Life with Rosie

by Helen Thomas

It put our brush with death in perspective.

  The next few weeks are uneventful, at least for the two fillies enjoying the open space of the pasture after being cooped up for so long in the stable on the hill. The weekend after they have walked out of the stables, I clean it out completely, going into Roxie’s stall to finish the job. Noticing the plastic feed bin she’s knocked to the floor, I bend to pick it up before something stops me reaching for it with my hand and I kick it over instead. Curled up in a sleepy coil lies a tiger snake.

  With my heart beating loudly, I try as calmly as I possibly can to back out of the stall, grab a rake and a spade from the feed room and walk back in, hoping the deadly visitor has slithered away from sight. Instead it is sluggishly heading towards the back of the stable, and when I step back into view, it rears up to face me, ready to strike. Thankfully the horses are well away down in the paddock.

  Having seen my old farming neighbour Damien deal with an even bigger ‘tiger’ a year earlier, I know what needs to be done and do it quickly before the snake attacks first. Using the rake I pin it to the ground and chop it in half with the spade. I hate having to kill it, but a dangerous, hibernating reptile in a stall is a risk not worth taking.

  In the open air, away from the stable, Rosie’s wound continues to heal and shrink. It has become a hard scab over slightly puckered skin under her mane. She’s impatient with it, tired of the attention it requires, although she is beguilingly cooperative when being handled.

  Even when I have to drench all the mares midway through March, she accepts the liquid being syringed into her mouth without any resistance. Of course, Express more than makes up for Rosie’s acquiescence, making me work to achieve the same result. For some reason, the old mare is incensed at this intrusion, wheeling about in half circles as I try to get the plastic drencher in her mouth, all the while pushing me back to her good side, so she can see me clearly with her one good eye. She’s remarkably strong for one so aged and tosses me around her shoulder, ears back in annoyance while she tries to hold me against her body. Like a naughty foal. She’s not exactly a good role model for the two young ones. But old trouper that she is, she eventually allows the task to be completed. I marvel, again, at this mare’s character, her robust nature—and just how fitting her name is.

  They really got it right, I think, as, dreaded drench behind her, Express starts to search my pockets for sweeties.

  Little wonder she’s lasted this long; even less of a wonder that she reigns supreme in the paddock—deciding when the small herd moves from one patch of grass to another, or down to the dam for a drink. And when it’s windy or wet, she is the one who stands in the shelter shed, occasionally deigning to let Po or another mare join her.

  My friends used to laugh when I told them about these interactions, how Express rules Picayune. But now most have visited and met her for themselves, they know it’s true. Horses have hierarchies. And personality traits, it seems, can be inherited.

  The following weekend, One Love—Express’s daughter, who we still call Mouse, the name we gave her as a weanling, despite her being twice the size of her mother now—takes up the cudgel as I start to walk her and her paddock companion Swirl (aka Miss Unexpected) and the two yearlings into a different paddock, one a little further away from the older mares. As they lose sight of the herd, Mouse gets panicky and rears back on the lead rope I’m holding, tearing it from my hands.

  She then takes off at full gallop, heading back into the paddock we’ve just left, spooking Roxie and Swirl into following her.

  But Rosie, for some reason, refuses to take any part in this mutiny, and continues to trot just ahead of me, at one point stopping and turning to me as if to say ‘What’s their problem?’ Even when the trio gallops back, suddenly furious there is a fence separating us and forgetting about the gate they have just run through minutes before, Rosie just tosses her head from side to side and actually comes back to walk beside me, all the way up to the top gate. The one we usually use.

  It is as if she knows the little band will be reunited as soon as we reach the top of the paddock. Good powers of deduction, I think, opening the gate so she can trot back to her friends, who have taken off again in the direction of the older mares. But this is what can happen with horses, all the time, any time. No matter how steady they usually are, no matter how sure of their surroundings, it doesn’t take too much for them to redesign the playing field. And rewrite the rules for good measure.

