Fish hospitalization, Day 8: Back to school

Together again

After four days without a further death, all 28 survivors are back together again in a 150 liter basin I picked up at an agricultural supply store on a trip to Brittany back when we about to do the repairs of the fish-pond-in-the-fountain that had sprung a leak sometime before, worsening the consequences of the major freeze we had in January 2009 as a result of the lowered water level right before the whole thing froze solid one night. 4 survived, and of those, 2 survived this bout of illness and returned to rejoin the other survivors today.

I treated the water with more of the JBL Ektolfluid that is intended to treat fin rot and other skin infections for fresh water fish. It is supposed to be effective against aeromonas, pseudomonas and columnaris, and judging from the result this week, it does appear to be effective. About three of the fish showed signs of fungal infection on top of the bacterial infection, and they are looking better. I also added 1 tablespoons of sea salt (gros fleur de sel de Guérande) for every 5 gallons (19 liters) for a salt water concentration of about .06%.

Wednesday, the plumber comes to fix the outdoor spigot, and we'll be able to refill the fish-pond-in-the-fountain and return the 28 survivors to their home.

Meanwhile, I'll be watching them very closely now to see how they are acting, and if anyone needs to be isolated again.
....

The abandoned fish pond in the background

Fish hospitalization, Day 7: Fish out of water

Stayin' alive

We are at 3 days without a death.

Not that we haven't nearly had several accidentally do their best. At least 5 now have gotten so fed up with their container confinement that they have lept to an uncertain future. I found the last one the other morning on the guest room floor, next to the table on which his bowl sat.

What I have learned is that a fish who leaps from his container once does not do it again, and this, not because he dies, but because he learns how miserable it is to lie around, a fish out of water, until someone happens along to find you and put you back in in a hurry.

Water, it turns out, is highly overrated for fish. At least for an hour or two. Who knows. Some period of time. I won't be testing it to find exactly how long.

Tomorrow, I think, will be the day I transfer them to two large volume bins, all except perhaps two, who still show signs of fin rot.

Lesson learned, anyway: Fish do learn.
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Goldfish hospitalization, Day 5: Stability and Impatience

Contrition

Contrition, or a larger container. Whichever it is, and I am going for the containment factor, the fish who lept yesterday to a miraculous survival, faced with one dog, one cat and no water upon landing, is still alive. And she let us know again last evening that she has had enough and isn't taking anymore, circling vigorous and insistent circles up against the sides of the galvanized steel bucket we now call her home, water flying in all directions. One particularly forceful round and leap found her head rising over the bucket's lip, a good 20 cm or more above the water level.

Surprise! It's I!

She nearly ended up in my dinner plate.

We were at table, and her bucket was just to the side of my right elbow. I was keeping a close eye on her. She will have to survive until the spring before I can be certain she is a she. I have a doubt.

This morning, I hid under the covers, putting off the moment I'd have to go over to the petite maison and check on the patients in the guest room. I had no reason to believe I would find anymore casualties of whatever caused this population wipe-out, but I couldn't know. Enough is, after all, enough, and I had had enough of finding little bodies floating flank up in the water. When I made it out there for morning rounds, I was gratified to find everyone alive and active, petitioning for a return to the pond.

"C'est la preuve qu'ils sont habitués à un plus grand espace et à ne pas avoir des limites," commented my husband, listening to yesterday's leaper race around the inside of the bucket.

I didn't find that so amazing. When you have swum around in a 180 cm diameter, 70 cm deep pond with 6,000-something liters of water, rocks and plants and hiding-places and shelters, why wouldn't you protest against finding yourself in a soup or salad bowl, even a bucket?

So, today I repeated the daily routine, carrying the bowls, vases and buckets in turn to the kitchen, scooping up the first liter of medicated water from the big plastic bucket in the sink in setting it to my side before carefully emptying most of the used water, pouring in the liter to reassure the poor fish and then filling the container, adding a pinch of gros sel de Guérande, a bit of an oxygenating tablet and a little bit of food before carrying the patient out to the Moroccan table in the garden. It takes an hour and a half for the 28 surviving fish. I'd happily have spent 3 hours had all 60 survived.

The little leaper

They are impatient, however, all of them; two more lept today. I found one little one lying between the containers, several away from its empty one, practically glued to the tiles of the table, and another particularly muscular  one, one of the last I found and retrieved from the fish-pond-in-a-fountain -- oddly, the last ones out were among the least vulnerable. If I think about that, it makes a kind of sense --, was missing from his red plastic basin, and like yesterday's, was lying in the grass covered in grass cuttings and dirt. He also jerked in my hand when I picked him up, mercifully, and appears regretful of his impulsivity.

The large leaper

My doctor husband wants them to spend at least 3 or 4 days with no further demises in their individual containers before I begin to group them in a larger capacity container, while we wait for the plumber to come and repair the outdoor spigot so we can refill the fish-pond-in-a-fountain. I don't know if they can take it.

Time to go check on them again.
....

He lept and survived, the excitement never ends

Dirt-covered goldfish

Great God in heaven.

I walk out the door to the garden compulsively, every few moments, to go and check on the fish in their containers. I had let a little more time go by than usual, watching the women's Masters, and I was supposed to be heading up to the stable. I wandered out the door, just to see, one more time, just to make certain everyone was alive, still. Just out the door, I look over, and on the other side of the table covered in fish I see the dog Fia and Shadow, both concentrating on something between their two heads and four front paws, separated by inches.

Then, Fia's head dipped and lifted, and something moved. It looked like she had torn at her old rawhide bone that is now a flatted piece of hide. It was about the same color, but no, Shadow wouldn't be interested in that.

I hurried across the terrace and looked between the two of them, and there was a dirt-coated object in the very shape of a goldfish. Fia looked at me, and then looked back down.

"Oh my God," I breathed, staring at the still and lifeless fish there on the ground, several of its scales in the marks from Fia's paws, where she had scratched near it, surely trying to keep it alive, one of the last two originals, as far as I can tell, from before the freeze and the subsequent thaw.

It looked like breaded sole.

"Oh my God."

I leaned down and picked it up, and it jerked in my hand. Alive? It was still alive? Covered in dirt? I hurried it into its empty bowl and carried the whole thing into the house.

A photo. Take a photo. 

"Right. A photo."

I hurried the bowl out to the edge of the fountain and returned to the house to grab my D300 and AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm DX VR lens, and the strap caught on the edge of the low table, sending it to the terra cotta tiled floor with a sharp noise.

"Damn. Damn damn damn."

The center ring had shifted out of place. I pushed it back, tried the telescopic movement and noted that it caught.

"DAMN."

I ran back out to take a photo, cursing myself, and thanking the dog and cat. First, they had not eaten the fish. Not only had they not eaten it, Fia had not ripped at its flesh. She might have tried to pick it up, though, like she has done with the frogs she finds in the lawn from time to time. Second, had they not stayed by it, I would not have noticed.

No, that's not so; of course I would have seen the empty bowl and found the fish lying in the dirt.

A blade of grass stuck out of his tail, and he was covered with dirt. I took him back inside and lifted him carefully in my hand, making certain to keep him under the water, while I gently wiped the dirt from his gills, his flanks, fins and face. I picked up the pail from outside and added more medicated water, slid him and the water from his bowl into the larger container and set it down next to the computer and Googled How long can a goldfish suvive out of water?

The this came up:

I managed a pet store for 8 years.

Occasionally, we would open the store and find fish on the floor that had leaped from the tanks in the night. Most of the tanks had at least a partial glass cover on them (he ll, they were inventory!) but some fish are determined. Most of those fish were dead. Some were alive.

