Owning horses will cause your hands to shake sometimes. I can distinctly remember when In Over My
Head first made my hands shake. It was
right after we bought him at an auction.
The excitement got the best of me and I couldn’t even sign my name on
the sales slip. From that day on, he
caused my hands to shake many times.
Normally this was after a big race and once text messaging became more
prevalent (can you believe that Mo’s career goes back to the early stages of
sending text messages???) the hand shaking phenomenon become more noticeable. Today, Mo made my hands shake one last
time…and for a very unique reason.
He passed his fertility test.
Let me take a step back since I haven’t had an updated since
June.
This season marked Mo’s 8th as a racehorse. At times, he looked like his old self. Other times, he was starting to look his
age. He had three wins in six starts and
going into his seventh start there was no reason to think he wouldn’t get his
fourth win on the season. We had no idea
that July 25, 2015 was about to mark the end of one of the most exciting,
gratifying, humbling and memorable experiences in our lives.
When the gate folded that night, Mo make an uncharacteristic
break. After he got back on stride, his
driver, Kyle Wilfong, urged him to pick up the pace. He made another break. This went on again and finally Kyle just let
Mo do his thing. What Mo did was pace
around the Balmoral oval in about two minutes, some 30 lengths from the leader. He was trying to communicate something very
simple to us. He was trying to tell us that
he didn’t want to race anymore.
In his previous 87 starts, Mo had never given anything less
than a 100%, run through a wall effort.
Even through injury…hell, even when he got hurt IN THE BEGINNING OF THE
RACE. Nothing stopped him. He was a runaway freight train. Suddenly, he flipped the switch and ended
things on his own terms. It took us
about 2 minutes to come to the conclusion that there was be no more races. While he was sore, the great thing was that he
did not have any major injuries. Even
though he was about to be retired, we had him checked out anyway. No minor breaks or tears could be found. We were always worried he would end his
career with some sort of injury, but he made sure to pull the plug before that
happened. He was healthy enough to easily
transition to the next stage of his career…but what was that going to be?
We needed to find him a good home. Preferably a home that allowed him to, you
know, be a stallion. We knew it wouldn’t
be easy. The stallion game is a tough
one and while Mo has shown many of the traits needed to become a successful
stallion, the competition is fierce. We
would need to find the right niche. So
we went to work.
Danny took the lead and he reached out to numerous small
farms in California, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana among others. We had a nice package of information with a
letter explaining why he would be a good fit.
For a while, it was silence, then we got a call back from someone in
Iowa. She had about 5 mares and knew of
others that might want to breed to him.
Perfect.
We were thrilled at the thought that our boy was going to
get a chance to live the life of a stallion.
We started having visions of his babies at racetracks. We thought that maybe one day we could have
one of our own. However, there was one
important obstacle that needed to be hurdled.
He needed to prove his ability to be a stallion. He was…well…not experienced when it came to
the ladies.
So, we set up an appointment at a clinic in Cedar Rapids,
near the farm of the prospective owners.
The deal was clear. If he passed
his test, she’d take him. If not, we’d
have to come up with a new plan and the dream of stallion life for Mo would be
over. That’s a lot of pressure.
Luckily, our plan ended up working. Mo passed!
Not only did he pass, but apparently he is considered “extremely fertile”. This is a great sign for his new owners and
will allow him to move smoothly to his next career. When we got the news, I was actually supposed
how excited I was. It was like he just won
a race!
We shouldn’t have been surprised at our excitement. Mo has given us so much over the past eight
years. I’ll likely do one more post that
is a final summary of this story, but it is hard to describe how gratifying it
is for us to be able to give Mo this second career he deserves. He should be a stallion on some level. His stats don’t to him justice. He’s a million dollar horse and hopefully he
can pass along all those wonderful traits to his future offspring. We can’t wait to see that little colt one day
with the dark coat, star in the middle of his forehead and white left front
leg. When we do, I think we may just
have to make the owner an offer they can’t refuse.
It’s also nice knowing that it isn’t over for Mo. There is more to his story. He won’t just be ours anymore, but Mo was
meant to be shared. He can make more people
happy and find a special place in their heart just like he has with us.
So from now on, we don’t need to say “Let’s Go Mo”
anymore. I think “Go Get Em Mo” is a
little more appropriate.
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