  The quicker I can get the filly to Robbie Griffiths’ stable, the better. At least there, this intelligent, robust young lady will be under constant supervision, safe and hopefully sound before something goes really awry, here on the farm.

  All I have to do is go meet the man!

  Chapter 8

  Fall of the hammer

  A month later, in March, Robbie Griffiths and I get together at the Premier Yearling Sales in Melbourne, at the complex owned by the auction company Inglis at Oaklands, a large, purpose-built sales complex just up the road from Tullamarine Airport. Hopefully it is an inspired choice of venue.

  Robbie has already assured me he is happy to take on Rosie, and happier still to meet up at the sales. This means he can go about his business without breaking stride and I can watch him work in an environment that will no doubt reveal much about his approach to horses. It also means I can see some of the yearlings he hopes to add to his roster for his Class of 2009, and really take into account what the differences are between them and my youngster.

  Casually dressed in board shorts and shirt, and deceptively laidback, Robbie is one of those instantly likeable people; at once unassuming and easy to talk with, he is also extraordinarily alert and perceptive.

  His horses regularly perform well at both metropolitan and provincial tracks and one of his most popular gallopers was the durable Dandy Kid, famous for being the winning-est horse at Moonee Valley in August 2006, with no less than 15 victories at that particular track.

  All this Cranbourne-based trainer needs is one truly outstanding galloper to put his stable at racing’s centre stage. That’s why he is here. Like all top trainers, Robbie Griffiths is always on the look out for that one good horse to change not just his life, but those of everyone working and racing with him.

  Every year, he needs to replenish his stable stock, moving on the horses who haven’t made the grade for the up-and-comers who might. Naturally, he’s not alone in this pursuit, this constant search for pirate treasure. On opening day, this sale is overflowing with people who share his dream, and it takes me a few minutes to find him through the hustle and bustle of the throngs of people moving in and out of the main auditorium.

  Even when a horse is under the auctioneer’s hammer in the raised, circular sale-ring indoors, there are rows and rows and rows of other youngsters to look at in stables outside, and thousands of horse lovers seem to be doing just that on this muggy Sunday morning—flipping through their sales catalogues as they wander adjacent aisles and walkways. Less than an hour’s drive from Melbourne’s CBD, Oaklands feels like a small country town built for horses.

  Robbie and I have agreed to meet up between Barns C and D, and it takes me two trips around the stables to find him. Eventually I spot him inspecting a chestnut filly with a long-time friend and client.

  Not wanting to get in the way I slip in behind him to watch. And what becomes quickly apparent is that Robbie Griffiths has a gift. He can look at a young horse and see the future. He can’t predict how many races they will win, or even how much money they might earn, but he can describe the kind of animal they will become. He has a knack for mapping the shape they will take, the height they will grow into, just by seeing them in their baby forms.

  He’s a pretty good reader of people too, and misses nothing in the nuance of conversation. In a business renowned for its lack of candour, he is an expert, articulate horseman more than willing to explain what he wants to achieve, and how he hopes to do it. What he doesn’t seem good at is the exaggeratio
n and double talk that comes as naturally as breathing to many in this world of the punt.

  Once introductions are over, we spend the next couple of hours wandering through the complex, mainly looking at horses from the various drafts of three main studs: Yallambee, Three Bridges and Little Plains.

  This involves a great deal of walking and talking, waiting and watching as these young horses are haltered and brushed to look their best for Robbie’s inspection. He makes it clear that he is particularly impressed with three of the yearlings being presented at the sales by Yallambee this year; intriguingly, they all share the same sire, a former elite sprinter called God’s Own. He is being represented at this sale by sons and daughters from his first year at stud. Many good judges advise buyers to steer clear of any stallion making his sale ring debut, no matter how good a galloper they were on the racetrack. This is for the simple reason they could turn out to be complete flops at stud. Despite this, Robbie is clearly taken with God’s Own’s progeny. And I’m looking forward to finding out why.