Now the alive ones were mostly determined to have leaped within the hour before we opened, which means they were out of water for only an hour. These fish were still wet and covered with slime. 

However, I did find some fish whose bodies were dry and covered with lint and debris because they had thrashed about on the ground and when I lifted them as dead, to throw away, a few surprised the he ll out of me by moving around.

For a fish's body to be dry but the fish still somehow alive I have got to say at least 6 hours out of the water. A fish produces slime to lubricate its body in times of stress and that's what kept those little guys alive for that long.

However... Even when we put them back in the tanks, the ordeal of lying on a floor, stressed and thrashing and covered with debris...very few of the "jumpers" made it back to good health.

A lot died right away. Most developed a bacterial or viral infection and died shortly afterwards. Some rotted off a lot of their fins, hung in there, survived, and lived scarred up. (profits down the tubes.)

Fish jump.

COVER YOUR TANK

Thanks. Like by now I do not know this.

So, tonight each bowl is getting at least partially covered with plastic film. I think. Maybe it's not worth it, given that fish, as the pet store manager knows, are determined.
....

Wiped off and alive, for now

Fish hospitalization, Day 3

Cat water bowl

No. It's not what you think. Shadow is just doing what she always has; she is drinking from the fish water. Usually, she is up on the edge with her neck bent to get that little pink tongue to the "pond" surface, but the recent catastrophe has made her life a lot easier. Now, she merely needs to stand at the edge and drink from a bowl. The fish is in no danger from her, only from the fin rot and the fungi that have come to feast on the bacteria still present on her tail fin.

I believe this one is a she. I can't remember. It's less important than getting well and returning to the fish-pond-in-the-fountain.

Yesterday started out a better day; everyone was still alive. Then, three small gray young ones died, one of my favorite orange and white young ones threw himself from his hospital room while I was out getting more, different, better, who knows products to treat them, and expired, and this morning saw the demise of one whose swim bladder was affected. Still, I found another larger gray one from this year in the nearly empty "pond", and I know there is still another, a little pink one my husband saw the other evening, we have not been able to catch and isolate. A furtive little guy.

Blasted swim bladder

All the others seem vigorous. We must be down to just under 30 fish.

I counted. 28.

I also bought a test kit for the water. Granted, we were a few days past when all of this began, and the weather was gloriously sunny and hot yesterday, for a wonderful change from the rains of biblical proportions (and they appear to have returned during the night), so the results might not be what they would have been over the weekend, and all the week before, when it was raining without stop, but they were all normal. It's not the water quality that did the fish in, so what was it?

Was it the shubunkin, caught between the reeds and the wall of the fountain, whose body had rotted in the water, that was responsible for the proliferation of bad bacteria? He had clearly been there for a little while, but I had not thought to scrutinize that hidden spot until I saw the others dying and becoming weakened, sick. Was his death the work of one of the neighbors' cats? Every now and then, a fish disappears, and we wonder if it is the cats or a heron, up from the Seine down below, just past the field on the other side of our garden wall. Or, was he just the earliest victim? How many days does it take the body to turn to nothing but fin and bones?

It's time to bring them in their bowls, vases, and various containers out from the guest room to the garden, change their water and medicate again. If no one else dies between now and tomorrow morning, I might put them all together in the large black plastic container we bought for a similar sad purpose when the fountain was leaking three years ago.

Please do not let me find that anyone suddenly took a turn for the worse since I last went out to visit them earlier this morning. I am developing a thick skin, but enough is enough.

I still haven't found a trace of the maman fish, who was probably responsible for a vast part of the now deceased population. I miss her.
....

This one is missing its gill

Container fish pond

Hospital rooms

Container gardens are normal. Container fish ponds are not.

The first fish I saw, lying on its side in the fish-pond-in-the-fountain, was last week. I don't remember the day. It had been pouring, raining cats and dogs for hours, days on end since I was able to get the lawn mowed before the truck came to collect the bin of garden cuttings and grass clippings Monday evening. I felt a stab. I care about the fish. I told myself that it was the violence of the rain; it had made the water level rise above the edge of the brick ledge and the fish had gotten trapped out of the water, then fallen back in after it died.

Then I saw another.

It's not possible to believe that this could happen to two fish, at the same time. I removed their bodies and kept a look-out. The next day, there were more dead fish. And another, one of the fish from the original population before the big freeze in January 2009 killed nearly all the fish, leaving only 4 of more than 40, was looking very iffy. Reading that post today, I can't even believe that I could write a seemingly tongue-in-cheek poem about their loss. I was sick about it at the time, but it had to have been the joy at finding 4 still alive that left me nearly giddy with some kind of relief that returned some of my humor. By yesterday, I had no good humor left. None whatsoever.

I yelled at everyone. I had removed more than 15 dead fish, and every day there were more dead fish. 7 alone yesterday morning before we made the decision to remove all of them to individual bowls, large liquid measuring cups, vases, plastic food containers and Tupperware. I cursed myself for not having more clear mixing bowls or at least Tupperware.

The day before, having spotted one of the original pinkish fish clinging to the wall of the pond, another at its side, I knew others were fragile; I was going to lose more. You can just tell. They become lethargic. I went to the garden store and bought enough salt to treat the pond water and the last remaining bottle of fungicide, and I had picked up a box of "powerful" all-purpose tablets to dissolved in their water. The only problem was that they each treat 30 liters and are intended for aquariums, not individual containers of many volumes for fish in isolation. I had to get a somewhat large, handled flexible plastic basket I use for cuttings and fill it, a half liter at a time, with 15 liters of tap water from the kitchen sink, pour the dissolved capsule into it, and then mix that medicated water with an equal part of regular tap water, bowl by vase by container until the 34 fish I had retrieved were rehoused. It took more than 2 hours.

We began to drain the 6,000 something liter fish pond with a hose into the bottom garden, leaving a bit in case there were more fish in there somewhere.

That night, we moved all the containers to the guest room in the petite maison to protect them from predators, and this morning, there were 3 more dead fish, one small one from this year, one large red-orange fish, and one of the triplets. I know most of my fish. They have characteristics that identify them and stories.

The maman fish, my personal favorite, the one who always got fed first, racing across the water to me, her mouth out of the water and working to take the koi stick proferred from between my thumb and forefinger, never appeared. I couldn't remember the very last day I had seen her. It couldn't have been long before the heavy rains began. She must be gone, like my most gruesome discovery last week of one of the large shubunkin, half decomposed with only the head remaining, caught between the wall of the fountain and the stalks of pond grass and reeds. I don't see any evidence of her body, but it could be hidden from my sight. Still, I found all of the dead fish near the surface. Another had disappeared some time before. He was a red-headed, compact shubunkin I had treated for some illness or another several years ago and saved, and who had been particularly sexually assertive this year, hence the number of baby shubunkin in the pond this season.

While I curse our house and dream every day of moving away, the one thing that has kept me from doing enough work on it to sell and go away has been the fish-pond-in-the-fountain. The life in it fascinates me. I photograph the fish and the frogs who have chose to make it home and to breed there more than nearly anything else in the garden. To lose the fish is like losing small, scaled, colorful friends.

I removed the dead ones, added them to the plastic bag with yesterday's bodies, carried them to the trask bin and set to work repeating yesterday's task, making 30 liters of medicated water to add to another 30 liters of plain tap water, changing the water for 31 fish. Some appear to have red sores. Others gill or fin rot. Some of those also have fungal infections along the fin edges. Some seem to have nothing at all wrong.

Usually, I would bury a dead fish. There are too many. They are gone, so what does it matter what becomes of their bodies.

Later, I spied another small gray baby fish in the pond and removed it to a Pottery Barn cereal bowl of its own.

The frogs are still there. I see bubbles coming up from the mud at the bottom and occasionally a bronze-colored snout and two round eyes peer up at me, or a tinier green and brown frog will perch on the edge of the bird bath that once sat in the middle tier, between the cupid and the large one that is still there. The cupid supports one side of it, down at the bottom of the pond.

The Shubunkin that looked terrible yesterday seems better this afternoon. Several never looked like they were suffering in the least and are quite upset with me for this disturbance of their life and imposed isolation.

See the shubunkin at the upper edge of the lily pad

In happier days, October 7

I don't know what went wrong, but I suspect the pH dropped too low, causing a lack of oxygen and weakening the fish. I don't know. I didn't test the water right after all the rain, but heavy rainfall lowers pH. Still, a gradual change in pH won't negatively impact the fish, while a crash in the pH level is often fatal, but then you see peeling skin, not necessarily red sores and fin and gill rot. Perhaps there were just too many this season, many of the younger fish born since 2009 coming to sexual maturity this year and having produced a wonderful bumper crop. We were so proud and happy. I had estimated the population had climbed over 50, and having removed more than 25 dead fish and still having 31 alive today, I know there were at least 56. You need about 75 liters for one fish, and half that much for each additional fish. If our calculation of 6,000-something liters for our fish-pond-in-a-fountain is true, we have tons of extra water for many more fish.

All I can do is try to take more preventative action and better care once these survivors are able to return to their habitat. If no more die, we will have lost about half the fish, and of those we lost, approximately half were born this year and half were older. Right now, there are 14 from this year and 18 from years past, and if Darwin is right, they are the fittest.
....

The first past, looking to future races

Fibs and Mark, heading companionably to the warm-up ring, Saint-Cloud

The rites and rituals, the rhythms of the racetrack comfort. The days of waiting for a race finally over, the moment to saddle up, walk and mount in the presentation ring to head to the track provide their own pleasures, small but real ones. The tight circle of professionals and friends gathered at the saddling box; the horse solid and sound, brushed, braided and in every way burnished to a high shine; the sounds of others calling out to one another and horses clopping past; the details of the preparation unchanging one race to the next, day after day. It's always the same, and always a little bit different within that sameness.

There is the relaxation of the nerves. The horses are all here, and the preparation is done and as much is known about one's own horse as can possibly be known. Less is known about the other horses. The racing papers have given their probable odds, and the bettors have made their own opinions known. A list of favorites is drawn up, and you may agree or disagree. You will never know enough about each horse, each jockey and the conditions out there to know who is right until the race is run and over. It will please you, comfort you, surprise you, disappoint you, but it will never leave you indifferent. If it could, then you probably don't belong at the racetrack. You need either a new profession or a new hobby, unless you are a lad or hot walker. To be honest, they look indifferent enough often enough.

Saddled, Fibs headed out to walk with the others, those who had just come off the track and were cooling down or drying off after their showers, and those who were warming up, staying limber for their race to come, whether the next one, or another after that. We'd come with one horse. Some trainers, like Cédric Boutin, had horses standing in several adjoining boxes along the main alley, others out walking, and still others heading to or from the racetrack.

Hellos and news, les bises are exchanged with other trainers, owners, familiar lads. Remarks made about their horses, their chances, their results. Congratulations or encouragement, knowing nods and consolations. Nothing is long-hidden at the racetrack. Everyone knows what your horse looks like, what your racing record is, how long you've been at it, and how you've done.

"T'as fait quoi?"

"6ème," with a shrug, the inimitable Gallic one, and a self-effacing smile, an eyebrow raised, "il n'avait plus rien. Ben".

"Ben. La prochaine fois alors."

"Ouai, la prochaine."

It's never necessarily or even likely going to be the case, but that won't keep you from the racetrack. You have owners, they have horses, and you must enter them in races that suit their talents and abilities. The professionals need to make money, usually; the owners need to enjoy themselves, and not to lose their fortunes, great or small, or not to be worthy of such a description in the first place. The horses need to do what thoroughbreds do best: gallop with other horses and try to beat them.

In the presentation ring, the horses paraded around us, their number blankets white against the green grass, the green leaves and their dark and supple bodies. The jockeys for this race, a 1600m (8f) 13,000€ and 17,000€ claimer for 5-year-olds and female jockeys walked from the locker room across the winner's circle and joined their trainers and owners. Smiles and greetings, instructions exchanged, photos taken, the television cameras rolling (but you don't pay attention to them), the jockeys are led to their mounts and given a leg up. Some horses take it in stride, others buck a little, considering a full-out rearing up. Lads and owners-enjoying-being-lads calm their charges, and one by one they head to the track to gallop easily toward the starting gates, bettors taking their last looks before casting their bets, if they haven't already. The public is sparse. It's a lovely June evening, and the restaurant terraces are full all over Paris and in the center of Saint-Cloud.

Fibs accepted his jockey and headed to the track like a professional. It was his 30th start. He knows his job, and that job is fine with him. He is an honest and considerate horse. We watched him go and headed, by ones and twos, up to the Owners' and Trainers' Lounge above the grandstand and the post to watch the race on the television screens. We'd come out to see them come up the homestretch.

Heading out to the track

Fibs and the other horses entered their stalls without the least fuss. They were 5 and older. They'd been around long enough to know, and they were all healthy enough to find a race a pleasant prospect on a sunny evening. Before we knew it, the bell clanged, the gates opened and 9 horses charged forward. Two took an early lead, and the rest remained bunched together.

"They're being stupid out there like that. Damn. Fibs has his nez au vent."

It was true. Carla and Fibs were on the inside toward the middle of the following pack. He had no benefit of a draft. They came on, positions only slightly changed heading into the final turn. Fibs remained on the inside.

"OK. That's not bad. She gave him the shortest ride around. Now."

But, rather than the surge forward we expected, following the lead horses who ought to be tiring and retire the distance between them, Fibs travelled out past the two horses behind him toward the outside. We stared at the television screen. I knew what Gina was thinking, "He's hanging badly, but he runs straight."

"He's never done that before," she said. And then he slowed to an easy gallop, heading toward the post like he had the jockey's mother on his back on a Sunday morning on the trails. The other horses, most of them, anyway, continued the race, and one won, 4 placed, and Fibs tripped past the post like he was anywhere but at a race course.

"That was a strange race."

"Indeed. I have never seen anything like it," concurred Sebastien. We looked at each other and blinked, followed Gina down the stairs, out past the horses who had had the good fortune to remember this was a race and enter the winner's circle to meet the jockey.

"This is the part I dread," I said to her young niece. I don't think she asked why.

We heard that he travelled beautifully all through the backstretch and into the last turn. He was a wonderful ride. A real pleasure. But she hadn't liked the footing along the rail coming into the homestretch and pulled him to the outside. He stopped, she explained; there was suddenly -- nothing. My mind flipped back to Elbow Beach. She was fast, too, but she failed to finish. Still, this horse had won races. He liked this distance. He didn't like heavy going, and the turf had soaked up early summer rainstorms.

"I wonder if he didn't take being pulled to the outside for being pulled up." Sebastien nodded.

"I think it is possible, too."

We were, quite simply and quite frankly, perplexed. Here was a horse who had run more than two dozen times and knows his job, and all you had to do was let him run straight and find his own footing.

Later, after his shower and drying off, after simple chat and laughter (it is enjoyable, win, place or lose, when you are with friends and the sun is slanting through the trees on a hill above Paris), I walked by myself to my car in the owners' lot. The attendant with the bright and good-humored eyes who had greeted me asked, "Alors, qu'est-ce que votre cheval a fait?"

"C'était étrange. Une course très étrange." He nodded, listening. "Juste après le dernier tournant, le jockey l'amenait vers l'extérieur de la corde, et je pense qu'il n'a rien compris." He nodded again and smiled.

