Fifty Years in the Doghouse

by Lloyd Alexander

  One possible suspect, if only on the basis of his name, was a jockey called "The Ripper." Ryan hustled out to the track. With the help of the Chief Steward, he arranged to have a few words with the Ripper in the track's private conference room. "Listen, Ripper," Ryan began frankly, "I'm going to tell you something for your own good. Stop cutting those horses. If you don't ..." Despite the nickname (Ryan finally learned that a newspaper columnist had pinned it on the jockey in a moment of inspiration), the Ripper was an easygoing, goodhearted fellow. "I never cut a horse in my life," he protested. "Who needs it? If I win, I win. If I don't make it, cutting the horse doesn't do me no good."

  "I don't know," Ryan said. "I've seen you out there waving that crop around. You weren't swatting flies."

  "Oh, that," said the Ripper. "That's for the grandstand. I don't even touch the horse with the bat."

  "Maybe so," Ryan told him. "All I have to say is this. If your horse comes in with so much as one welt on him, you'll wish you'd gone into another line of work, like crocheting doilies." For the following week, Ryan went to the track every day. He examined the horses in the paddocks, at the starting gate, and after each race. Neither the Ripper's horse nor any other animal had a mark. "See?" called the Ripper. "What do I tell you? A skin like a baby!" Ryan scratched his head. The complaints had been pouring in. Yet the horses still showed no sign of being cut. At the starting gate during the last race, Ryan decided he might as well drop the whole business. If a jockey was beating a horse, he had discovered a new way of doing it.

  The announcer was calling the positions of the horses in the back stretch, but Ryan saw no use in waiting for the end of the race. He began to turn away, then stopped. He suddenly knew who was whipping the horses. Ryan found the Chief Steward. "I got my man," Ryan said. "Bring him in here."

  "The Ripper?" asked the Chief Steward. "Not the Ripper. Let me talk to your radio announcer." The Steward called the announcer into the conference room. Ryan stood up. "Listen," he said, "I want you to repeat word for word what you were yelling into that microphone a few minutes ago." The puzzled announcer thought for a moment. "Let's see full House was on the rail."

  "No, no," Ryan interrupted, "after that. You were hollering your head off up there. 'Now they're whipping those horses into the stretch! They're slashing their way home!"

  "Oh, sure," the announcer smiled. "Pretty dramatic scene."

  "You know damned well," Ryan said, "not one of those jocks laid a crop on those horses."

  "Well, I guess they didn't," the announcer admitted. "I just figured it sounded good on the air. You know, give the two-dollar bettors a thrill."

  "Next time you give them a thrill like that," said the Chief Steward, "don't bother to come around for your last pay. I'll mail it to you." Ryan looked up the Ripper and apologized. At the Society, the complaints stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Although some radio listeners might have wondered what had turned the slashing, whipping jockeys into such humane horsemen overnight. Aside from overenthusiastic sports commentators, the jockeys lead a fairly tight professional life.

  The Jockey Club polices its own members, tries its own cases, and the penalties handed down are often more severe than any punishment the Racing Commission itself might apply. Jockeys don't have pockets in their racing silks, and while this may only be a matter of tailoring convenience, it's also a good symbol for an amazing absence of bribery. The fixed race has just about gone out with bathtub gin. Tracks are loaded with movie cameras, microphones, closed-circuit Television and Pinkerton plainclothes investigators (The Pinks). The horses undergo saliva tests for signs of drugs, and veterinarians run constant medical examinations. This has not always been so. Racing has had its freewheeling aspects. At one time, the last day of the racing season at many tracks was the signal for the local residents to chain lock their doors. 'Getaway Day' around a track had all the features of a swarm of locusts. Foresighted housewives even took their laundry off the line. Horse racing itself was less a sport than a battle of wits. Handlers and trainers seemed to take positive glee in developing new ways of wrecking the competition. But the horses, not the humans, were the ones who suffered. A single hair from a horse's tail, tightly knotted around the pastern, then concealed by a bandage, could cripple a horse in minutes. Or a pair of handlers might 'broom' a horse-slapping the animal with a whisk broom, driving it back and forth between them until the horse was worn out by over excitement. A clever operator could use a button hook to pull the nerve out of an ailing leg; the horse felt no pain-only, possibly, dismay when its hoof eventually fell off. The last man in the world to be mixed up in racetrack chicanery was Ryan's good friend, Dr. Tom Childs. Dr. Tom had been among the early assistants to Henry Bergh himself. He had gone on to take his veterinary degree and had become, later, chief veterinarian for the Society.

