right foot, left foot

Good things happening last night at Penn National, where our friend, Doug Nunn, had the winner of the last. He scored with Trefinity, a hard-knocking horse that has bankrolled close to $200,000 while racing during much of this decade, it seems. Win is especially cool for T Street, as we actually owned Trefinity's dam, Trevatha, a number of years ago. She was our first foray into the business, picked up as a broodmare prospect to send to the great Express Tour down in Florida. Things went south right out of the gate, unfortunately, beginning with serious difficulties getting her in foal. After a lot of wine, chocolate and all sorts of other tricks, the magic just wasn't going to happen. So, after shipping her back to NJ to wait for the following season, the poor mare somehow came down with strangles, and, after all sorts of efforts to save her, died. Bad, bad times.

I remember that I was out after after work that night, playing wing man for a co-worker buddy, when I got the call. It was really loud at the bar, so I ducked into the alcove between the men's and women's restrooms to take the call from her vet, who had cared for her entire family before it was broken up and sold at dispersal after the patriarch died. So, he passes on the crummy news, which sent me reeling back into the pay phones, while trying to avoid (teary) eye contact with traffic in the area. We're both sniffling and whimpering on the phone, feeling bad about the whole deal and I began wondering how the hell I was gonna tell everyone that she had died. "Oh, umm, yeah, you remember how we recently became horse owners?..."

I had to pull myself together and head back to the bar, quickly, of course, because my man was likely struggling without me trying to charm these two girls we had been chatting up. I didn't need to do much talking, necessarily; my role was just to look my usual handsome self, which, in turn, was supposed to elevate his standing on the looks meter. (It was heavy lifting, man). I go back to the bar, tell them it was just a buddy calling, and get back to looking beautiful. I had a serious urge to fill the next conversational void with news of my mare's demise ("Whyyyyyyy??" sniffle, sniffle, followed by "I probably shouldn't be alone right now. Hold me."). Instead, I kept my mouth shut, nursed my beer and hit the road.

I cried like a baby on the drive home that night (happy hours always make me emotional to begin with, so it was a given), broke the news to my family, cried a bit more with them, and hit the sack. It always hurts some to think back on good old Trevetha, even today, but news of one of her kids doing well, especially now with Trefinity running for Doug, helps take away a bit of the sting.