"Soumillon fait souvent ça."

"Mais, ce n'était pas Soumillon."

"Vous auriez peut-être meiux fait de rester à Roland Garros," he said, and smiled his sympathy.

I had arrived 2 hours earlier a litte out of breath from the stress of the traffic in Boulogne-Billancourt and Saint-Cloud, having gotten up to leave half-way through the second set of the second women's semi-final. Maria Sharapova was on her way to securing her place in the final, although Petra Kvitova seemed to be finding the resouces to maybe cast doubt on the outcome. It wasn't easy to leave, but the stunned sound of my trainer's voice saying "Ohh-kaaay" on the other end of the line when she called and asked where I was, and I had replied "Just thinking about leaving Roland Garros now," was enough to remind me that owners have duties, too.

"Mon entraineur m'aurait tué," I replied, smiling back, feeling a little conspiratorial, and stepped toward the other young attendant, holding my door open, and placed the euro coins cradled in my cupped palm into the space of his own.

"Je vous remercie, Madame."

"Cest moi. Bonne soirée, Messieurs," and I climbed into my car, hoping not to stall heading out of the owners' parking lot owing to my high, wedge heels.

It's time for more sensible shoes, as long as this violon d'Ingres remains remotely sensible, and at least I got my rayons de soleil to make Fibs' coat and my silks shine, even if the performance was anything but bright and shiny, for whatever reason. Next time out, June 23rd at Amiens. Having done his first race in France, he is free to enter a far wider range of races, and better luck next time. In racing, luck is better than genius, they say. At least Jane Smiley says it.

For more race photos, click here.
....

Grazing after the race, Fibs hears horses galloping in a later race,
his full concentration is on them over on the track.

Anticipating race day for Fibs and Flannel

Cooling down after a "canter", May 25
followed by Hard Way

I have done this before. Four times. But this is nothing like those other times.

The race for which we hoped was today at Maisons-Laffitte, but with 69 entrants, Fibs and Flannel, a 5-year-old gelding by Tobourgg out of Kayman Cai mare Queens Jubilee, wasn't going to get in. We'd have to go for the back-up entry, the 8th, Prix du Mesnil-Villement, a claimer at 1600m (8f, a mile) tomorrow at Saint-Cloud, and if my trainer Gina Rarick told me once, she told me once per multiple daily conversation for the past week, at every possible opportunity (no chance of not getting it) that the field of 9 is a tough one: these aren't real claiming horses; they are horses who have earned themselves weighty handicaps and who are slumming it a little to get some races in. Their owners will defend them.

Tougher than the fields, for me, is following the logic sometimes. Essentially, one must argue, the cost of defending certain horses in such a race is negligible in comparison to their past and future earnings. And some people just like seeing their colors on a jockey's back from the comfort of the grandstand in front of the Owners' and Trainers' lounge or  their table at the restaurant, surrounded by duly impressed friends and clients with betting tickets and black, or at least platinum, cards in their wallets. This cannot be my case. Mine is altogether different. First of all, my dog ate my green card. Second, the Sport of Kings is slumming it letting me play, and has kindly offered the claiming system as my point of entry, as well as access to the valet parking and reserved sections of the track.

Like everyone else, I harbor fantasies and dream of standing next to my horse, its jockey and my trainer in the Winner's Circle, the most hallowed of the privileged sections of any track. This is my right; a claimer wins like any Groupe I horse. I know my place, but I struggle daily with it. Can I really afford to indulge this, my violon d'Ingres? Or, have I entirely lost my mind and all rational senses? If I can be smart and cool-headed enough, might I continue to indulge in it, or will I collapse under the weight of the stress of the worrying?

It is supposed to be fun, they say. Have fun! they say.

There must, then, be, I have discovered, a threshhold; an amount of disposable income that serves as the key in the lock to fun. There must be, perhaps, income that may be called disposable, tout court. If not, there must be a stop dollar wall, as a friend and fellow owner in Gina's yard in Maisons-Laffitte says. It's the point at which you stop and get out as soon as you hit it.

But I want my chance, and I want to see if it is at all possible to get the parts of the machine working, the horses moving through the box in the yard, the system, making modest profits or minimal losses that amount to a pleasant net gain or coming very close to breaking even and result in an experience of fun. I am not optimistic, but the individual serving as my bloodstock agent has replied in capital letters and with utmost clarity and succinctness when I express my desire to keep my horse, "NO." No, you may not. No, you must not. Do not get attached. We love them all, but the only way to be sure to make any money is to sell.

So, I must chose the horses I buy wisely, enter them judiciously, and then let them move on.

The best horse is a sold horse.

I have heard it hundreds of times now, and it doesn't sit any easier, not even once the bills start coming in (the ultimate reminder, along with your name and colors on the racing program and the jockey's back) and you know that this is absolutely true and must not be argued with. The bills do help, though. I must remember to thank my trainer's bookkeeper, and so must my bloodstock agent, who makes a little tiny fee every time I make a purchase. This is fine, too. As long as I am doing at least as well.

And so, this lovely, honest horse will be most successful for me by finding his longer-term home by the July sales in Newmarket. I will have the photos I have taken of him at which to look and by which to remember him. I can follow first his career, once he will have left the yard, and those of the others I will buy and move on. If I am lucky enough, I tell myself, I will buy him back when he is 10 and will have finished his career and be ready for a second one, carrying me on lovely trips through the forest, at a stately walk and leisurely gallops de chasse. If it won't be Fibs, finally, perhaps it will be one of the others I do not know yet.

Tomorrow Fibs will face the favorites, Settebellezze and Ocean Moon, and their dauphins, Celebrity Choice, Rey Davis and Delta Black Sheep. It is likely that he will find himself on the rang du con, the 6th place, just at the foot of the podium without a check for his efforts, yet beating Tucker's Law, Jamindar and Russian Davis. But, there is always a chance, that's why it's a race. No one knows the outcome before the race is run. Fibs has a chance. Paris-Turf writes of him, Fibs and Flannel mérite qu'on se penche sur son cas." In other words, he deserves attention and respect going into this race, and I will hold onto those words in the seemingly interminably endless hours stretching out between now and post time tomorrow, 8:10 pm.

I am hoping for one of the belles éclaircies forecast for tomorrow evening after a morning of wet skies to break out when lady jockey Carla O'Halloran is given a leg up into the saddle by Gina, fellow owner Mark at his second favorite place (after the winner's circle alongside Hard Way), the lad's, holding Fibs' lead, setting his chestnut coat on fire and lighting up my colors, golden-orange and claret, in the long June evening sun, copper radiating light like new, burnished centimes, drawing everyone's eyes to him, shining somewhere toward the front of the pack coming up the homestretch.

I want to be able to jump from my seat, arms liberated from my fists clutched at my stomach and into the air over my head, my heart to stop slamming around in my rib cage and rise along with them, watching him pull out and ahead, fighting to beat just another horse coming up to the post. The usual "I want" of the owner.

But, more than wanting a win for me, I want Fibs to shine for himself. If he is going to move on, let it be with dignity and respect for his honesty, his heart, and the good motor the good Lord gave him, and a positive number in my account with France Galop.

That'll be enough.
....

Jockey Carla O'Halloran, Cagnes-sur-Mer, February 2012

Fibs and Flannel, first canter and new colors

Fibs and Flannel, Piste Jaune at Maisons-Laffitte, May 25
In flight

If I was an owner with Elbow Beach, it's true that it was nothing like it is now that I am an Owner, officially approved by and registered with France Galop, and the owner of Fibs and Flannel, by Tobougg out of Cayman Kai mare Queens Jubilee (in the year of the Queen's Jubilee, a sign perhaps), making purchase decisions, ordering my silks, signing contracts, and, yesterday, standing on the mound of grass alongside the piste jaune, waiting for my horse to come blazing up and past us where we take stock of the horse's action, respiratory effort, relative speed and power.

