Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

CHAPTER 12

Kneeling in the birthing stall, Dr. Penny Hinson examined the newborn foal, male, who had struggled to his feet. At that moment, he looked as though he was on ice, with each leg in danger of sliding in the opposite direction. Didn’t take the little guy too long before he pulled himself together.

Tootie Harris traveled with Penny on Mondays as the vet realized Tootie truly loved horses as did she. Hard to be a good equine vet without a bond of strong emotion for the animal. Sister gave her Mondays and Wednesdays off, sometimes Sunday and Monday, depending on what needed to be done in the stables or kennels.

Tootie hoped to become an equine vet and Penny, a good one, happily took the young woman along as a sidekick. Both stood in the stall while Phil Chetwynd stood outside.

“He’s fine.” Covered in blood, water, and manure, Penny stripped off her long, thin rubber gloves. Tootie wore them as well, along with heavy overalls, for the day was frosty. Penny tried to keep from introducing anything potentially infectious to a newborn. As it was, the little fellow would be breathing in air for the first time, along with some of the dust. Broad Creek Stables had immaculate birthing stalls, a ten-stall barn dedicated to this. Clean as it was, tiny particles of dust floated through the air.

With the newborn still wet from his journey, Penny looked him over carefully. “Phil, I think when he dries he’ll be a blood bay, a true blood bay. Been a long time since I’ve seen one.”

“You don’t see them often,” Phil agreed. “When sunlight hits that coat it’s something, isn’t it?”

Picking up gear, tossing gloves into a bucket, both women left the stall.

“How many mares are in foal this year?” asked Penny. “You had four foals last month and now this fellow. You’re on your way to a full house.”

“We’re back up again, Penny,” Phil said proudly. “When we last spoke I’d bred seven of my mares, three to my own stallions and four out of state. Sales prices are better, as you know, but the real issue is consumer confidence. If people think the economy is improving, they make it improve, know what I mean? Anyway, clients sent me five mares. Ignatius and I rejuvenated the old barn back on the northeastern quadrant. So far, it’s been a good year, no problem births, no crooked legs either.” He smiled, then glanced back in the stall. “That fellow is by Curlin. We paid good money for that stud fee. My fingers are crossed. ’Course the mare is topnotch, just topnotch. She raced sound for five years. Sound.”

Penny remembered horses better than people. “I remember seeing her at Colonial Downs and then you took her up to Maryland for some races.”

“Just a wonderful horse.” Phil beamed.

They walked outside the foaling barn, a steeply pitched roof with a cupola, and a large copper weathervane of a mother and foal.

Broad Creek, like Walnut Hall and so many of the old glory establishments—whether they were in Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Virginia, or South Carolina—had grown over the years. The various barns at Broad Creek with their building dates over the main doors, announced the years when the money was good. Anyone in the horse business or any business knows change is the one constant. Up, down, flat years, everything will happen to you sooner or later, but the difference with the equine world was the drama. Maybe this was because animals were concerned, creating a lot of emotion, or because the people who get into the business are gamblers by nature. Someone who wants a placid life doesn’t breed Thoroughbreds. The lows can bring a man or woman to their knees. The highs make one feel as though they are soaring in Apollo’s chariot.

From the 1870s to today, the Chetwynds had experienced it all.

Tootie noticed that the gorgeous Victorian main barn had the date in gold: 1877. The numbers had the flourish of those years. She looked around, seeing that two of the smaller barns also had that date. She made a note to check dates when she and Penny drove out, passing other structures.

Phil ushered the two women into his office. “Can I get you all anything to drink? A sandwich?”

“No thanks,” Penny responded.

“No, thank you, Mr. Chetwynd.” Tootie sat where he beckoned her to do so.

Phil took papers off his desk, along with some high-gloss announcements concerning stallions. He sat in a wing chair opposite the ladies, who perched on an old leather sofa. Decorated in 1877, the office maintained the ambience of that time. The two wing chairs and sofa had been re-covered once in excellent cowhide back in the 1930s. The walls, jammed with photographs of horses—horses even before Navigator—bore proof to the success of Broad Creek Stables. One wall held silver trophies and even silver Christmas balls, inscribed with horse names. The silver glistened; someone polished it regularly.

Tootie thought the task must take an entire day, which it did.

Phil rummaged through papers from The Jockey Club, handed a few to Penny. “Mercer and I go over this all the time. If you look at the pedigrees of our standing stallions—and I’ve run them back to the 1870s—you’ll see, especially in those early years, many of the same horse names, which makes sense. There were not as many standing stallions in the country. At least I don’t think there were. Hell, there weren’t as many people.”