  Within half an hour of us shaking hands, he has inspected four or five more horses and we have started what is going to be a continuous conversation over the next couple of days, about what to look for in a young horse. Or at least, what this trainer looks for, after he has pored over their pedigree and family histories in the sales catalogue.

  Of course, not all genetic theories work out according to plan. And the horses outlined in these pages—their individual family trees spread out over a page—don’t always match the youngsters who step out of the stall for sale. A catalogue will reveal the most important members of a yearling’s clan in bold black type, and the racing and breeding records of their parents. Yet, unless you can see what Robbie sees, physically, in these babies, these inspections can prove frustrating. Even so, this canny trainer is certainly aware it’s more art than science.

  ‘There’s a few too many million dollar babies running round the country tracks,’ Robbie notes. ‘This isn’t exactly foolproof.’ He has a dry sense of humour and a quick, infectious grin, although he is always polite and almost reserved on this round of inspections. Unlike some of the major players in this arena, there’s nothing loud or flashy about the way he goes about things. He seems intensely focused on the job at hand, more than willing to put in the time required to find the right kind of horse and very clear about what he is searching for.

  ‘A well-balanced athlete that doesn’t waste any time moving, a straight-forward horse,’ he says. ‘I’ll probably see 400 to 500 of the whole 700 in the catalogue. (But) I’m mainly interested in fillies, because I’ve a couple of clients who want them. And top colts will probably be more expensive, to be honest.’

  Robbie tells each of the stud managers exactly which horses he wants to see out of their stalls, and within minutes they have been re-haltered, brushed and combed, led out of the stable and brought to stand before us in a walkway. He wastes no time on pleasantries, keenly aware he is just one in a long line of potential purchasers who have done exactly the same thing, perhaps just minutes before.

  For my benefit, he explains that he’s especially focused on ‘rein, barrel and rump … the mechanics we can see. The fastest things in the world have good length about them—look at Tiger Woods and Greg Norman, or a cheetah—so that’s what you’re looking for in these guys. The majority of the better horses have it.’

  I try to picture Rosie as he describes his measuring stick. She has a good strong bottom, but she may not have the body length yet—the size, or rein that Robbie’s so keen on. She would certainly be dwarfed by some of the youngsters emerging from their stalls.

  After he watches a horse walk up and down in front of him a couple of times, on and off the paved walkway and grass, the trainer feels under their chin, looks more closely at their head and then feels their knees to see how ‘open’ they are: ‘most haven’t grown into them yet.’ Intriguingly, he says he doesn’t worry so much about minor leg faults if the top of the horse is OK.

  He has been hard at work at this for a solid three days before my arrival, yet still remains keen.

  At one point, after buying Lot 11 for $50,000—a lovely chestnut filly by former sprinting star and now top stallion Flying Spur—Robbie mentions he has had a bad headache all morning. Wincing, he pulls a couple of aspirin out of his pocket and washes them down with soft drink.

  The yearling sales schedule is especially punishing for trainers. Like Robbie, most work a full session of track work early in the morning before travelling to the sale yard and once they arrive, no down time is possible until they have seen all the horses they have picked out to look at, the ones they believe have potential, the yearlings that might fit their particular set of criteria.

  His headache dealt with, Robbie is back in the thick of things, although he’s the under-bidder on a colt by young sire Elvstroem, who was the son of a mare he trained. He dropped out of that race at $65,000, but within 5 minutes admits he should have kept going, because he was ‘a super colt’ and he knows the family so well, having already trained one of the sons from the mother, or dam.

  By early afternoon, two more of Robbie’s stable clients have joined our little group and both husband and wife seem determined to buy at least one of the yearlings by new stallion God’s Own that Robbie has looked at from Yallambee Stud’s draft.

  The woman likes Lot 108, a filly out of a mare called Startle, while her partner is leaning to Lot 183, from Zippast. Robbie prefers the third candidate from this group, who won’t be in the ring until tomorrow. Nevertheless, he buys both fillies who enter the ring today, for $85,000 and $87,500 respectively.

  ‘I might go home with a barn full of them,’ he laughs, somewhat ruefully.