It's where we realized the issue with Elbow Beach that we believed explained her lack of turn of foot in the homestretch. It's where we realized that Fibs is fast. Fast, I hope, enough.

Full reach

When he arrived in the yard in Maisons-Laffitte from Newmarket May 7, I went out to see him the next day and found a horse dripping with muscle in the shoulder and hind quarters, with a nice deep chest. Even I could see that this was a horse built for the mile, 8 furlongs, 1600 meters.

"Up to maybe 2000 here," said my friend and trainer now Gina Rarick, "But, we'll start him at a mile."

Good, consistent milers are rare enough, and it's a good length race to run well here, and he likes the turf, and runs just about as well on the fibersand. There would be plenty of options for him.

"I watched the video of his last two races in England again, and I think he was just losing interest. They are hard on them over there. I think all we have to do," said Gina "is make him happy."

This is the yard to do that, and it's the part that makes it the hardest if you're in the clamining races, with the chance of losing the horse to someone willing to bid higher than the price at which you are willing (or able) to defend. King Driver has a blue plastic soccer ball in a net that can be hung from the wall of his box or held by Agata in a game of tug-of-war, her hand and arm to his teeth and neck.

Everyone gets pets (except the stallion) and company, music during evening stable and individually adapted meals, according to the horses' needs and tastes. The boxes are squeaky clean and fresh, the straw plentiful, the hay tasty, and both are free of dust to bother the throat and lungs.

Owners wield pitchforks and walk their and others' horses, take the news of the yard, show up for each other's races, bring carrots and photos. The gate is always open, except when it is time for the afternoon nap and peace and quiet reign.

The other bit of work was to develop his back muscles and help him heal a sore spot along his spine, just before the croup, from where the saddles in England bothered him. He ran with his head up and his back hollow. Here, he would strengthen his back and learn to run with his head down while carrying a jockey.

Fibs did not move into the yard as the fanciest horse, nor as the most expensive horse, the horse in whom anyone could have the highest hopes and expectations. He arrived from the spring Breeze Up & Horses In Training Sale, Lot N° 35, not the best sale with the best horses. That's in July. But, the sale was taking place, Sebastien was going and returning with horses, and with the departure of Elbow Beach, I was without a horse. I could see what Sebastien had shipped over and if Gina thought anything was worth training, or I could just wait until July.

His race history was good enough; his paper was alright; but, he could be up for sale at the Tattersall's spring sale because there was something developing, something wrong, or not right enough, or because the barn needed to make room for younger, more promising horses that hadn't reached their ceilings yet. Racing is relative; he could be useful in the claimers and handicaps, but only seeing him, watching him move, going over his legs and feeling who is is would tell.

Gina gave the nod; Fibs was a horse who might well do what we hoped, and, so, he stayed in the yard under my patronage as the possibly useful horse, a horse who might bring in more in a claimer than was paid in Newmarket, and his papers and shipping.  A horse who might help me acquire a better horse still, or who would at least work and pay his bills in exchange for good care and the chance to run.

Yesterday, the yard's regard for him climbed a notch the second he passed us, standing alongside the piste jaune.

"He's good," said Gina, sounding, just possibly, agreeably surprised. "He's straight, and he has a large stride." I definitely heard satisfaction.

He'd cantered, what the French call galloping, the speed work, with Hard Way, and Gina turned to Hard Way's two other owners, she herself being the third, as well as his breeder, and pronounced him ready for Longchamp June 11. At that moment, I hope I might be forgiven my selfishness, I only had ears for what she had to say about Fibs, eyes for Fibs. Hard Way, as much as I adore him and am enchanted by his story, seemed a million miles away, somewhere out in Fibs' orbit.

We made our way over the other side of the piste jaune to the trail alongside, the place where Gina asks her questions and finds out what the exercise riders have to say about the horses' performance, while they turn in lazy circles around her, and Ludovic on Hard Way and Agata on Fibs trotted peaceably up toward us, where we waited.

"Il est bon," said Agata, and I got lost behind my camera lens, watching them turn about Gina, half-hearing the conversations around me, and the words He's good. He's good. He's good. Il est bon, il est bon, il est bon turned around and around in my ears.

Later, Agata came up to me in the yard and said, "Il avait encore a donner. Il aurait pu prendre Hard Way à la fin là et vient avec Hard Way devant. Il est bon."

Il est bon, il est bon, il est bon.


You don't let them actually race in speed work, though. Hard Way was the one set to gallop out front, and Agata's job was to gallop Fibs, staying back. Let one get along side another, and you've got a horse race, not a morning speed session.

My silks were ready at Petitspas on the main street in Maisons-Laffitte, making and selling everything you need to train and race a horse, and we headed off to pick them up, my heart a little bit in my throat. I could always change them if I hated them. I had had such a hard time making up my mind, but I didn't want to have to go through that, show myself as anything but decided and knowing my mind, at least for the choice of my colors.

Monsieur greeted us like he always does, and we followed him through the workshop, smelling of leather and full of scales, tools and an assortment of different machines for sewing everything from fabric to leather, where his assistant looked up from where he was working at the long bench along the windows of the courtyard and smiled toward us, to his office, from which he emerged with a smile and a clear plastic bag in his hand. Neatly folded inside were my racing silks. My colors.

I imagined them up on the wall at Deauville or Longchamp. I have no right to, but no one does not imagine this. I saw satiny golden orange and a color like a deep claret wine, so close to "win", shining through. I hardly dared form an opinion, but it seemed generally favorable around me. We drove back to the yard, and Gina pulled into her place in front of the gate.

"Do you want to take the silks home?" she asked.

"You usually keep them, don't you?" It occurred to me she thought I might want to show them to my husband. "Keep them here with all the silks."

"OK, I'll keep them with the others," she said, drawing back her hand and the silks shining in the sunshine through their plastic packaging. We started to cross the street.

"That way there can't be any problem; everything is here and ready."

The trainer brings the silks to the race in the little pouchshe has just for that purpose, leaves them in the cubby near the jockeys' locker room, and brings them back to launder them after the race. We turned to cross the street.

"You don't want to take them into the house?" I said.

"No! Let's take them over to the yard; we always show new silks off to the yard," she added, laughing.

It's true. It is a big moment. New colors coming into a trainer's yard means new business: a new owner, another horse, more racing opportunities and business. There are endless moments to mark and to celebrate in racing, even the sorrier ones, like a race that doesn't go according to expectations, when a jockey doesn't follow his orders or a horse has a bad day against tough competition, and none is to be missed. Ever.

Gina walked down to the barn and ripped open the plastic, turning to hold up the casaque in the bright noon sunshine for everyone's inspection. I watched from the safety of my camera lens. Agata voiced her approval and her surprise at finding that she approved.

"C'est beaucoup mieux en vrai que sur papier!" she pronounced, a huge smile across her face, "Le satin brille et ça change tout!"

I realized she had carefully hidden her fear that the silks would be hideous from me, but because they were shiny, and not just muddy ink on heavy ivory paper, or what it looked like on the simulator on the France Galop site, whichever she had seen, they had saved themselved from being awful, and even pleased.

"J'avais vu les échantillons des tissues chez Petitpas," I offered, by way of hopeful explanation, "alors je savais que ça donnait autre chose que sur l'écran de l'ordi ou papier." I had seen the cloth samples at Petitpas, I explained, so I knew what they would look like. Sort of.

