Free Saving Baby by Jo Anne Normile

horses go alone or with just one other horse. They are not running side by side with a field of horses while they are being clocked.
    That’s only one of many things that are brand new to a horse making his first start. When Thoroughbreds train, they go out in the morning, then generally like to take a little nap around 11:00 or 12:00. That’s why, so many times when I would come back to Baby’s stall after he finished training for the day, he’d be sleeping, stretched out and snoring adorably. While almost all horses sleep standing up some time after weaning, Baby always lay down in the straw, even at age two. I’d tiptoe away those days, not wanting to wake my sleeping child.
    Races, in contrast to training, take place only in the afternoon, or at least they did in Michigan at that time. So already a horse, very much a creature of habit, knows something is different on race day. He hasn’t been taken out in the morning for his usual training, and here he is being taken out later in the day. And when he gets out to the track, he sees not rows and rows of empty bleachers but a grandstand full of people moving around.
    Horses have not only good distance vision but also much better peripheral vision than we do, and are able to see almost in a full circle. It’s easy to tell that what they see is making them feel unnerved. Many start to prance in agitation, wondering what is going on. Voices booming over the loudspeaker only add to their anxiety. Furthermore, the horses saddle up right in the grandstand area, whereas for training they are saddled in their stall and then ridden out to the track. It’s like after years of putting on your clothes and then going out to your driveway, you now have to go out to your driveway and finish dressing there.
    I could tell that Baby was very concerned with all the commotion in the stands, that it was making him feel disoriented. “Good boy, easy boy,” I kept saying as my hand lingered on his neck, but I’m not sure how aware he was at that point that I was trying to soothe him, so distracted was he. I kept telling myself that it was not any different from a skater or dancer’s nerves before a good performance, that Baby needed to get this experience under his belt and would feel less fearful the next time around, once he saw how well he could do.
    I kept my hand on him as long as I could, until the jockey had to mount him. Then, like all the other horses, Baby was paraded back and forth in front of the grandstand with his jockey on his back, after which he was led into the starting gate, where the metal clanged shut behind him.
    It is an extremely tight fit, which, because horses are prey animals, makes them very nervous. They want to be able to bolt. But they have to wait a few minutes for all the horses to load, adding to the tension. In fact, gate accidents are not uncommon. A horse might rear, catching his leg on the steel bars.
    As soon as the last horse is loaded, the bell goes off. The deafening sound reverberates, piercing all other noise throughout the track. At the same time, the metal bars in front of the horse bang open while the jockey cries out as loud as he can to goad the animal into action. Then the horse is urged to run faster than it ever has, being whipped not only to make him go faster—animal behaviorist Desmond Morris likens it to trying to escape the sting of a biting predator—but also to keep him from bumping into other horses or from running through the gap back to the barn.
    While Baby was being exposed to one new and unsettling sensation after another, I climbed the stands. We had invited more than twenty people to sit with us—my children, their friends, all our own friends, my parents, my sister and her husband, everybody in our inner circle. My heart was in my throat; I could almost feel the adrenalin rush through me as the bell rang. Here was the horse I had helped bring into the world, now ready to