  I wonder which of the fillies the couple will choose to pay for privately—and can see even Robbie’s starting to think about convincing other stable clients to believe in and buy into the offspring of God’s Own, this young sire he’s so keen on.

  While the amounts he is spending aren’t huge in this world of equine dreams and high finance (and you actually become desensitised, hearing so much money being bid, hour after hour), back in the real world it is.

  A 10 per cent share in an $85,000 yearling will probably end up costing about $10,000. God’s own, indeed.

  Again, I stand back and try to make a comparison between the two fillies he’s just bought and Rosie. After all, they will all be in Robbie’s bunch of babies, his Class of 2009. Both look much more forward in condition than my filly, quite tall and muscular and certainly much shinier in their coats—a bit more sophisticated than the country girl back home. Still, for a yearling who hasn’t been fed up as much and worked properly to hone her young muscles, I’m relieved to see she’s not as far off the mark as I feared. Happily, the scope for hope is pretty equal!

  By the end of this opening day at the sales, the Sunday crowd has thinned considerably after being packed at the start, standing room only for the first hour or so, and two deep at that. There is much talk around the ground about the sale’s low clearance rate so far—at this early stage, the pass-in rate is 30 per cent, which is just as worrying for vendors as low prices—and there is genuine disappointment that some very nice horses aren’t getting sold in the ring, despite being looked at many times and their X-rays getting the all clear.

  Some vendors are upset that they are bidding against themselves because the interest is so poor. One stud manager, there with only a small number of yearlings to sell, is amazed that one of the best in her draft didn’t attract even one real bid.

  As the afternoon winds down, I catch up with my good friend Jenny from Timor Creek Farm, who has travelled down to oversee the sale of a filly she has bred and raised. By Elvstroem, she should bring a decent price, all being fair in the ring, but the worry is that she could fall through the cracks tomorrow morning, courtesy of the global financial crisis. If the global economy is in dire straits, or buyers are trying to navigate their finances away from them, young racehor
ses can suddenly look like financially unreasonable luxury items rather than sound, sensible investments.

  Jenny is trying to tough it out, or at least put on a brave face, but she is already fretting. And I don’t blame her.

  Both she and the handler who will be walking the yearling into the ring are dismissive of the Magic Millions sale just a month earlier on the Gold Coast, especially in terms of its three top sellers. The first yearling sale in Australia every year, the auction is seen as a benchmark for price trends and demand for certain stallions—especially the freshman sires with their first progeny up for public scrutiny.

  ‘No horse really went for more than a million,’ the handler says. ‘And everyone in the business knows that.’

  She was expecting prices at this sale to fall too, but not quite so dramatically. ‘I thought the average (here) might be $80,000, but at this rate we’ll be lucky if it’s $50,000.’

  She is spot on. The end-of-day press release puts it around the $57,000 mark. If anything, it is a genuine buyer’s market. Good for those keen on buying a yearling at this sale, in other words; not so good for many intent on selling this year.

  I arrive mid morning on the second day of the sale, after test-driving a couple of used cars in my so far unsuccessful hunt to replace the one that burst into flames a month ago.

  Miraculously, the first one I drive proves to be pretty good, so I sign a mountain of papers to buy it, and head back out to Oaklands—still in my father’s old Commodore for the time being. Getting caught in the city’s notorious cross-town traffic, I ring ahead to see how things are going in the lead-up to Jenny’s yearling stepping into the ring, only to discover she has already been and gone and the breeder is just about to jump on a plane back to Sydney. But overall her news is good: the youngster fetched $62,500, well ahead of the still falling sale average.

  When I finally make it to the sale, I find my newly cashed-up friend about to tuck into lunch in a big corporate marquee, one of several hospitality rooms set up for buyers and sellers alike. It is pleasant and much cooler than sitting outside in the sun, and there’s a big screen up on the wall showing all the action in the ring, which everyone crowds around to watch a relative of Makybe Diva being sold for $365,000. Obviously, this is one of the hottest equine families in Australasia.