"Et, je voulais que ça brille au soleil, que se soit des couleurs heureuses qui se voient."

She nodded, still smiling, and went to take the silks from Gina and pulled them over her head. I turned to Mark and added, "And I have the horse, as it happens, to go with them." He raised an eyebrow and smiled, nodding Yeah.

It was true; he shines like burnished copper, a bright, shiny centime in the sun, and the colors are perfect for him. It is just another coincidence.

Watching Agata pull the silks into place, I thought, I even have an enthusiastic and beautiful exercise jockey to model them for me, and got back behind the lens. She went to shut Milly's box door against the strong sunshine and heat and mugged for me, laughing and celebrating new colors.

"Il fallait oser le faire, mais c'est bon," she concluded, folding them back into their clear plastic bag and setting it on the bench alongside everything else one needs to care for race horses in Gina's barn. "C'est vraiment bien."

"C'est ça qui compte le plus," I told her, "que tout le monde les apprécie car l'on travaille tous ensemble." The whole yard wears the owners' colors, so it's best, I think, if everyone likes and is proud of them.

I feel like I might be a little bit crazy. I am not the person of whom you think when you think of a thoroughbred race horse owner; I am far from from it, possessing some of the qualities, but lacking the main one, the wealth, but there's something driving me. I don't make a lot of impulsive decisions; I can't afford to, but I am doing this for the experience, for the pleasure of being around these animals and everyone who is also compelled to be around them, for whatever lessons I will learn, and for whatever stories I will have to tell.

Because, you can't know the stories until you live them, and you can't tell what you haven't lived.
....

Fibs

Hard Way adds a chapter to his story, and a victory to his record

Hard way and jockey Christophe Lemaire enter the winner's circle

Hard Way's back at the racetrack, and things will never be the same again.

I used to trip off to the races in the wake of throughbred racing trainer Gina Rarick and her retinue, a kaleidoscopic cast of support staff, clients and friends, camera in hand, with a sense of interested detachment. Even when I knew the horses running and their owners. Even when I was the owner of the horse running, which has been the case 4 times on a two-leg share in Elbow Beach. Even when the horse did well. But that's all changed now. Racing, for me, will never be the same again because Hard Way returned, and Hard Way won. And Hard Way is not just any horse.

He made it look easy. He made it look like the race was being run in slow-motion, and at his bidding. It was his race. His and jockey Christophe Lemaire's race to run, and to win.

He made it look like he'd known all along, all those months in the cold dark mornings and tucked in after a manger full of oats, apples and Guinness in Agata's company, listening to the radio, for the long dark winter nights. Like he'd been waiting for this, through those early spring lengthening days.

He knew he had come back to the yard in Maisons-Laffitte for a purpose, taking up the priveleged stall next to the sellerie, Gina's office in the barn, where the only phone is in her pocket and there's no desk. A trainer's work is in the boxes. In the training center and the forest. At the racetrack. Gina's office is for old photos of horses, including Hard Way at Deauville in his younger days, white boards for communicating who needs what and how to contact someone who knows what to do in an emergency, a cupboard with a supply of benign verterinary first aid supplies, for when you can take care of it yourself, shelves of wool saddle blankets from England and racks of racing saddles, counters covered with pots of leather grease and pallets with sacks of grain and racehorse mixes, crates of practically give-away price apples from the market in Maisons-Laffitte.

And he knew, like he knew everything else a racehorse needs to know, that this purpose was to race again, even if Gina herself didn't know it yet when she brought him back in the truck.

Saturday, May 5, the wait was over. The long months of conditioning from early retirement to race form were accomplished. His shaggy winter coat and leg feathering gone since his last preparation race at Lisieux on April 15, a new Hard Way -- one, who of everyone, only I had never seen -- emerged from his box on the backside like a butterfly from its cocoon, transformed into a shining, sleek being tuned to race. It was enough to take your breath away, if you hadn't happened to be paying attention recently.

He looked at us, glanced around the walking circle, where a few of the others who would run against him in the fifth were turning, under a storm gathering overhead, and one would swear that Hard Way sighed with satisfaction.

I'm back, and it's good. I'm ready. He nodded to Agata, Gina's assistant in the yard, and they set off to walk around and around.

This horse is the special horse in the yard. The horse with the story and the love of his trainer, who is also his breeder and holds a share in him, and everyone around her racing stables. Hard Way, the horse you'd be tempted to say was dealt the "hard knocks", asked to take the "hard way" in life, but you'd know no such thing from being around him and having the pleasure of his gaze return your own. The horse who loved to lay his head on Gina's shoulder during evening stable and let her lean into his big chest. This is a horse who knows grace. A lovely state.

Orphaned when his dam, Nicosia, a German bay with 1 win and 7 places in her 28 starts, the last 8 of them for Gina, died, he was raised by a wet nurse, a solid, working plowshare mare on the other side of the farm from the thoroughbreds, who he could see, but didn't particularly care to join. He grew up apart and a little fearful of those bold thoroughbred colts who ran together. Even of the fillies who nudged each other like their dams, and whispered, he almost certainly thought, about him. He was afraid, Gina told me, telling me her favorite story -- his -- again, of the other horses. He didn't like to run with them, or even get too close to them. He didn't, really, see himself as one of them, and that didn't change when he got to the yard, and eventually to the racetrack.

Hard Way didn't care for breaking from the starting gate and finding all those horses running behind him. Hard Way preferred, if possible, to get away from them, and winning was a particularly good way to do this.

And then Gina noticed in early August of 2010 that something had changed in Hard Way's stride. Even at a trot. His last couple of races at Saint-Cloud and Clairefontaine with Lemaire and Olivier Peslier on board, his performance hadn't been the same.

The vet said nothing was wrong; he was running fine, but Gina knew him better. She'd ridden him long enough to know something was wrong. The scan showed a crushed Atlas, the first vertebra, just at the base of a horse's skull. Hard Way's racing career was over. Early in the fall of 2010, Gina drove him in the van to Normandy to let him enjoy the pure, damp breezes that blow from the channel and eat all the lush green Normandy grass that humidity bestows on France's horse country his long life of leisure before him would afford.

But, Hard Way languished in his emerald pastures. He cooled his heels and despaired. He watched the other horses and kept his distance, I am sure. He kept his head down, nosing through the long wet grass, lifting it to look to the southeast, toward Paris, and he thought, I am equally sure, about Gina, and Maisons-Laffitte, and racing.

And one day, Gina decided to bring him back. He might as well keep her company in the yard for all he was enjoying his early retirement. And she rode him, and he seemed -- better.

Gina had another scan done, and this time it showed an intact, repaired Atlas; it had calcified. Gina thought about training him again, and the vet said, Pourquoi pas? Fais-le courir et on vera bien, and that was how it was that Hard Way was back in training by the time I set foot in the yard for the first time around Thanksgiving, just 5 months before his comeback race.

That Saturday, there was more electricity in the air than the gathering thunderstorm, unless Gina's nerves brought it on. The other races went on; we trooped up to the Owners' and Trainers' lounge to occupy a table, eat plates of desserts or fromages from the buffet and drink champagne to calm Gina's nerves and pass the time. People circulated, exchanging greetings and bits of coversation, squeezes of the shoulder or elbow and half-knowing smiles, like couples in a ballroom, bits of business to facilitate, racehorse or social. It was there that Sebastien and I saw Esles blow past the competition and the post and grabbed the Tattersalls catalog for the upcoming Guineas Breeze Up and Horses in Training Sale Sebastien wasn't missing, suddenly motivated by a colt in the pages liberally peppered with black type, another by Motivator, and way out of our range, as it turned out.

Then it was time to saddle Hard Way. The relief of something to do. The way time passes on the backside, in its own raceday rituals and rhythms.

Jean-Paul Gallorini had a horse in the box next door -- they'd raced earlier in the day in the Group 2 race, le Prix de Greffhule -- and he came by to wish Gina and Hard Way well. Laying his hand on the white stripe down the middle of Hard Way's forehead, it looked for all the world as though he was receiving the blessing of one of Gina's own mentors and friends, one of the best trainers in France.

And then it was time to lead Hard Way out to the presentation circle. Last this time. Last in, and, necessarily, last out. The presentation ring is where Hard Way evacuates whatever emotions gather in him before a race. In these moments, he is best ridden by a jockey with bronco experience, and his grooms had best love him, or they'll not forgive the minor wounds.

Finally, there is the moment when the horse and his rider pass onto the track, to trot and then canter toward the gates, when the trainer, the owner, and the grooms retreat to their vantage posts to watch the race and await the outcome. When last bets, including mine that day, with the last 5 euros bill I had in my wallet, 2 to win and 2 to place, are made, before everyone gathers in front of the television screens or presses their binoculars to their eyes. The horses circle as one by one, more or less readily, they walk or are pushed into their gates, green metal doors clanging shut behind them to wait the last horse in, and then the steward gives the signal, the bell clangs, and everyone thinks "They're off," like several hundred silumtaneous and silent prayers.

Hard Way broke at the front of the field of 20, and then, before disappearing from sight, Christophe Lemaire settled him back a bit, letting the others overtake them until Hard Way was on the hind end of the fourth horse. I had chosen a place on the rail in the grandstand just below the plate glass windows of the Owners' and Trainer's Lounge, where most everyone else was watching on the television screens to watch every move the horses and their jockeys made, and then they were coming round the final turn. The announcer said "Hard Way". I listened. He was closed on the rail, near the horse out front. I was trying to listen and to watch, what was happening on the track and in front of the screens up behind me all at once. I turned and missed the moment Christophe and Hard Way found their opening, skipping past the horse that stumbled right in front of them, watching Mark and Steve, Steve's daughter and Graham, and his wife see it. I turned, and there was deep blue and yellow out in front on a dark horse.

Hard Way. Hard Way is out front!

I snapped photos in rapid-fire succession, holding my breath, watching Christophe and Hard Way pull away on the sodden turf, looking for all the world like they were out for a morning galop de chase in the Rond Poniatowski, followed by a bunch of school boys and girls who were far outclassed. And then Christophe sent a message up the reins to Hard Way. If Christophe were American, like Gina Rarick, it might have been "Whoah, boy, easy now. You don't have to win this one by much. Let 'em look good, too. Atta boy" that he was telegraphing up those orange rubber reins for the others had gained ground by the time they crossed the post, but not by enough to catch Hard Way who won by nearly 2 lengths. Christophe had given him the perfect ride.

I turned to look through my camera lens back up at the doors, from which Hard Way's fans were bursting into the stands with shouts and smiles, hugs and wet eyes everywhere. Pandemonioum. This was not your average victoire à Saint-Cloud, and neither were the photos with the horse in the winner's circle or the fête pour arroser la victoire after. There was nothing blasé nor every day about it. Hard Way had gone into retirement broken and emerged again healed to win. Not for a moment had his owners lost a shred of confidence in him; if Hard Way were back to train and run again, they were there to make it happen.

And that is how it is that I will never return to the racetrack with the same detachment I once had. How I am not even sure my own horse's victory one day might rival the way we all felt when Hard Way entered the winner's circle, head held high, Christophe Lemaire looking almost goofy with pleasure up on his sweat-soaked back, the dark print left by a hand laid in congratulations on his damp haunch. Lisa beaming at his far side, and Agata radiating the purest joy on his near, and Hard Way found himself at the center of a training and racing enterprise built on the best horse sense and friendship, love for the horses and the sport, and everyone was gathered here, around him, to celebrate it on this day.

Today, Hard Way runs again. This time at Maisons-Laffitte. Christophe Lemaire was to have been on board once more, but fate dealt another hard blow and there will be a different jockey for another day; one more lesson that racing teaches: no one ever knows what is coming next or gets to write the story before it happens, and that is exactly as it should be. The interest is in the journey, the day-to-day, and, win or lose, a story will be lived and live in the telling.

Here's to Hard Way, all that is good in racing.


Merci.
....

Hard way out front in the homestretch

For the RaceDay photos, click here.

Tattersalls, N° 35

Fibs And Flannel (GB) Ch.G. by Tobougg (IRE) x Queens Jubilee (GB)Consignor: Saville House Stables (W. Musson)

The Tattersalls Guineas Breeze Up and Horses in Training 2012 sale was set to begin at noon in Newmarket, 1 pm in Maisons-Laffitte, and on the edge of Normandy, where I sat in front of my laptop. It wasn't the sale at which we had intended to make a purchase, not being a favored sale, but we hadn't expected to be sending Elbow Beach back to Newmarket, either, which left me, quite unexpectedly and in a terrible irony, without a horse the very day I became an official owner with France Galop.

That Saturday, the vet Jerôme, trainer Gina Rarick, Thierry, Lisa and I stood at the place where Elbow made the noise, and waited for her to gallop past, Agata on board, just behind Guilain on Deep. We held our breath in absolute silence, waiting to listen to Elbow's, and past she shot, but not really on Deep's heals. Jerôme nodded. It was enough for him.

"Oui," he nodded again, looking from Gina to me and meeting my gaze, "j'ai entendu le sifflement. Elle corne."

She was whistling.

And she wasn't finishing her races. Her last time out in Maisons-Laffitte April 16 in the Prix Arreau (photos), she'd been out toward the front coming up the homestretch, and then she seemed to get smaller, receeding back into the pack like a balloon running out of air in super slow motion, almost imperceptibly. Was she slowing, or was everyone else speeding up? She finished far from the win she was here to get, 11th in a field of 13. Only 2 horses crossed the finish line behind her.

I watched from a distance as jockey Fabien Lefebvre dismounted and spoke with Gina after the race, surrounded by the crowd of hopeful supporters who had come to the racetrack to watch Elbow run that day. I knew what he was going to say, and so did Gina. I watched his body language as he described ber behavior, unwilling to enter the gate; we'd all seen it on the big screen. Elbow had tried to desist from starting without a fuss, first backing away from the gate, then shaking her head "no", pulling back steadily, insistently on the lead.

Yes, said the track handlers, You're going in. No, said Elbow. She didn't rear, she didn't throw; she just kept resisting until their combined force, hands joined behind her hind quarters, Fabien pulling on her tail, overcame her resistance. But, it wasn't just orneryness. Watching her,and having watched her other races, I was convinced she had her good reasons and knew she knew no way to tell everyone pulling, then pushing, other than by resisting.

She broke fine and ran a good race, until they were right in front of the grandstand.

I watched Fabien describe, gesturing with his hands, lowering and shaking his head, lips pressed together, how she just dropped back coming up to the post. It wasn't merely that she lacked turn of foot, which she was supposed to possess in abundance, coming from a family of winners and here to collect her win to make her programmed offspring more valuable in the yearling sales; she lacked the breath to accelerate and make her attack. Of all the horses out there, it was Elbow who lacked the ability to suck in enough oxygen to sustain her effort and go for that final one to overtake her competition and win.

We didn't know this yet, but we suspected it.

