![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j_cheneyI finished reading Merryland by Josh Pons this morning. This is a two-year diary of a horse racing farm in Maryland. I enjoy diaries in that they give unexpected insights that statistics often do not, but I read very few of them.
This is easy to read, but the language is often arcane. There are references to various things that only horse people would know, which are not explained for the laymen. I even had to look up the word pinhooker, which might be compared in real estate terms to a 'flipper', I think. I was quite worried that it meant 'renderer' until I found it on-line.
Anyhoo, what did I get out of this book?
1) 50% of your racing stable is injured at all times.
2) 1.5 out of every 1000 starts dies. Yep, dies. Can you imagine if 2 out of every 1000 NFL players starting a game dropped dead in the endzone? Yeesh!
The stables in question lose a few horses during the 2 year span of the diary. That's the painful part.
3) Starting a horse racing at 2 is pretty scary, as their bones might not be fully developed (at least, that's what I understood). Also, 2-year-old is an inflexible term, as a race horse turns a year older on Jan 1, not their actual birthdate. If you have a really late foal (say born December 20), when January 1 rolls about, it's lumped in as a yearling, just like the ones born back in March. Now I understand why they start breeding in February.
4) Fragile, delicate, anything will chip their bones, cut their hide, trigger colic. The number of horses that die OFF the track is probably like the number of men that died from sickness in the Civil War.
5) I applaud the people who run various racehorse rescue agencies, trying to place retired racehorses with adoptive homes (rather than sending them to the renderers.) (This is not an issue with this particular farm, I think, who had one horse that appears to be 35+).
All in all, a good book, if you're prepared not to understand what he's talking at times. There is no plot, no resolution. Raising race horses is gambling, in many ways.
This is easy to read, but the language is often arcane. There are references to various things that only horse people would know, which are not explained for the laymen. I even had to look up the word pinhooker, which might be compared in real estate terms to a 'flipper', I think. I was quite worried that it meant 'renderer' until I found it on-line.
Anyhoo, what did I get out of this book?
1) 50% of your racing stable is injured at all times.
2) 1.5 out of every 1000 starts dies. Yep, dies. Can you imagine if 2 out of every 1000 NFL players starting a game dropped dead in the endzone? Yeesh!
The stables in question lose a few horses during the 2 year span of the diary. That's the painful part.
3) Starting a horse racing at 2 is pretty scary, as their bones might not be fully developed (at least, that's what I understood). Also, 2-year-old is an inflexible term, as a race horse turns a year older on Jan 1, not their actual birthdate. If you have a really late foal (say born December 20), when January 1 rolls about, it's lumped in as a yearling, just like the ones born back in March. Now I understand why they start breeding in February.
4) Fragile, delicate, anything will chip their bones, cut their hide, trigger colic. The number of horses that die OFF the track is probably like the number of men that died from sickness in the Civil War.
5) I applaud the people who run various racehorse rescue agencies, trying to place retired racehorses with adoptive homes (rather than sending them to the renderers.) (This is not an issue with this particular farm, I think, who had one horse that appears to be 35+).
All in all, a good book, if you're prepared not to understand what he's talking at times. There is no plot, no resolution. Raising race horses is gambling, in many ways.
