Here They Come Spinning Out of the Turn...

There are two kinds of people in the world, animal people and non-animal people; the second group worries me.  There are four primary animal people: dog people; cat people; people who think it’s OK to put their arm in a cage at the zoo; and people who think reptiles make good pets.  Reptiles do not make good pets; it is never OK to stick your arm through the bars at the zoo; and cats give me the willies.  By process of elimination, I’m a dog person.

 

We lost Thelma, our basset hound of fourteen years, last October, and I was willing to make the transition to ex-pet owner; losing an animal is just too hard.  But my wife felt otherwise, and, six weeks later, we found ourselves with an eight-month old basset, Satan, though everyone insists on calling her Penny.  Why “Satan”?  Because dogs, least of all basset hounds, aren’t supposed to fly through the air the way this one does, ears snapping in her wake.  And, until now, I was unaware my toes make a good snack food.

 

People who race dogs for a living are a subgroup of dog people, and a vanishing one, so I won’t bother with them other than to say, Bye-bye.  People who keep a horse the way we do a dog are nuts, but more power to them if they can afford it.  People who breed horses to race and people who buy horses to race are another subgroup, and one I have about as much affection for as I do people who keep tarantulas for pets.  Spiders are not a pet, and horses shouldn’t exist for our betting amusement.

 

Sorry, but too many horses lead miserable lives without ever getting close to a chance to race for the Triple Crown.  The dirty little secret about horse racing is that the glue factory and slaughterhouse weren’t punchlines in a joke; they existed so as to get rid of horses unable to run like the wind.  Horses may no longer go there, but, trust me, many of the aged and unfleet of hoof are taken somewhere like that.

 

Stories about starving horses and down-on-their-luck horse farms are a staple on the news, and let’s not forget accidents; I saw in the paper yesterday that two racehorses died running over the weekend in California, at Santa Anita and Pimlico.  According to a story in the Sunday NYT, on average nearly ten horses a week died at American racetracks in 2018.  Racetracks would seem to be the glue factory.

So, forgive me if I don’t get all wrapped up in this year’s Triple Crown.  If I want to see an animals run fast, I can chase Satan around the yard.  When she starts chasing me back (which she likes doing), it may be on behalf of those horse that die in the name of racing.