When you’re a greenhorn and eager to learn, someone might say, Why don’t you go over to Barn Six and ask if you can borrow their saddle stretcher? So you go to Barn Six and say, Biff Gifford wants to know if he can borrow your saddle stretcher, and the person at Barn Six says, I gave it to Barn Nine, you can get it from them. You go to Barn Nine, but the person there sends you to Barn Twelve and says, While you’re at it, can you get me the key to the quarter pole? You’re walking back and forth, barn to barn, but there’s no such thing as a saddle stretcher or quarter-pole key.

One guy knew I was afraid of mice, so he’d catch them and put them in my feed sack. At four o’clock in the morning, half-awake, I’d pull up the lid and put my hand into the sack and six mice would jump onto my arm. I’d be screaming and he’d be laughing.

They stick one horse in another horse’s stall to get you flustered, or they take your horse, put him on a walker, and say, Where’d your horse go, where’d your horse go? They mess with you, especially when you’re new, and then pretty soon you’re doing it to people, too.

GALLON OF BLOOD

At Park Jackson it was the cheaper horses, but a lot of them were at one time big-money horses. In the past they ran for forty, fifty thousand dollars, but most were so broke down you could buy them for fifteen hundred in a claiming race.

Most racehorses bleed from the lungs when they run. They won’t win because they’re choking on the blood coming up. There was a drug you’d use to bring their blood pressure down, but then that drug got banned because it could mask other drugs.

Some of the old-timers at Park Jackson would tie smooth wire tight to the root of the tail to constrict blood flow. Others took blood from the neck with a big syringe and squirted it into a milk jug until the jug was full. Sometimes the jug got knocked over — there’d be blood all over the ground.

One trainer in particular liked to do it. He plunged so many syringes people would joke, Hey Joey, how come your right thumb’s so much bigger than your left?

NUTS AND BOLTS

The horses got the best feed, they loved to run, but some of them were pieced together with nuts and bolts. Their legs — you call them their wheels. This horse has a bad wheel. There might be a screw holding the bones together. There might be a knee swollen the size of my head. You tell the rider, Don’t look down, jock!