  Now in his eighties, Dr. Tom had practically gone into retirement. He lived near a track in Upstate New York, and kept up a small private practice. Ryan often visited him and could never figure out how Dr. Tom ever kept his accounts straight. Most of the neighboring farmers paid their bills on the basis of the barter system. Dr. Tom's bank balance was small. On the other hand, he had a lot of vegetables. Ryan asked Dr. Tom if his clients had ever heard of money. "Money?" said the old veterinarian, who had gone slightly deaf. "Yes, I'm a little short, myself. But help yourself to some beans. Very tasty. Very good for you." Dr. Tom occasionally entered his own horses at the local track. That season he told Ryan he was convinced he had a winner. "That Blue Boy is fast. He'll run away with it," the veterinarian said glumly. "What's the problem, then?" Ryan asked. "The horse is fine," Dr. Tom said, "but there's one thing missing. I don't have anybody to ride him." During Ryan's next visit, Dr. Tom appeared more cheerful. He introduced Ryan to his new jockey, a young man named Teddy. He was tall for a jockey and Ryan guessed the only reason the boy could make the weight was because he hadn't been eating too often. "Where did you find him?" Ryan asked later. "Find him?" asked Dr. Tom. "Why, I didn't find him. He found me." Teddy, Dr. Tom explained, had been hanging around the track for a couple of weeks. He was there from dawn to sunset; no one had ever discovered where he lived-presuming he lived anywhere at all. Teddy had been trying unsuccessfully to find a job as an exercise boy.

  None of the owners seemed to clamor for his services and Teddy spent most of his days sitting on the railing, staring at the horses. He was sallow, taciturn, and his face looked older than the rest of him. "It's a real stroke of luck." Dr. Tom beamed. "Did he ever ride before?" Ryan asked. "I suppose he must have," Dr. Tom said happily. "Otherwise, he wouldn't have asked to be my jockey."

  "I don't like him," Ryan said. "I think you ought to find another boy."

  "Nonsense," Dr. Tom said. "He'll be perfectly all right. He's staying in the house with me, I'm giving him his room and board-I can't afford to pay him anything right now. I've been watching him. He's a good boy. He's fond of vegetables, too." Dr. Tom had bought Teddy a suit of clothes to replace the undersized jacket and oversized pants the exercise boy had been wearing. The veterinarian also had Teddy fitted in a set of racing silks and a handsome pair of boots. Even Ryan had to admit the boy looked natty in the colorful costume. On race day, Dr. Tom gave Teddy his final instructions. The boy nodded curtly. "We'll win it," he said tightly. "Try to get the rail," Dr. Tom went on. "If you can't, then run him easy until the first turn-"

  "I say we win it," Teddy repeated. "I take this race or I bust that horse's neck."

  "Good heavens," Dr. Tom cried, "don't do that! I mean, if Blue Boy wants to win, don't discourage him. But I don't want you to whip him and I certainty don't want his neck, or any other part of him, broken!" Blue Boy took the lead from the start. Teddy made for the rail and kept it, pounding into the turn, crouched in his saddle. Watching beside Dr. Tom, Ryan judged it no race at all, it was a walkaway. Blue Boy gained two more lengths in the stretch, and held them all the way home.

  Dr. Tom pummeled Ryan joyfully. "I told you!" he shouted
. "He's a good boy. There's nothing like vegetables!" The veterinarian and Ryan hurried to the paddock. Teddy, his bright silks drenched in sweat, climbed down from Blue Boy. Dr. Tom ran up to shake his hand. Teddy turned away. "Get the Pinks," he said in a flat voice. Dr. Tom looked at him in amazement. "What are you talking about, boy? What happened out there?"

  "Nothing," said Teddy. "I win it. That's what happens."

  "He's sick," Dr. Tom told Ryan. "Too much excitement." Teddy reached into his boot and tossed a wad of hundred-dollar bills to Dr. Tom. "Keep it," he said. "Teddy," Dr. Tom cried, "are you telling me that race was fixed? They let Blue Boy win?"

  "You got it backwards," Teddy said. "The bookies pay me to lose."

  "But you didn't lose!" Dr. Tom began. "That's what's wrong," Teddy muttered. "I don't figure Blue Boy to start so good. I figure maybe he loses anyway. But when he takes off at the turn, and starts coming on so strong, I think I better pull him in a little. But hell, Doc, I can't do that to a guy like you. So that's it. Call the Pinks."

