the Law of Attraction. The premise of this book is that we can contribute to the creation of a physical reality by what we direct our minds to. “Thoughts become things, choose the good ones.”

Still with me?  I hope so. I know all this takes a real leap of faith, which is why we are going to quickly hurdle the three theological virtues faith, hope and love heralded by Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 of the Book of Acts. 

You need all of those virtues to run a not for profit for used luxury items, i.e. Thoroughbreds. Faith because you must stay steadfast in your belief that you can carry on no matter what. Hope, because it buoys you with a much needed cheerful expectation of all good things to come. And love, because, well, you just want to do your part, unconditionally and selflessly for a cause bigger than yourself--helping these amazingly beautiful, vulnerable animals who can’t do it without you.

Which brings me to the MMSC. Thank you for your patience while I took you on the unorthodox and seemingly “unhorsey” ride.  But it my mind, all of these subjects have everything to the MMSC, and I wanted you to know that.

Sure we may be like Don Quixote trying in our small way, one horse at a time, to change a horse’s world, an adopter’s world, and maybe sometime, the racing world.

Or we might be like quantum physicists determined to influence the creation of our reality with good thoughts and positive imagined outcomes.

And we need to approach the reschooling of every horse with faith, hope and love every day. But, sometimes that’s not so easy. I have, for example, a horse in the barn right now that’s really testing my faith. I’ll tell you about it…in the next blog. 

Cheery bye,

Susanna

To dream ... the impossible dream ...

To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...

To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...

To run ... where the brave dare not go ...

To right ... the unrightable wrong ...

To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...

To try ... when your arms are too weary ...

To reach ... the unreachable star ... 

This is my quest, to follow that star ... 

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ... 

To fight for the right, without question or pause ... 

To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ... 

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest, 

That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm, 

when I'm laid to my rest ... 

And the world will be better for this: 

That one man, scorned and covered with scars, 

Still strove, with his last ounce of courage, 

To reach ... the unreachable star ...

Restored Picture

I really wanted to watch the Belmont Stakes last Saturday. I really love my job, but lately my faith in being able to realize the big picture I have for the MMSC as well as for the betterment of the racing industry down the stretch has been flagging. Any one who has tried to effect change any where at any time, knows that it takes vision and grit. But, heaven forbid should your picture get obfuscated! Then your gusto will lag. And gusto is essential.


This race could be the pick-me-up I needed. First of all, the “people’s horse,” California Chrome (left) was chasing the third jewel in the Triple Crown. His becoming the first horse in 36 years to win it would be really great for racing. But my heart belonged to the little grand horse, Samraat (right), owned by a MMSC board member. I had reschooled his full sister and several of his half siblings. He was family. I understood what the mother of Tracy and Lanny Barnes must feel when her twin daughters (below) compete in the same biathlon events. How does one pick a favorite child?

I burst through the door at home that evening, dashed to where our television sits, and was alarmed to find an agitated husband, remote in hand, randomly slamming its buttons whilst glaring at the Direct TV logo that bobbed saucily across a blank screen.

“What’s up?” I asked, suspecting the answer.

“The D#%%**&&!!!  TV WON’T WORK!,” he spurted.

“Let’s see, honey.” 

Husbands tend not to like to read, follow, or ask for directions. It has to do with the Primeval-Man-Can-Do! thing. Fortunately I am immune to that, and without hesitation picked up the phone.

“Hello. Thank for calling Direct TV. This is Nenita. How may I help you today?”

 I explained the urgency to restore service. The Triple Crown. One horse had a chance to win it. Another was a favorite of mine.  

 “Yes ma’am. I understand.”  She had a refreshing accent,  like pineapples or starfruit. 

Where are you located, Nenita?”

“In the Philippines, ma’am.”   

“You speak beautiful English!”

“English and Filipino are the two official languages spoken here. But there are over 100 other languages and dialects spoken in my country.”

“My goodness! How many of those do you speak?”