Penny read the sire line on each certificate, the dam line going back three generations. She recognized names like Teddy, an early one, Rock Sand from 1900, Spearmint from Great Britain, 1903. Moving forward, she read the great Count Fleet’s name, coming much closer to now. Lots of Forty Niner blood in 1987, Danzig, 1977, Lyphard, 1969 and, of course, Northern Dancer, 1961 and Mr. Prospector, 1970. She handed the papers to Tootie, who—while not as well versed in bloodlines—did recognize the names Northern Dancer and Mr. Prospector.

“Great ones,” the vet said. “The mares are great, too. I always loved Toll Booth, just loved her name.”

Toll Booth was a mare who was Broodmare of the Year in Canada in 1989. The Canadians breed some great horses, but then most all of the former British colonies do, whether you look at South Africa, Australia, you name it.

He laughed. “Penny, me too. I’m supposed to be a hard-nosed horseman, but I can be won over by a great name or a lovely soft eye. But, hey, I know you have calls to make. I’m curious. What I know about DNA is what the public knows: the double helix and all that. But is it really possible to determine ancestry from DNA? Equine ancestry?”

“That depends on what you really want to know.” Penny folded her hands together. “If you’re talking purely about genetics, yes. Mitochondrial DNA called mtDNA is inherited only through the female line and it doesn’t change from mother to daughter unless there’s a rare mutation. So it’s reliable. You can trace the Y chromosome too but not nearly as far back as mtDNA; mtDNA is pretty amazing.”

“What’s the disclaimer?”

“Records are notoriously unreliable. The General Stud Book was published first in 1791, in England. We imported our blooded horses from England so it matters to us, as well. Anyway, sometimes people would change the name of a horse when it changed owners. Hence the unreliability.”

“It is a mess.” Phil nodded. “But even with that, if I know the mother of a horse, say Rock Sand, whose mother was Roquebrune, an English mare born 1893, then we would know, right?”

“Right,” Penny said. “You’re probably aware of the study at the MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, which gets us closer to the true origins of the Thoroughbred.”

“That’s why I sat you down here and am taking up your time,” Phil explained. “The conclusion of the study was that Thoroughbred foundation mares were not all Arabs, or what were called Turks in the eighteenth century. Turns out they were cosmopolitan in origin, with British and Irish native horses playing a big part in those foundation mares’ bloodlines. As more work is done, and it certainly will be, could this throw our bloodlines into question?” He slouched back in his chair.

Penny smiled. “Not a chance, Phil. Don’t worry. This is about foundation mares. Once we move into the middle of the eighteenth century, going forward into the late eighteenth century, blood representation is pretty solid. We have track records, literally, for those horses, as well as the records of their get.”

Phil smiled in relief. “Well, I am a little too sensitive maybe, but Penny, people are so crazy now. I had a bad dream of someone suing Broad Creek Stables over a bloodline misrepresentation.”

“Hopefully, you’ve had better clients than that over the years,” Penny’s mellow voice soothed.

“For the most part, but every now and then. I remember Dad found out a fellow he did business with was a crook. That’s not exactly the same. But people are so quick to find wrongdoing or imagine it, and as more and more new people come to us—and of course, I hope they will—I feel Broad Creek has to protect itself more. Our country is run and ruined by lawyers, I swear it.”

Penny burst out laughing. “I’ll tell that to my husband.”

Phil blushed slightly. “I didn’t mean Julian, of course.”

“Phil, put your mind at rest.” Penny stood up. “You get more beautiful babies on the ground like the one I just delivered and you won’t have a worry in the world.”

Back in the big vet truck with Tootie, Penny headed toward Greg Schmidt’s house out in Keswick. A highly respected equine veterinarian, sought after on many levels, he’d sold his business, thinking he would retire. Well, in a sense he had, but practitioners like Penny often asked for his advice.

“Dr. Hinson, that foal’s eyes wandered,” said Tootie.

“No, he doesn’t have strabismus, which is a deviation of the eyeball’s positioning. People can have it, too. But often a newborn’s eyes aren’t settled yet, so there’s asymmetrical movement. This usually corrects itself in a few hours or at the most a few days.” She slowed as a car pulled out in front of her without looking. “Idiot! Sorry.”

“Does make you wonder.” Tootie smiled.

“Nobody pays attention anymore. How’s that for a sweeping statement? Oh, yes, while I’m thinking about it, foals are like human babies. The eye detects the information but the brain doesn’t know what it is. A foal has to learn to understand what it’s seeing, just as a baby does. It’s a big world out there.” Penny laughed.

“The thing that amazes me is how a horse remembers everything,” said the younger woman, gazing at the beautiful pastures going by. “Once they see something, say an overturned bucket in front of the barn, they’re going to look for that overturned bucket.”

“Memory is fascinating. I was reading somewhere that memory evolves, at least for humans. It isn’t set in stone. I’m willing to bet equine memory is more complicated than we now know.”

Tootie perceptively remarked, “People remember what they want to remember.”

“And forget what they want to forget.” She turned left onto Dr. Schmidt’s road. “And then something happens or they hear a song and boom, so much for forgetting.”