  "But my dear boy," Dr. Tom protested, "why should I turn you in? I don't want to have you arrested."

  "I don't want to get arrested," Teddy said. "I just don't want to get shot. I need a couple bodyguards to put me on the train." Two Pinkerton men escorted Teddy to the station. One of them rode with him as far as New Orleans. From there, Teddy headed west-which was the last Ryan and Dr. Tom heard. "For his sake," Dr. Tom said, "I hope those bookies have short memories."

  "I just hope," Ryan said, "they don't know much geography."

  So far, no psychiatrist has specialized in horses-professionally, at least-but the trainers apply psychotherapy of their own. Otto Bauer, a genial Bavarian and one of Ryan's acquaintances at the track, firmly believed in the psychiatric approach to racing. "Cot tamm, if a horse feels good up here," he told Ryan, tapping his forehead, "he moves good down there. That's something the handicappers don't figure. But I figure it." He led Ryan over to a stall. "There," said Otto, "is going to be a winner. Rheingold. I make him the happiest horse on the track." Ryan asked how he intended to accomplish this. Rheingold, as far as Ryan could see, looked more worried than happy. The horse whickered, laid its ears against its head and reared nervously in the stall. If Rheingold's position in the race depended on the horse's outlook on life, Ryan suggested that Otto would do well to bet him last. "There is nothing wrong with him," Otto assured Ryan. "A little jumpy, maybe. What he needs is a pet. I fix him up." Otto was only applying a bit of old horse-training lore. Ryan, ever since his boyhood, had known that highly strung thoroughbreds find it pleasant to have small animals keeping them company in the stall. For reasons best known to the horse, even the presence of a chicken has a calming influence. Perhaps race horses, by virtue of their exalted birth and status, are lonelier than cart horses; perhaps, like humans, they simply enjoy pets. Ryan wasn't surprised at Otto's idea-but he was surprised at the pet which the horse trainer selected.

  Next day, when Ryan passed by Rheingold's stall he saw Otto crouched on the ground, a piece of straw in his hand, playing with a Siamese cat. When the ASPCA inspector asked Otto why he didn't settle for an ordinary domestic short hair, Otto shook his head. "No, no," he said. "Only the best is good enough for Rheingold. A thoroughbred like him should have at least a pedigreed cat." Later on, Otto lost some of his enthusiasm. "Cot tamm," he said, "I don't think Rheingold likes cats. Not even a Siamese. Maybe they give him allergies." However, the result was no better when Otto replaced the Siamese with a dachshund. Rheingold behaved more skittishly than ever. Otto threw up his hands in despair. "What does he want?" he cried. "Cot tamm, next thing do I get is a monkey?"

  "Why don't you try a goat?" suggested Ryan. "A goat!" Otto snapped his fingers. "Wunderbar! I should think of that myself. But ... cot tamm, where do I find a goat now?" Ryan offered to locate one but on the following day, before the agent had a chance to go goat-prospecting, Otto showed up at the track with his own animal. "She is beautiful," Otto beamed, introducing Ryan to a shaggy, thoroughly disreputable-looking nanny goat of dubious Swiss ancestry. "My little Kaetzli! She is perfect!" Kaetzli raised her head and made noises at Otto. She was small, even for a nanny goat, but her voice was as loud as a mule's. Otto happily bleated back at her. "You see?" he said. "We are all friends already." Whatever Kaetzli's appearance, Ryan couldn't deny that Rheingold now seemed a better-adjusted horse. The two animals nuzzled one another and Otto nuzzled each in turn.

