Page 18 - The Game January 2006

18 The Game, January 2006 Your Thoroughbred Racing Community Newspaper
Horse RacesVerses Elections
"WHATEVER" is going on at True Colours Farm???
By Peter Gross
So we’re going to the polls this month to try and elect a better government than we used to have. Big deal. Ever notice how many times someone talks about an election and says,
“It’s a horse race,” or
“The two leaders are neck and neck,” or
“It’s a veritable dead heat.”
In the thousands of times that I’ve been to the track, not
once during the running of a race has anyone nearby turned to me and said,
“That looks like an election out there.”
When it comes to democracy in action, give me a horse race anytime. In fact, let’s compare an equine competition to a human electoral race:
In an election, the candidates are constantly telling you how special they are and why you should vote for them. Personally, I’ve never had the experience of a non-winner of two knocking on my door to persuade me to bet on him.
At the track, everything a horse has done, good or bad, is printed clearly in the Racing Form. In an election, spin doctors make sure you only know the lovely things their candidates have done. If the aspiring Member of Parliament needed three shots at grade four or if his influential father was able to have a teenage DUI expunged, trust me, that’s not in the printed brochure.
In a horse race you can bet win, place, show, exactor, triactor, daily double, pick three, win four or superfecta. Four guys running for Prime Minister? How can you bet on that?
During this Federal campaign, each of the candidates will fire caustic shots at their opponents; accusations and insults zinging through the air on an hourly basis. Horses keep their mouths shut and let their running skills speak for themselves.
Our elected bodies invariably help themselves to the tax-payers‚ money, spending our cash on exotic trips, expensive hotels and sumptuous meals. Even the best, stakes-winning horses sleep in a barn and eat hay.
The candidates make elaborate promises in order to seek our affection and our vote. The only promise a horse makes is when he flashes a bullet workout in the morning.
In this election, we don’t even get to vote directly for our Prime Ministerial choice. If we like Paul Martin (just being hypothetical here) we’re forced to vote for our riding’s Liberal candidate, even if he’s a stiff. At the track the horse you bet is the horse you get; it’s completely democratic - the one with the most money is always the favourite
And when this Federal Election is over, if we’re not happy with the outcome, it will be at least two years before we can do anything about it.
Didn’t like the way the last horse race turned out? No sweat - the next one’s coming up in twenty minutes!
In the rolling hills of Puslinch, there are some funny going ons with the True Colours Farm breeding stock .
Not only do they have the worlds first buckskin & white Thoroughbred in residence with their fabulous 2004 filly - Faux Finish (by Guaranteed Gold out of Puchi Trap), they also produced the worlds second buckskin & white Thoroughbred in her 2005 full sister - Chai Latte!
Now - if that wasn't enough, in the last week of October, another strange looking Thoroughbred was added to the breeding stock, this time all the way from Auckland, New Zealand, in the form of "Whatever" - a splash white Thoroughbred filly by the very successful Australian race horse - Go Corp out of Hey What The. Go Corp had 74 career starts, finishing first 11 times, second 10 times and third 7 times, earning $117,050. His wins came from 1200 to 2000 metres, proving the versatility of this wonderful stallion and we have equally high hopes for his unusual daughter - Whatever.
Whatever is another rarity in the Thoroughbred breed. A splash white is distinguished by the unusual white markings, the ice blue eyes usually combined with apron face markings, the bottom white half of the tail, and usually body white as well along the belly. Think of picking up the horse and dunking the bottom half of it in a vat of white paint and you can pretty well envision what a splash white will look like.
What makes Whatever very unusual as well is the fact that she is deaf - another common occurrence among splash whites and one that interestingly enough, is a benefit as much as it can sometimes be viewed as a detriment.
Splash Whites are known for their very quiet demeanor and their calm acceptance of the world around them. With no external stimuli to set them off, while the noise of the crowd and the call to post can frazzle the nerves of the other horses in the race, to a splash white, all is calm and all is quiet in their world. No cotton balls are required in their ears to muffle the external noises and their other senses are usually more finally tuned to compensate for their lack of hearing so they should sense and FEEL the gate opening a split second before the bell goes off thus getting that minute advantage over their counterparts in each race!
Famous cutting and reining horses, and English and Western show horses of the splash pattern have been deaf and not only have they been competitive, many have been Champions and excelled above all others in their disciplines.
A very well known deaf splash white Paint named Snoopy was also the star of the Roanoke, VA police mounted unit where he was used in volatile and loud crowd situations where he
Faux Finish, the world’s first buckskin and white thoroughbred will be making her 2-year-old debut at Woodbine in 2006
A splash white thoroughbred, named, Whatever, arrives at True Colours Farm from New Zealand in October
consistently maintained his calm demeanor despite the tension all around him, undoubtedly due to his deafness.
Whatever will present an interesting and rewarding challenge to break and train and talks are already underway to select a trainer for her when she makes her racing debut at Woodbine along with Faux Finish. Her owner - Donna Hiscock - has started training her with body language and hand signals and is extremely gratified and excited about the early results. Horses in the wild rely 100% on body language to convey all emotions and commands to each other and working with Whatever will follow those same principles and rules.
Whatever, being a Southern Hemisphere foal, was born in October 2003, so she will have some ground to make up compared with her Northern Hemisphere counterparts who are all born in the first half of the year.
Whatever and Faux Finish will offer racing some visual excitement at Woodbine in the years to come, unlike anything that has ever been seen at any racetrack in the world before. They will both - literally - be the "World's First".
And with the full brother or sister to Faux Finish due in May 2006 and another interesting coloured possibility in the Guaranteed Gold / RFF
Golden Angel mating for May 2006 as well (possibly the world's first cremello Thoroughbred race horse!) you can be sure that the next few years will certain- ly be very colour- ful around the backstretch and on the track at Woodbine!
Cimarron
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