Friends, Relatives, Lend Me Your Ears

Track conditions can make a horse look bad; so can the wrong post position; so can the wrong kind of ride. Dr. Dubious ran three times at Cleveland , over a fast track, a slow track and a heavy track; from inside, middle and outside post positions; under different jockeys trying all the different skills they knew to get a horse moving. He was three times seventh.

Common sense told us that he was a bum, a dog, a beetle, a pig. But he kept looking at us with those resolute eyes. The hope that springs eternal in the horseman's breast told us that he was simply unable to get himself un-tracked in the deep cushion at ThistleDown. He just needed a hard race track like the one at Tropical Park.

Tropical is 1,250 miles from ThistleDown, and a race horse cannot travel parcel post. Oats, hay and straw, all of which Dr. Dubious requires in large quantities, cost more in Florida than anywhere else in the world. Anybody who ships a horse to Tropical had better win himself some purses or be prepared to hock the family jewels.

The Doc looked good in his morning workouts at Tropical; that fast track really did seem to help him a lot. We got him into a six-furlong race against the cheapest 2-year-olds on the grounds and told the jockey to ride him with confidence. He ran eighth. The only encouraging thing was that he made up 10 lengths on the winner down the stretch. Though I had lost my customary bets, though I had let all my friends and followers down again, I was elated. True to his breeding, the Doc had proved himself a distance horse.

On December 21 we finally sent him out against the cheapest 2-year-olds at Tropical who could even dare hope to stagger as far as a mile and 70 yards. No race was ever to be a softer touch. "What I hate about this," I told the trainer, "is that even after the Doc wins it we won't know whether he's any good or not." I sent a nice bet to the track and sat back to wait the happy news. The Doc could have made a lot of us rich that afternoon.

He was a little closer than usual during the first quarter of the race, promptly dropped back, engaged in a stirring battle for last place and finally finished 11th out of 12, beaten 19 lengths.

Beaten, nothing. He was disgraced. The jockey, dismounting in disgust, said flatly, "This horse isn't worth a quarter." When the remark was transmitted to me by long distance phone, I said amen. Even the most optimistic owner has to quit dreaming eventually. The Doc didn't have any early foot—and he couldn't go a distance, either.

I decided to give him one more chance, and one only. In the meantime I made arrangements with another writer I know, a young woman who has a farm and some riding horses down in Maryland , to give him a home. She said she was willing to pay the Doc's van bill back from Florida and keep him in oats the rest of his life in the hopes that he might be taught to ride to the hounds. She said this, frankly, only after numerous Martinis, and later I felt guilty for having taken her in. Any hound in Maryland , in my opinion, as of that moment, could have outrun the Doc by 20 lengths to the mile.

In the elevator at the office building I met one of my faithful betting followers. "How's everything with the horses?" he asked, and I admitted that things were terrible. The elevator boy misunderstood and asked me in conspiratorial tones, once we were alone on an upper floor, "So you own a horse named Dr. Dubious? Shall I bet him?" I said loud and clear, "Heaven forbid."

I got home that evening and found a card showing that I had a gift subscription for 1960 to that fine breeding publication called The Thoroughbred Record. The donor was, of course, my wife, but she had listed the gift, in some long-gone day of frivolous hope, in the name of Dr. Dubious. I said, "If my young lady friend changes her mind when those Martinis wear off and welshes on her promise to give the Doc a home, this will turn out to be the first Christmas present I ever got from somebody I shot."