Raja, Story of a Racehorse Read Online Free PDF Page B

isn’t finishing her feed. Try adding Gatorade powder. She did this last year when it got hot. Make sure it’s orange, not lime — she only likes orange.”
    Then Willie, my exercise rider, appeared, and it was time to train! The track was where the action was, the center of everything. Horses jogged next to the outside rail, or galloped in the middle of the track, while owners and railbirds, coffee and racing newspapers in hand, chatted and watched. On the track we always had to have our eyes open for horses spooking or running off with, even dumping, their riders. Alex said that “traffic” got us used to all of the action of a race day.
    I still hadn’t seen a race, but I couldn’t wait.

    RB shook his head as we watched the vet use a machine to look at the leg of another horse from Alex’s barn who had limped painfully back to the barn after his race.
    â€œRacehorses are athletes and athletes get sports injuries. It sounds as if he’s torn his suspensory ligament. He might race again after time off or maybe he’ll go to stud. What a shame; he was running well.”
    â€œWhat happens if a horse can’t race or gets old?” Max asked.
    â€œRetirement?” RB answered, “I’m not so far away from it myself, you know.”
    The chatter died down as Max and Shaddy and the others stopped to listen.
    What happens to a racehorse after racing?
    â€œWell,” RB thought for a while, munching a mouthful of hay, “you know, we’re the lucky ones. Most of us are very well bred and will go to stud. The Sheikh is really good about finding homes for his horses that don’t go to stud but can do other things. A lot of his horses go back to live in the big retirement field at the farm.”
    The nervous bay horse next to RB interrupted, excitedly,“It’s being sold to a bad owner or trainer that you have to worry about. The ones who think you’re an investment that needs to make money.”
    RB nodded sadly, in agreement. “If you’re useful but not especially well bred, you might be sold. Then you keep racing, just easier and cheaper races, and hope that you stay sound enough for another career afterward or that your owners will make sure that you are taken care of.” He paused to take a sip of water. “But I hear stories — we all do — racehorses abandoned, even killed for meat.”
    Meat? That couldn’t possibly be true.

    â€œAnnapurna won wire to wire and I was second,” Max glowed after his first race a week later, his eyes sparkling, words pouring out and running away with him. “Oh Raja, you’ll LOVE it. It was so much fun, so different than I expected. Shad, did you see that grey, parrot-mouthed pain in the neck, Sanchez, trying to come up my inside? Dumb idea — I shut him down quick. No one gets up my inside.”
    Even Shaddy was abuzz from his fifth place finish.
    â€œRaja’s entered in the maiden race tomorrow,” I heard Alex tell Chris.

    A crisp breeze blew in a glorious morning, all blue and green and red and white, the colors of Saratoga. Sparrows perched on the rafters, darting in and out of the shed row, watching for spilled grain as we ate breakfast. Even the little routines of the morning seemed grand and filled with significance.
    Today is race day!
    It was a week after Max and Shaddy’s race and now it was my turn.
    â€œKnock ‘em dead, buddy,” Max called as I left to go to the pre-race barn.
    â€œGood luck, my friend,” Shaddy echoed. RB smiled and nodded.
    From the pre-race barn I heard the announcer rapidly calling each race and saw the runners returning, steam whirling and wisping off their glistening bodies as they jigged and danced. Walking around my stall, I shivered in anticipation, pawing the ground until I had dug a hole through the straw in the dirt floor. Every triumphant note of the buglers’ “Call to the Post”