There’s this thing called Equineline, which is a website run by the Jockey Club (JC, the studbook for thoroughbreds in the U.S.)  On Equineline, you can buy race reports for every JC-recognized race run in the U.S., pedigrees and a whole bunch more stuff.

So let’s take a look at Howdy’s race report:It has a bunch of cool stuff on it, no?  Owner, trainer, year, DOB, color, breeding, earnings, length of race and a whole bunch of stuff I haven’t figured out yet.  What I do know to check is the penultimate right (Ok, I love the word penultimate, it means “second to last” and is just so British, that it makes me giggle, so please just humor me.)  Anyway, the comments column way on the right.  The most recent race is on the top of the list, so the last race he ran he was “outrun.”  Before that it was “inside, no bid,” then “outrun,” “never menaced,” “retreated,” and in his first race, “void of speed.”

Now “void of speed” is a turn of phrase!  I might have to see if that name is available for USEA registration for eventing.  Can’t you just see it?  Ok, well, maybe not, but nevertheless, I think it is hysterical to say that about a race horse – it is basically the racing equivalent of the mountain climber sailing off the end of the cliff on The Price is Right .  Just, “Aint gonna happen, thanks for playing.”

At any rate, a horse with comments like this is just the kind of horse I want to work with.  He’s had some training, he’s galloped a bit, he’s been in a start gate, he’s trailered, he’s seen a thing or two, basically.

Speaking of seeing, Howdy has seen exactly how the flash works on my phone and he knows how to time his blink so that I get images like these three different takes:

Ha!  I did manage to get one half decent but out-of-focus one, but I think that is going to be it for using the flash.  The good news is, I think it is a sign of his pupil actually responding to the atropine and really opening, so bright lights are not comfortable – so I’ll let him alone about it.  This is the best one I got and it’s actually quite useless.  Ha! 

But I did shoot one without the flash and I think you can see that the eye is starting to look a little less grey.  Go steroids.

Meanwhile, we had a stellar session yesterday when he relaxed and decided it was perfectly ok for me to be on his right side, and got right lead canter on the lunge four times  in a row.  I think his new friend Bravado told him that if he is good he might get to do this cool thing called foxhunting where you get to see all sorts of new things and meet new horses.  And now that Howdy has a friend, he has all those endorphins that will help his eye healing.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, anyway.

And finally a bit of, “hey, that’s not a bad trot” for the dressage geeks in the group.  I suppose the galloping, sliding stop, and rollback won’t go over as well, but we take what we can get.  LOL: