second mortgage right call

If you're in the business, whether through ownership, trips to the windows or picking out the prettiest horse in the paddock, you're likely familiar enough with all of the second guessing that's involved. Over the years, I've come to be pretty good at rolling with the punches after a bad beat, mismanaged play or times when I've zigged instead of zagging. Logic dictates that the combination of thousand pound animals running around with tiny men and women on their backs is going to end in confounding results more often than not. Plus, every once in a while, the chaos will unexpectedly break your way and lead to a big score. So, even though I might mutter to myself for a few minutes after an especially unkind turn of events, I'm usually over it fairly quickly.

On the ownership side of things, I'm still learning how to go with the flow. It's probably been a little trickier if only because so few horses ultimately make it through the vetting process once we hit up a sale. Normally, we'll go in with a list of, say, twenty horses, most of which will get knocked off due to one physical issue or another. From the lot that's left, the vet might knock off the odd one or two due to something with the scope or radiographs. Finally, I'll give the thumbs up or thumbs down depending on what I've had for breakfast that particular morning. The end result is that we're usually left with 2-3 at most that we can seriously think about acquiring.

Anyway, I've been catching up with some of the racing missed while away last month, and had the distinct pleasure to spot that our second-ranked filly from last year's Fasig-Tipton yearling sale at Timonium, (pedigree page here), just aired in her debut at Monmouth Park. A few hours after Kate came home from school and found me in the fetal position under the computer desk, I was able to come around and see it as a positive thing, you know, in like a, "Yeah, I could have had her, man, but I just didn't feel like it," kind of way. Totally sad, of course, but these are the things you tell yourself if only to get some sleep at night.

The story is pretty simple. She was one of two to make it through the ringer (Veiled Reference was the other), though we had her ranked behind the filly we did land. She was a NJ-bred with a big walk that covered an unbelievable amount of ground and did it really smoothly. My only knock on her was that she might not come to hand until her 3yo season (she has a late-developing pedigree), by which time we would have missed the 2007 NJ racing season. Naturally, you could have taken it to the bank at the time that she'd win for fun as a 2yo.

So, we scored our top choice, Veiled Reference, for $50,000 on day one of the sale and then came back the next day hoping to pick up this other filly for $40-50,000, which would have been tight, but I thought we could scrape it together. When we got down there, word got back to us that $60,000 was the number to land her. Naturally, I squealed a, "You've got to be kidding me," or two and finally determined that my couch cushions would come up about $59,999 short of their number and, besides, I had it in my mind that she wouldn't see the races until 2008. Well, she sold for $60,000, romped last month (and is now worth closer to $160,000) and projects as a filly that will get better with time (really? you don't say.). Her name is Love For Not, she's trained by Kevin Sleeter and she'll clean up in NJ over the next few years. Naturally, I'll have to be leaving the state soon.

The lesson, as always: taking out equity in your house is okay for kitchens, bathrooms, flat screen TVs and good NJ-bred racehorses. Second, said good NJ-bred racehorses can be forgiven for late developing pedigrees, as it should always be remembered that they'll be competing against fellow NJ-breds to start their careers, not the best horses of their generation. Third, don't be a baby over $10,000, especially when it comes to a nice NJ-bred. You'll drop $30,000+ a year taking care of that bad boy or girl, so the few thousand to get one that you really like is de minimis in the scheme of things. (De minimis, by the way, was one of my favorite Latin phrases to use with my old boss when he was whining over something brutally unimportant; his face would twist up in a combination of anger and confusion and then he'd usually stalk off; you'd think he'd break down and look it up after the third or forth time.)