Saving Baby (20 page)

Steve agreed to come to Michigan for a fee of a few thousand dollars—a lot of money for our board—and do an inspection himself.

Part of what he told us was just what the jockeys and trainers already knew through experience. Near the rail, the combined layers of clay and sand were as deep as ten inches.

But what came as a shock to all was that out a ways, the clay-sand cushion was sometimes only a quarter inch deep, much too shallow to protect a horse's leg from the hard limestone surface beneath. The whole of it was supposed to be on the order of six inches. While the jockeys and trainers were aware the horses could run faster there than they might have anticipated, they had no idea just how dangerously thin the soft, protective layer had become. It explained to them why they might have had at least one, if not two, horses die on the track that season but hadn't lost any for five seasons before that. Routine maintenance had deteriorated to an astonishing degree.

Worse still, Steve found, the limestone was a mess. In spots it came up like waves. In other areas there were dips and gouges. No wonder horses were now breaking down in record numbers. They were running on just a sliver of soft material above a hard surface in complete disrepair.

Steve told us that industry standards called for measurements to be taken in several spots around the track every single day—and posted for everyone to see. That way, if the cushion were deeper in one area, bettors would understand why there was a bias in where the horses were being run. They could then use the information in handicapping winners.

But our track never checked to see that the racecourse clay-sand combination was of a uniform consistency and depth all the way around and all the way across. Workers would drive harrows and graders around, but no one ever followed up by taking measurements to determine whether that made the track level. We didn't even have a track superintendent, let alone someone to take measurements.

Steve recommended that the track be shut down for two weeks for the necessary repairs and that two weeks be added to the end of the season so no one would lose any money. If the night lights were used and work went on twenty-four hours a day, he said, the waves in the limestone base could be shaved, the valleys filled in, and then an even layer of clay and sand installed and leveled. After that, he said, there would need to be daily track maintenance. The top layer of sand would naturally drift toward the center, toward the inner rail, since the track was built on a bit of a slant for rainwater to drain off.

Steve put his recommendations in writing for the HBPA board to file with both the track and the State Racing Commission, and when we presented them, to our great surprise, the track agreed to do the work. We couldn't believe how easily the higher-ups acquiesced and were thrilled that our efforts were going to bear fruit. Even the trainers were glad, despite the fact that they would not be earning any money for two weeks. Too many horses were going down.

A week later, the HPBA board paid for Steve's assistant, Danny Houck, to fly out from California and oversee the repairs, but Danny soon called me and said, “I don't know what to do here. I've phoned Steve for advice because they are
not
repairing the base.”

It turned out the track heads were now saying Steve wasn't qualified to evaluate our track because he was from California, where tracks are built differently to accommodate different weather conditions and, further, that they had never agreed to make any repairs. They said they would spend three days smoothing out the soft top layer but were not going to touch the base, which of course was going to leave the larger problem unsolved. They also refused to take measurements.

When we brought this up to Steve, who had supervised the building of tracks from Argentina to Hong Kong, in all kinds of climates, he responded in writing: “It does not matter if you are from the east coast, west coast, or the North Pole. Irregularities in the limestone base were visible to the naked eye of either an expert or nonexpert … it was quite obvious there was a problem.”

From those in the Racing Commission, whose salaries depended on money being made by the track, we received no communication at all.

By that point—the middle of July—more horses had died on the track than had died all through the previous season, which lasted through Thanksgiving.

“Why are you still sending your horses out there?” I would ask various trainers.

“Jo Anne,” they answered, “you can take your horses home. This is something you did extra. But it's how I make my living, how I pay my mortgage. My kids go to school here. I can't just pick up and go to another track.”

I wasn't having an easy time of it emotionally. It was impossible for me to walk down Baby's shedrow. If I went to see a trainer because his horse didn't finish a race and I wanted to find out why, I would just look down when I passed the gravel road where Baby's stall had been. He was on my mind all the time. I think what drove me was not so much vengeance as incredulousness. How could this happen to my horse—and still be happening to other horses—with everyone now having no doubt about what was wrong but not lifting a finger to fix it?

Yet every day I had to steel myself, have a cry before getting out of my car, reapply my makeup, and then go back there business-minded so I would be taken seriously. Otherwise, people would have told me to get over myself, that what happened to Baby happened to horses all the time. It would have been seen as
my
issue rather than as an endemic problem.

And the problem was much worse than I imagined. I had started asking trainers and others what happened to all the horses who went down, since I knew not all of them suffered a life-ending injury. Sometimes these conversations would take place in a local bar that we would go to after board meetings. Sometimes they'd occur right at the rail.

“Oh, I got rid of it,” they would tell me.

“What do you mean?” I'd ask. “I just want to keep my records straight.”

“Oh, it went to auction.”

“Auction?”

“Yeah, the meat buyer took it. I got eighty cents a pound.”

I still wasn't quite getting it—I continued to have it in my head that the horses were retired to a farm, or rehabilitated somehow—but the more people I talked to, the more I began to understand.

When horses at the track broke down, they generally weren't taken somewhere for recuperation. And when they experienced a catastrophic injury, they usually weren't put down humanely with an injection, as Baby was. Almost all who could no longer race were sent to a slaughterhouse, and the owners would receive money in return. Their horses would be killed and sold to actual butchers where horsemeat was legal—France, Belgium, Japan. All the little euphemistic blurbs printed with each set of racing results for horses who did not make their way around the track—“broke down,” “vanned off,” “DNF,” for “Did Not Finish”—they all meant the same thing.

People explaining to me that a particular horse was removed would freely use terms like “kill pen.” They were all fine with it. It was part of the economics of racing. Why not earn a last few hundred dollars on a used up horse rather than lose money on the horse by chemically euthanizing it or paying to board it somewhere where it could graze on pastureland and be given a nice retirement?

I started to realize that what I thought was abuse—Simply Darling being fed her sweetened grain all at once, the little filly with the bleeding welts—was nothing compared with this slaughter pipeline. It came over me gradually until one day, when my understanding reached a tipping point, I felt dizzy, like I needed to hold onto something. How could this be going on? I had had so much fun here. I laughed in the kitchen, kidded around at the rail, and these very people with whom I had been cavorting were giving their horses horrible ends. I needed to do something.

I found antislaughter groups online who were trying to get the word out. I'd be at the computer and have to stop and look away. The horses, I learned, are crammed together, forced down tight metal chutes, one after another, no matter what their condition, whipped and beaten to make them go faster even if a leg is broken. Then they end up in a metal box and are hit in the head with a retractable bolt that is meant to knock them unconscious. But because horses are naturally head shy, they keep trying to move out of the way, so the bolt shoots out again and again, going into their heads but not killing them, after which they are hoisted up on a chain by one of their hind legs and a sharp blade slits their throats. I couldn't read it all at once, or look at pictures of horses in kill pens starving and thirsty while they waited for a week or more to be sent to a slaughterhouse, often in cramped trailers meant only for hogs and cattle so that they had to bend their heads very low for the entire journey.

It made people pressing me to take Scarlett back to the track all the more preposterous. “It won't happen again,” Frank the Greek said to me, referring to Baby's tragedy. “She's sitting on a win. She's on her way.” When he found out I now had a full sister to Baby, too, he tried to talk me into racing her as well.

Jerry also had a hard time letting it go. While Pam knew that I wasn't going to change my mind, he would say to me sometimes, “You know my plans for Scarlett. There's the two-hundred-thousand-dollar Sire Stakes Race in October.” That's how perfectly made Scarlett was for racing. She was the equine version of the most beautiful actress you can think of, like Julia Roberts or Angelina Jolie on the red carpet.

Scarlett's promise was so well known that even people with whom I was barely acquainted tried to talk me into racing her. “Are you ready yet?” they would ask in the kitchen.

I would never be ready. It was so painfully clear that the track's being dangerously uneven was only a small part of the problem. I didn't want to have anything to do with this activity anymore, this so-called sport in which the “athletes” were treated like decks of cards or dice—gambling devices thrown away once they were “used up.”

Even those trainers who treated their horses well inadvertently played a part in racing industry practices. Although such trainers made sure to find a place for all their Thoroughbreds who could no longer race, I knew it couldn't be true for a horse they dropped into a claiming race that was then bought by someone else. That horse probably went from cheap claiming races to the slaughterhouse. These trainers did care. One or two would even cry when their horses broke down. But like others who cared—and there
were
people on the backstretch who truly didn't mean any harm—it was easier to look the other way, pretend it didn't happen, accept on blind faith the assurances of those who obfuscated the truth by saying they'd find a broken down horse “a good home” or “take care of it.” I couldn't pretend anymore. The thought of it all turned my stomach.

In the meantime, wrangling with the track and the Racing Commission went on through the entire summer and early fall, with me continuing to write unanswered letters asking why these entities were not adhering to the rules and regulations for track safety, why the track was not even taking measurements. Finally, in October, I and the rest of the HBPA board found out that the track had hired its own independent evaluator, the track superintendent at prestigious Belmont Park in New York. His final report was more scathing than Steve's, stating that it would take $595,000 to repair the track. Even with that, however, no improvements were in the works.

It was then that I decided to hire a lawyer. I wanted it acknowledged that beyond my own clouded judgment, it was a financial calculus that killed Baby. He deserved that. By forcing that truth out, I could save him, or at least something of the dignity he deserved. Even more important at that point, I needed to try to protect other horses from the same fate. I knew that if someone else had owned Baby, he would have ended up at a slaughterhouse, where, abandoned, he would have met a frightful end.

Every horse, utterly dependent on its owner, understands what it means to love and to feel loved and to bond with other horses and with people. Every horse is by nature cautious. Every horse loves to roll in the grass, to shake out the snow. By working to save them going forward, I was in some way saving something of what I so loved about Baby.

 

CHAPTER NINE

Having been a court reporter for years, I should have known what a difference hiring an attorney would make. Through all my months of writing letters to the State Racing Commission, making phone calls, attending HBPA board meetings, and meticulously monitoring the injuries and deaths of Thoroughbreds on that form I had designed, I had gotten nowhere. But then I brought Bill Mitchell onto the case after researching who would be the best lawyer to represent me. Within weeks, the Racing Commission, whose job it was to make sure the track adhered to laws regarding safety for the horses, set a hearing date for December 10th. They subpoenaed dozens of people, including track experts, trainers, HBPA board members, veterinarians, even the track executives. These people were served not just subpoenas but subpoenas
duces tecum
, meaning they were to arrive at the hearing bearing supporting documents.

How glad I was to be served my own subpoena one day at the HBPA Board office. Now, finally, all the documentation I had been amassing could be used to make the track do its job.

William Mitchell III, outspoken, determined, and unfazed by controversy, came to me by way of the new president of the HBPA board, who had been elected just weeks earlier. I knew a lot of attorneys, but the board president knew attorneys who knew the racing commissioner, who had been appointed by the governor. He knew attorneys who knew the track executives. He also had a really warm feeling for his horses and so understood how much I loved mine. And he, too, had lost one of his most promising Thoroughbreds to the track, a young filly whose two front legs literally broke off at the knees during morning training that year on the uneven racing surface.