(no subject)
Guilt (1 of 3)
*sigh* I don't know what else I thought might happen to me, facing the prospect of three months feeling like there isn't really all that much wrong with me physically, and yet inexplicably forbidden to ride or do anything else fun for the danger of my spine collapsing. I don't know what else is supposed to occupy my time and attentions for this insufferable period of time but a man.
Unless, of course, I am meant to sit and ponder my guilt over what happened to (crash)land me in this predicament. It would be an effective but inadequate punishment. After all, I got off a lot easier than the horse.
And the extremely slight chidings I've received from one or two of the other riders don't really help. Mainly what I got was a lot of truly genuine concern, but given that I was already in a mindset geared toward being pretty hard on myself about it, the criticism, if you can even call it that, is what I took to heart.
But really. I should have known a lot sooner than I did that something was bad wrong.
I should have pulled him up a quarter mile ago.
The first clue I missed: the horse, an eight-year-old, had made a sharp decline in class over the course of his last few races, and yet had failed miserably to do any good. Maybe I should blame my valet instead of myself for the fact that there is NEVER a program in the girls' room unless Carson brings one for Polly, which only happens if she's on at least three. Sorry I don't get on a lot of horses and I don't do very well on the crap I do manage to pick up so I can't afford to TIP much. 10% is the standard, which is in addition to what the track pays, which means he got away more than even last year, after not returning the $65 hoof knife I lent him, the $30 set of gloves I gave him, one horse I paddocked and two gallops I never got paid for. I guess he still thinks everyone's just doing him inexplicable favors.
I no longer have a particularly long fuse for hounds. I guess it is unfair for me to have not notified him of this; how is he to know my standards have changed from a year ago?
Not that my dumb ass would have been able to extract that meaning from the program listing anyway, whether beforehand or after the field of presumably weaker horses pulled steadily away from us up the backstretch. I swear, for being as smart as I like to think I am, I sure miss an awful lot of shit that ought to be blatantly obvious.
Maybe I should blame the riders who know the trainer from the New Mexico circuit and failed to notify me that they've basically blacklisted him for having a barn full of crippled horses. I still should have at least suspected because the first horse I picked up for this guy was one the assigned jockey tried to scratch at the gate for soreness. The vet couldn't see anything wrong to scratch the horse, so I just assumed the rider, who'd been looking a little chilly to me this year as it was, had come down with a sudden case of salmonella. (Often caused by consuming undercooked poultry resulting in diahrrea; my clever way of suggesting someone has the chicken shits) I feel bad for thinking such a thing about this rider now. No one else was even trying to get on this guy's horses; he named me on his whole barn after I picked that first one up. It is dangerous to be in the habit of overlooking such things, preferring instead to give myself credit for being so brave as to get on a bunch of horses I don't know, and for riding well enough that a trainer who can't get anyone else isn't opposed to putting me on even when the established respectable trainers wont. That's brave, spelled S-T-U-P-I-D.
When we changed leads at the three-eighths pole, the horse might have taken a couple funny steps. I was told that was where he would make his move, and when I asked him, he felt like he wanted to go on but wasn't going to fire for whatever reason, maybe the surface. At the quarter pole I asked him again and he felt like maybe he was really leg-weary, but he wasn't gonna quit on me. Maybe we could have beat a couple horses and repaid the guy's jock-mount and bute/lasix bills, at least. Three-sixteenths pole, right where you straighten out, I asked him to change leads and he declined to do so. There's a big depression there that reaches from the rail to the middle of the track that holds a little bit of water long after the rest of the track is listed fast. I've had quite a few of my horses kind of scramble when they cross it, so I didn't think much of it. But then he kept going bad, and by then it was already too late. If I'd picked his head up real fast, he likely would have jammed on the brakes and broken at least one leg anyway. I would have been leaning back, probably with my right foot buried in the iron like it likes to get thanks to my injury from last year, and would have been under him when he went down. Nearly rolled on me as it was.
Maybe if it had been just one leg he would have been more uneven and I would have felt it sooner. He wasn't going real good on the backstretch, but he was just short in front, not three-legged. It was suggested that that's where I should have pulled him up. But that's pretty fucking easy for those guys who are getting on a lot of horses to say, when one race doesn't make much difference to them. Why wear yourself out trying to run last when you'll have a better shot in any of the next four races that day? It doesn't matter what it looks like because their overall performance record speaks differently. Easy for a successful, experienced rider to say, when they wouldn't be under the same scrutiny that I would have been had I stopped a horse that wasn't visibly lame to non-horsemen a quarter mile away in the grandstands. Everyone would say, "That dumb girl pulled him up for nothing." I'm sure they don't say much about me that's good as it is.
I just meant to let him ease himself and coast or even jog down past the wire.
I couldn't believe it when I felt him do the second one.
Couldn't believe it when I kind of got my bearings and looked over to see that he'd stood up, was standing up on the remains of his cannon bones, hooves and pasterns bent wrongly out in front, just waiting for someone to come help him. I was too disoriented to get up and help him.
Don't know what I would have done, anyway. Held his head and petted him and kissed his nose?
What do you say to a horse who doesn't know he's dead yet? When it's your fault and no amount of guilt or apology is gonna change things?
I swear I heard the collective gasp from the grandstands as I made landfall. Perhaps it was just the sound of my own air abandoning me for more promising endeavors.
God-bless my unusual defense against impending trauma which allows me to go limp and thus bend into shapes that would total a normal vehicle.
God-bless Polly.
God-bless whoever decided there should be EMT's tailing us around the track. It seems guardian angels are even assigned to good-for-nothing jockeys who make their livings beating innocent animals to their untimely demise.
God be merciful to trainers who stand their horses in ice for four-and-a-half hours before bringing them up to race, trying to get them numb enough to put one over on the track vet and unsuspecting jockey. But not overly merciful. Let him suffer what his horse and rider each suffered before being forgiven.
I don't understand why this trainer is allowed to win races with horses I would have been on had he not chosen to run that One who had no business being up there.
He had a younger jockey than me scratch a first time starter at the gate a couple weeks later. How do you get a horse sore enough that the vet can see it before it's even run? How did that kid pick up on it when I didn't?
I could chalk it up to a learning experience and show a little more gratitude that I'm alive and not paralyzed and am expected to make a full recovery, if not for the fact that some horse just died for the sake of my education.
I can be mad at any number of other people or at the industry itself and those who (fail to) regulate it, any of whom may or may not be partly or fully responsible. All of them will defer blame back to me or the trainer, who will deny knowing there was anything wrong.
I can refer to the number of horses I've taken for a myriad of trainers in my short career, galloped, breezed, ridden, who travelled worse than what Cincinnati was and didn't break down.
But the buck has to stop here. That's how I've always felt about it. That if someone thinks enough of me to put me on their horse and turn me loose, I alone am responsible for what happens to him during the time I have him. A Big part of my job is making judgement calls, even when I think the trainer's gonna get pissed at me for it and never put me on another horse again and maybe word gets around the track and no one else ever puts me on a horse again, either, but the bottom line is that I am in charge of that animal's welfare while I'm on him.
As far as my own safety goes, in that regard, too, I am on my own. Riding involves placing a lot of trust in a long list of people who probably don't deserve it, who simply feel no guilt about risking someone else's neck when they send a horse up who has no business being there. When that moment comes, no one's looking out for my neck (or back, as it were) but me, which apparently I'm not smart enough to do.
Maybe I don't need to be a rider.