Free Saving Baby by Jo Anne Normile Page B

notwithstanding, I had already become wary of him because I found out that he had been lying to me. Mike was supposed to ride Baby every day for training; 20 percent of the more than $1,000 I was paying Coburn each month once Baby arrived at the track was supposed to go to pay Mike to take him for a run, and on days I didn’t see him go, Coburn assured me that he had been out before I arrived. But Mike gave some clues inadvertently that that wasn’t always so. Now Coburn was refusing to race Baby when his chances for winning were so high. That was the tipping point.
    After much back and forth, without letting on that I was aware of his subterfuge, I took matters into my own hands. Across the aisle from Baby’s stall was Julian Belker, an older trainer in his sixties who had never asked me outright if he could train Baby instead of Coburn. I liked that. Others had made it clear that they were eager for the money to train such a promising horse. I liked the way Belker teased me, too. “I don’t know about you, Girl,” he’d say. “Don’t you have anything else to do? You’re here all the time.”
    â€œI’ve decided to fire Lyle Coburn,” I said. “Would you take over?”
    â€œSure, I’d be glad to,” Belker answered.
    With the race two days away, the Daily Racing Form predicted that Baby would come in second.
    Once again, however, he came in dead last, this time by 19¾ lengths. In the final drive for the finish line, he bolted straight for the bleachers rather than rounding the turn.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked Belker when I reached Baby’s stall afterward.
    â€œLet me show you something,” Belker said, and he took his fingers to make an OK sign with his thumb and middle finger, getting ready to flick them against something. He then bent down on one knee and flicked the front of Baby’s left ankle, and Baby pulled his leg right up. He did the same thing to the other leg, and Baby didn’t move.
    The leg that Baby had moved out of the way had a green osselet. He was in too much pain to put pressure on the ankle when turning curves, so he tried to run straight.
    It was time to take Baby home. There were only three more weeks left to racing season, and his ankle wasn’t going to heal in that time.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
    I figured that Coburn knew about the osselet but didn’t tell me because then I would have taken Baby home for the entire month of November, and he would have lost more than $1,000 in training fees. I was angry, but I felt much more guilty than angry. If I had insisted the previous year that Baby come home for the winter despite Coburn’s talk about his stubborn streak, he would have had a chance to rest up, be a horse again, and not be prone to the osselet. I had known better than to let him stay at Coburn’s training facility and not have any break whatsoever before he went to the track, and my remorse was only compounded by the fact that I now knew two-year-olds had no business racing in the first place because of the unique dangers to their legs, not to mention their minds. If I had only just let him come home and finish growing up first.
    But Baby was finally home now after more than a year away, and what a terrific homecoming it was. As soon as his trailer pulled up to the house, Beauty, Pumpkin, Pat, and Scarlett started whinnying, and Baby recognized their calls and whinnied right back in his honking fashion. His mother and sister ran around joyously, and he was so excited that he was pulling to get down to the barn and smell everyone. The five of them together formed a herd, and now they were reunited, like a family unit. Baby and Scarlett, in particular, were wonderful to watch together. They were still young and mischievous enough to play halter tag, a game in which they pulled at each other’s halters teasingly with their teeth in a tug of war that brought them off their front legs,