“Four, ma’am, and I understand many others. Now let’s reset your system, shall we?”

Nenita began walking me through the unplugging of chords, the depressing of buttons temporarily, the scrolling through options. It took, seemingly, forever. I kept eyeing my watch. When I get nervous, I talk. So I kept asking her questions.

“Have you ever heard of the Triple Crown? Or the Kentucky Derby?”

“Perhaps the Kentucky Derby, ma’am.”

“Oh well, you should Google it.”

“I will, ma’am, but only after I get off work. We do not have much internet access here on the job.”

“When do you get off work, Nenita?”

“In a few minutes, ma’am.”

“What time is it there?”

“About quarter to six in the morning, ma’am. I work the graveyard shift.”

“When do you sleep?”

“For about four hours when I get home, ma’am. I am a single mom of a four year old boy. I want to be with him as much as I can.”

“Heavens! And how many languages does he speak?”

“Two, ma’am. Are the satellite settings resetting now? It should only take a few more minutes.”

While I waited, I learned that Filipino is a Spanish-Creole based language as the country was colonized by the Spaniards in the 1500s and named for their king, Philip II. Comprised of an archipelago of over 7,000 islands, the Philippines boasts some 99 million inhabitants, making it the seventh-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. It’s a powerhouse for cellular service, tropical beaches and active volcanoes.

“What are your thoughts about climate change?," I asked, remembering the tsunami that struck her country last November claiming thousands of lives. I wondered if she thought it existed or not.

“It definitely exists,” she said. “Take for example the weather today,” and she proceeded to detail its idiosyncratic behavior. “It is certain that we are impacting the planet. It is also certain that to change this, we all must come together.” 

“Can we do that, Nenita? Can we change?”

"Of course we can.  If we all work together to achieve something bigger than ourselves."

“If we are around as a planet in 100 years, what will we be doing? "

“We will all be individually flying,” she replied with total assurance.

“Wouldn’t the skies be terribly crowded?”

She laughed, a tinkly sort of laugh, like a stream trickling over smooth stones.  

“Probably so. But scientists must already be working on that kind of thing. After all, all change is brought by an idea. In time the idea takes shape. People then come together with action around this idea. Momentum builds, and change takes place. It’s always like this…Is your picture restored yet?”

Smitten by her thoughts, I hadn’t noticed the face of  sports commentator Bob Costas looming from my screen.

“It is!!”  

“That is very good, Mrs. Thomas. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Her use of “Mrs. Thomas” suddenly struck me as odd. In fifteen minutes of conversation, I had connected with her as a fellow human being who is living a daily life, as am I, trying to thrive.

“No, thank you.”

 “She hesitated. “Thank you for your interest in my country. Isn’t it  amazing that we can speak to one another from around the globe, work together on repairing a piece of equipment in your house, and exchange so many thoughts about our world?”  The tinkly laugh followed.

“Yes, technology is an amazing in how it connects us all. Thank you so for your help. And for talking with me. I’ve really enjoyed it. Now go home, and get some sleep.  And, do me a favor, please?”

“What’s that?, ma’am?”

“Hug your little boy. He’s got a lovely mother.”

“I will, Mrs. Thomas. Thank you. And thank you again for calling Direct TV.”

Just in time. The horses were parading in front of the grand stand. I joined my husband on the couch. 

Change. Will it ever take place in the racing industry?  I envision a day when we will have a nationwide race day medications policy. There will be a racing commissioner over the entire industry. And there will be a universal, fully funded program for the aftercare of racehorses.

People tell me repeatedly that none of this is possible. That everything and everybody is too entrenched in their fiefdoms of self-interest.  Really? I say. Rome fell. The Berlin Wall was torn down. The Soviet Union disintegrated.