There was no way not to suspect the possibility of a wind issue now that she was fit, which she wasn't when she first arrived from England, having cooled her heals 10 days in a horse walker, waiting for the weather to permit a channel crossing, and that after having been out of racing training since her last race, October 10, 2011, 3 months before. She stayed back in Maisons-Laffitte when the others left for Cagnes-sur-Mer, and only joined Gina and them in her assigned box there when she'd had more preparation, and when I flew down for her first race, February 2, and she came in 4th, we were thrilled. Here was the proof; this filly was scarcely in race form, and she'd got a 4th place finish and brought home a check to pay her oats and training. All we had to do was keep up the work, except her next two finishes were 4th and 5th place, when by all rights should have been blowing past the others, and we weren't seeing the turbo kick in. More worryingly, Agata was reporting that she was making a noise at 1000 meters in her twice weekly morning gallops.

I thought about all that while I watched Fabien describe the race, looking disconcerted and dismayed for the first time. In the noise of a race, hooves pounding the turf, jockeys shouting, he wouldn't have heard the noise, but he felt its effect. The worst, he said, the thing that puzzled him the most, he told us, was her behavior before the race; she didn't want to race, and she hadn't the last time, either.

Later, at the Pur Sang for beers, we talked again about Elbow's performances, coming around to "the noise" and the wind issue.

"I think we need to get her scoped," I said, sounding every bit the horsewoman I am not, and then we went all through it again before Gina nodded.

"I'll call Jerôme and let's get her scoped."

Jerôme, as it happened, said that there was still time that day to do it, since she had raced just a few hours before, and we met at the yard.

The endoscopy of her pharynx showed little, except for a slight asymmetry of the cartilage of the larynx. Enough, however, to consider doing an endoscopy during fast work. That said, not being her owners on paper and a mounted endoscopy being costly, Jerôme suggested coming during her next gallops to listen for the noise, confirmation of which, that Saturday morning in April, was enough to send her back to her owner for further testing, and leave me without a horse in the yard.

I didn't go, although I thought I would, to see her off.

This is what sometimes happens in racing, like in jumping, and you have to get used to it or leave the game. We are their stewards, the time they are in the stables and working for us; we love them, care for them, feeding and grooming them well, exercise them, and even play with them (ask King about his soccer ball in a net), but when it's time for the horse to move on, move on to an appropriate next place and owner he must. I did think, though, of Elbow the morning she stepped onto the van for the journey back to Newmarket, and I believe that were she to come back to Maisons-Laffitte, she'd remember us and be glad enough to see us again.

We were good to her, as all owners, trainers, lads and exercise riders ought to be. She received the care she required and was raced with consideration. She got her hay, oats and water, and would have received any therapeutic treatment she needed, but nothing as a matter of course, and now it would be up to her owner to make the decisions in her racing career, depending on what the tests would show.

Elbow, before her last race in France at Maisons-Laffitte

I said good-bye to Elbow Beach across the kilometers from my home on the edge of Normandy, and suddenly the July sales seemed terribly far away. Gina hadn't been enthusiastic about the breeze up and in training sale at Newcastle in a couple of weeks, but just as suddenly, whatever would be up for offer seemed more interesting, and our eye turned to the 3-year-old colt Benbecula by Motivator (who, like Surrey Storm, calls the 2000 Arc winner Montjeu papa) out of Shirley Heights mare Isle of Flame after watching the N° 6 Motivator colt Esles (out of Dehere mare Resquilleuse and ridden by Christophe Soumillon) charge past his competition and the finish line in the 5th race of the day at Saint-Cloud May 1. We were watching from a table in the owners and trainers lounge, and Sebastien grabbed the Tattersalls catalog lying on the table by his hand.

"There's a Motivator horse in there?" I asked.

Oui, Sebastien nodded, riffling through the pages as fast as Esles had gone through the competition, and pointed to a pedigree "There."

The horse's name was Benbecula, and the dams had produced a good amount of black type. I watched Sebastien confirm mentally his place on his short list, and I made a mental note of my own to speak with Gina once she returned from wherever she had gone.

That we were interested in this colt was, in hindsight, less surprising by a great deal than that we thought we could ever possibly acquire him. My budget was small, and ought to have been a good deal smaller, and he had two 2nd place finishes in 4 starts. Still, he had no wins yet, and it was April. Perhaps no one was paying attention.

The first lots to go at Newcastle May 3 were encouraging, as horses sold for under 5,000 guineas, some not making reserve at just 5,500 or 5,800 guineas, and then came a bay filly, Cape Safari, who got a top bid of 37,000 guineas and didn't make her reserve.

"Oh oh, here we go now," I typed, watching the bids climb.

"Yup," came Gina's reply on facebook messenger, "The really good stuff sells for much more."

We were watching the live sales on the Tattersalls site and talking by chat, and Gina had Sebastien on his mobile by text message. She'd be calling him when Ben came into the ring. Then, four horses sold for 3,500 gns and less. My hope and courage returned, until N° 28, bay gelding Knockgraffen Lad by Forestry out of Miss Dahlia, turned a couple times around the sales ring and the bids were already soaring over 20,000 gns. The words "28 is obviously worth something!" appeared in the little window.

"No joke."

The top bid was 34,000 gns; he didn't make his reserve; the sale went on, and then another horse in which we knew Sebastien was interested, N° 41, entered the ring and was knocked down for 10,500 gns.

"We'll never get Ben for 8,000," I typed.

"No, I don't think so," came the reply.

"Not even 10,000."

I bit my nail to smooth off the ragged edge I'd left from biting it and typed "Did Seb buy?"

"No, I'm sure he didn't get that one. Too much.
He bought 35, though, too."

I looked up 35, 5-year-old chestnut gelding Fibs and Flannel by Tobougg out of Queens Jubilee that went for a reasonable price. Lots of starts, a regular performer with three wins.

"What do you think of him?" I asked.

"I don't care for Tobougg."

I put Fibs and Flannel out of my mind, with an asterisk. We were nearing number 50, Benbecula, who, to make a short story even shorter, was out of my range before the call even went through. If you care to make on offer, however, you may: he didn't make his reserve when the bidding ended at 45,000 gns. We weren't, it appeared, the only ones paying attention, nor were we likely the only ones to have come across the blurb on him in spankthebookie.com.

I took scant comfort in having my horse sense (alright, Seb's and Gina's) confirmed, and, I ruminated, at least I didn't have to deal with the ache of losing him by a couple hundred lousy guineas. Seb had bought two horses, Fibs and a horse who went for less still. Gina sent the photos. In them, neither looked like much, but then again, the angles were bad. No, Gina said, the first one wasn't all that compromised by Seb's cell phone photography; the one to look at was N° 35, Fibs and Flannel, and I set to thinking about it.

Ludo on Fibs and Flannel, behind Seb on Sabys Gem and Agata on King, Rond Poniatowski, May 8

I headed to the yard to look him over, stood in the Rond Poniatowski with Gina and watched him trot, then canter, did yards of mental calculations, consulted my instincts and measured my mettle, and yesterday I made my decision and we fêted it with two bottles of champagne between Gina, Seb, yard owner Chantal, and myself (Gina's husband Tim stuck with scotch, just like their friend Brian, who we waved down as he drove by; it isn't difficult to make a merry drinks party in Maisons-Laffitte). 

My husband wasn't divorcing me for it (I actually suspect he is finding all this rather intriguing, despite his normally conservative constitution), and as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Sole owner of this red gelding, dripping with muscle in his shoulders and hind quarters -- needing to build up the back -- and built to run a mile, with four legs in training, I am venturing it all. As Gina says, all we have to do is make him happy, and he'll run for us. They've been hard on him, and we'll make him happy.

Let us hope that this is fun. It might at least provide moments of mirth in the retelling, over cans of cat food at meals in my diminished retirement, because, suddenly, all I want is a horse; my kingdom for a horse.

God help me, and Inshallah.
....

Groomed and in his luxury suite, Fibs waits for dinner

For more photos of Fibs and Flannel, click here.