A Thought Provoking Picture

A picture, as they say, is sometimes worth a thousand words. The picture to the left may not be worth that many, but I keep looking at it and thinking about the symbolism. I took this picture of In Over My Head last Sunday at his current home in Mineral Point. Laura and I went up with Greg for one of his daily feedings. While we stood there watching him, he paused and looked out of his barn door. Since I’m always looking for good pictures of Mo, I thought it might make a good phone background. The more I look at it the more intriguing it is.

(a quick side note, the plan was to take the picture from my phone and copy it here, but due to some kind of glitch, it has been 'erased' even though it still shows up as my background....which is why you get to see a picture of a picture!)

Behind him, is darkness, which represents the past seven months of his life. Major injury, weeks of stall rest and visits by vets, pain in his leg followed by minimal activity, more vets, and some remaining pain. After additional slow rehab work, he finally gets to the point he is now. Kind of in purgatory. Life certainly isn’t bad up at his Mineral Point home. He gets excellent care and attention (Greg goes up to feed him three times a day), he gets a big stall to himself every night and gets turned out every day. Has his own paddock with an open barn area as well (as seen in the picture). Certainly many horses have it worse, but this isn’t the best life for Mo. After all, he is a racehorse. He lives to race. Taking away racing would be like taking away football from Brett Favre (he obviously struggles with walking away). My favorite part of the picture is what is in front of him. In Over My Head is looking to a brighter future both actually (in the picture) and figuratively. His leg has finally healed, which will allow him to move forward into that bright future.

As of today, he is less than two months away from taking his next big step back to the track. We are planning on sending him down to Florida to train with John Butenschoen this winter. If all goes well, he’ll be back racing in April. To those that have read this blog for awhile, you may remember that we told In Over My Head on the night of the Windy City pace that if he won, we’d send him to Florida for the winter. Well, we are going to end up making good on that promise after all. By sending him to Florida, we can say he is getting the best possible path back into racing. We all hope beyond hope that he makes it back to the track and is the monster that he used to be. He deserves the best, which is why he is getting the ‘Cadillac Package’.

It is kind of an interesting time to look back. Had Mo stayed healthy, we would all probably be heading down to Delaware, Ohio, home of the Little Brown Jug. The Jug is the most special of the major three year old events (in my opinion at least). It is raced at a fair track, in front of a huge crowd (they usually draw 30,000+) and it is raced in heats. Heat racing was the norm for many, many years in racing. In summary, you have to win twice in one day to be crowned ‘champion’. It is a true test of a horse’s heart and guts. While In Over My Head would not be able to race in the Jug, we did plan on racing him in the Winbak Open pace. The purse isn’t huge (about $45k), but the chance to race on Jug day was something we were extremely excited about when Mo was healthy and we started to make stakes payments in mid February. Looking at the field, he would have fit just fine. He has already raced against 3 of the 5 participants. He got beat a nose by Nob Hill High in DuQuoin, went 1 for 2 against Annieswesterncard and could have held his own against Booze Crusin had he not been sick that night last fall in the open at Balmoral. I guess we will just have to try again next year.

In other news, Showtime Shark is probably a couple of weeks from getting back jogging again. We still aren’t too sure what his short term future holds, mostly because of the uncertainly surrounding the Meadowlands racetrack, which is currently in the middle of a turf battle for the future of gambling dollars with Atlantic City. The State of New Jersey is trying to figure out what location to support going forward. I’m obviously biased, but on one hand, you have the premier track in all of racing and in the other you have an afterthought grouping of casinos. You have brand awareness in the Meadowlands and a punch line in Atlantic City. Horse owners, trainers and breeders spend millions and million of dollars in New Jersey for horses because of the Meadowland’s brand, but casino gambling has become more and more a business of convenience given the fact there are casinos in nearly every state. Only Las Vegas remains a gambling destination. Long story short, if New Jersey wants to keep people like me spending money on horses, vets, trainers and when we come to visit hotel, restaurants, rental cars, etc, go with the Meadowladns. This falls into the realm of ‘no brainer’ as far as I’m concerned. Again, I know I’m biased. So, long story short, if there is a Junior Trendsetter next year, we will enter Showtime and probably travel to New Jersey to see him. I hope it works out.

Lastly, please join me in an Internet based round of applause for ‘Dashing’ Danny Carey. Danny just finished his first full year as a driver on the Wisconsin Fair Circuit and finished in the top three of drivers while also driving the Trotter of the Year. Nice work Danny! Maybe someday when we all run into the winner’s circle after an In Over My Head win we can congratulate him as our winning driver.