But, I admit, keeping clear vision day to day takes effort. My rosy picture gets smudged, dimmed, or frozen in place. That’s when I head to the barn. For me its like unplugging everything, holding down buttons, and resetting the system.  In a snuffle or two from a grateful horse, I will know, again, that all things can be changed if we can all come together and commit to an idea that is bigger than ourselves... 

The starting gate clanged open. Horses surged onto the track.

Things happen because of all of those who stand in the shadows making it so.  Let’s make change happen in the TB industry!

Thanks, Nenita, for restoring my picture.

Cheery bye,

Susanna

SPRING BLUR

I’ve done it again-let the spring months blur by without posting a word on the MMSC blog. I did the same thing last spring. I swore this January I would do better. So much for New Year’s resolutions.

Here are my explanations (not excuses!) for this lapse:

1. Life is daily.
I make a “to do” list every night. It’s always long. Here are some of the daily features: 
BARN: Feedings, groomings, messing up, cleaning up, training, treatments.
OFFICE: Input/output of emails, letters, phone calls, bills, reviewing applications, putting out daily conflagrations, planning.
APPOINTMENTS: Board, staff, or committee meetings; adopters looking at horses, or looking at horses myself off campus, attending industry conferences, or to trying to meet at least one potential sponsor or donor every week. 

I guess some people get from A to Z on their daily “to do lists.” I never do. But every day I try. Hope springs eternal.

2. Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

The“to do”list falters with the lobbing of curve balls: Impromptu visits of old friends or new ones popping in the door. The server goes down. The printer breaks. A horse goes awry: Maine Avenue comes in with a pulse in both feet. Reggie gets his neck stuck under the fence and twists his neck out of alignment. The proud flesh on Formaggio’s right heel is growing back. Agie’s rain rot has flared up. Jake is diagnosed with EPM. Max is being Max, and the thirty minute training session goes on for an hour. Bandi throws a shoe, AGAIN.

Those days it takes me all day to get from A to B. And sometimes, I get turned totally upside down. I am lucky then to make it from A to a!

3. It is wonderful to have written.

“Writing is easy,” said the late brilliant sports writer Red Smith (1905-1982).  “I just sit at the typewriter and open a vein and bleed.” Really? Red Smith’s columns flow with stylistic ease and grace. He struggled?! 

I love the English language. When I speak, I flirt with vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure to the best of my limited ability. But writing is different. The words don’t evaporate like spoken ones. They hang around. In fact they entrench themselves on the screen before me. When I reread them, they tend to lurch and lumber across the page recalling my long ago days learning to drive a stick shift. More often than not, I’ll write a paragraph and stall out. Especially if I am trying to craft a blog while I am at the MMSC. That’s like trying to drive a manual car on the steep hills of San Francisco in the midst of a blizzard.

So I resolve to do it at day’s end, after my hour’s drive home, taking care of my horses, making dinner, trying to be a bit present for my family, and of course, making the “to do” list for the next day. But the lure of bed where I can dream of having written is too seductive.

That leaves weekends.  But “what, pray tell is a week end?,” I ask, like Violet, the Dowager Countess Grantham from the hit BBC production Downtown Abbey. 

I am not so sure I know. That’s why I have a day clock  on my office wall at the MMSC. It’s only marginally effective, however. One reason is that we work on Saturdays, taking Sunday and Mondays off to accommodate the schedules of potential adopters. This off stride week would make even the most calendar conscious individuals stumble. Then there’s the whole guilt thing: Why should I be off when the majority of people around me are working? The truth is, leaving all complexes aside, it feels weird to be relaxing while the rest of the world toils. Finally, there’s the “I have too much to do!” internal whipping boy. Most people know about that pesky inner being. He’s alive and well in me.

So I am always working.

Or perhaps I am always playing?  

Isn’t playing doing something that you love to do? 

Don’t you find that the harder the challenge, the more fun you have? 

Isn’t it great to never be bored?  To always be inspired?

If that is the case, then I never work.  

We should all be so lucky!

                                               Cheery bye,

                                                                        Susanna