A true tale of a trainer’s travail
by Trey Nosrac
Once upon a time, Trey found himself without a job. Nothing personal, just business.
The accountants calculated that they could hire two rookies for my salary. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Well, technically, I could have refused since I was tenured and several years from retirement. The surprise offer had attractions and would free up my schedule for playing golf and tennis, visiting shady pool halls, operating a baseball business, wagering at my local harness racetrack, and enthusiastically exploring additional rabbit holes.
I took the buyout. Then I made a big mistake.
Alert readers may note the harness racing reference in a previous paragraph. As a casual harness racing fan, I jogged horses for an elderly trainer on weekends. How I ended up in the jog cart was a long, twisted tale that would require a comic novel to tell.
Suffice to say, I was a backstretch novice, uninformed, and inexperienced. Working with horses on Saturdays was interesting, educational, and fun, except for the winters when my hands froze into the shape of the letter C.
Trey often shows remarkable confidence for no apparent reason, and occasionally jumps into the deep end of a pool without water wings. On a fine fall afternoon shortly after my career turn, I decided to become a horse trainer, a decision that proved to be very bad on many levels.
With advice from a slightly tipsy trainer, I bought an inexpensive filly trotter at a lower-tier sale; a trotter was mandatory because I could never master the mystifying task of attaching hopples to a horse. Renting a stall was doable. Borrowing equipment, purchasing feed and straw, and finding a veteran trainer willing to break the horse as I walked alongside holding a third line went reasonably well.
On my third day as a horse trainer, during the 45-minute drive to the racetrack, I had an epiphany and retired from my career as a horse trainer.
There were several reasons. I would need to get licensed. Injuries to both the filly and humans were more than long shots. On the first day, the filly mashed my little toe, and on day two, she bit my right shoulder. But the main reason for my abbreviated career was the realization I would need to tend to this filly every day. At some level, this responsibility must have occurred to me earlier, but in my enthusiasm, I glossed over this detail.
This amount of crushing responsibility would cramp my style and could not be borne.
On day three of my career as a horse trainer, wary of the surprisingly strong teeth, I haltered the filly and limped to an adjacent barn for a chat with a real trainer. Then I opened my checkbook, wrote several checks, and handed over some paperwork. For the second time that year, I took early retirement. I was off the racetrack premises and on the first fairway of Sleepy Hollow Golf Course at noon. I believe I still hold the Olympic record for the shortest career as a harness horse trainer.
To complete the story of this filly, and every horse is a story, when I handed over the reins to the professional trainer, I retained a 50 per cent ownership. Remaining an owner allowed me to continue making regular payments and occasionally drive out for a hearty racetrack kitchen breakfast and to jog the filly.
Did the filly make it to the races? No.
Did I squander my money? Not really, the entire episode was an adventure.
Would I ever try a similar horse training adventure? Yes, with a caveat.
I love that word – caveat (n.) “warning, hint of caution,” 1550s, from Latin, literally “let him beware,” third-person singular present subjunctive of cavere “to beware, take heed, watch, guard against.”
My caveat is that I would share the training by inventing a “Fractional Trainership” category. Here is a rough outline of this brilliant concept for participating in the training part of harness horse racing. Put together a group of three physically fit, slightly foolish, fun-loving partners and one real horse trainer. The trainer would be on-site and act as a supervisor/mentor. Every member of the quartet would be responsible for training one week per month. One week each month is enough for me.
What could go wrong?