  Ryan tiptoed away from the family scene. Kaetzli's arrival produced tangible result.5. The next time Ryan stopped in at the track, Otto advised him that Rheingold's time was improving. "Two seconds better today!" Otto said, holding up two fingers. "Cot tamm, if I know it's going to work that good, I should have bought two goats!" Rheingold's black flanks glistened, he arched his neck proudly. Mornings, the exercise boys found him eager to prance out of his stall and begin his workout. Rheingold had a new light in his eye and every so often he would blow out his breath, curl back his lips and give a long whinny. "He is smiling!" Otto said. "He is laughing! I never see such a happy horse." For the week preceding the race, Rheingold did better and better. Word leaked out among the bookmakers and handicappers that Bauer's entry would be worth watching. By race day, Rheingold had become the favorite-which ruined the odds he might have brought as a long shot, but Otto was too proud to care about that. "My Rheingold," he said fondly, "my little Kaetzli." Ryan had promised Otto that he would come up and see Rheingold win the race. The two men stood near the track. Otto wore a Tyrolean hat with a bouquet of goat hair pinned to the crown (the hair, he assured Ryan, did not come from Kaetzli) and carried a pair of giant binoculars. Rheingold got off to a bad start. For almost the first furlong, the other horses crowded him out. Otto began moaning desperately and clutching at his Tyrolean hat. Ryan saw Rheingold's jockey struggling for a better position. At the turn, Rheingold looked as if he had been suddenly charged with electricity. He lunged ahead and began to move forward, picking his way through the galloping horses like a lady shopper heading for a bargain sale. Gradually he came neck and neck with the second horse, then the first. The grandstand spectators shouted. Otto tore off his hat and waved it in the air.

  After the tum, Rheingold took the lead in earnest. "He was only playing with them," Otto said, with relief. He passed the binoculars to Ryan. Approaching the backstretch, Rheingold might as well have been running alone. Ryan watched him galloping effortlessly. The other entries were far behind. Through the glasses, Ryan noticed something else. The backstretch curved past the stable area; Kaetzli had been browsing nearby but at the sound of the oncoming horses, she trotted over to the rail and gave Rheingold a welcoming bleat. Rheingold, in a cloud of dust, skidded to a dead halt. The frantic, unbelieving jockey slapped the reins, waved his arms. As the other horses bore down on him, Rheingold finally moved. But not on the track. He headed for the rail. With an easy grace, he shook off the jockey, jumped the fence and sauntered over to Kaetzli. Oblivious of the screams of the crowd and the screams of Otto, which must have reached them even at that distance, the two friends strolled back to the stables. Later, after Otto had finally stopped crying, he and Ryan made their way to the stable yards. Ryan brushed the dust from Otto's Tyrolean hat and tried to eradicate a heel mark. It was difficult, for Otto, carried away by his emotions, had tramped very heavily on the hat. "Look at it this way." Ryan said, "you wanted to make Rheingold feel good and you did." Otto nodded glumly while Rheingold nuzzled Kaetzli "Ja-" he sniffed. "That much is true, Cot tamm," he added. "I hope they be very, very happy together." Otto never raced Rheingold again. Later, he went into the horse-breeding business. Rheingold was his star performer in that activity, at least. Kaetzli stayed, with her friend. Once, Otto had tried to separate them, but Rheingold got so angry that Otto had to bring back the goat immediately.

  "Tell me," Otto said to Ryan. "You know all about horse racing. Why does this happen to me?"

  "I don't know all about horse racing," Ryan said. "There's one
thing I've never been able to figure out. How to pick a winner."

  "Me too," said Otto. "But, cot tamm, I can sure pick a good goat."

  13 - Get Along, Little Dogies

  In addition to horse racing, rodeos bring a lot of assorted livestock into New York: bucking broncos, steers, 'dogies' or yearling steers, and cowboys. Ryan has met a great many of each and has discovered that some of the cowboys actually come from the Far West. The first rodeos to visit Manhattan were, like the races, pretty freewheeling affairs. The cowpunchers applied the techniques used on the open range, in a hodgepodge of Indian wrestling and jujitsu combined with all the finesse of a saloon brawl. Calf busting and throwing the hooligan were the most common. Calf busting begins fairly mildly. From his horse, the cowpoke ropes the calf-who usually dashes off madly in the opposite direction. But the rider then stops his horse suddenly and the calf, at the end of a tight lariat, finds himself snapped back and sailing through the air. For those who enjoy the prospect of several hundred pounds of beef rocketing skyward, this constitutes an exhilarating moment. A second later, the calf hits the ground and flattens out like a mattress. Any human in the same situation would agree that 'busted' is a reasonably expressive term. Throwing the hooligan has nothing to do with Irishmen. Perhaps an Irishman first invented it, although even an Irishman might find it a little rough. In the hooligan, a steer wrestler manages to seize the horns of the running animal, twist its neck and jam the horns into the ground.

  Undeniably, throwing the hooligan takes considerable muscle and determination. But the cowboy has the principle of the lever and the law of gravity working for him. With horns planted firmly in the earth as a pivot point, the steer performs a reluctant somersault, arcs end-over-end and crashes to the tanbark. The maneuver can result in a twisted spine or a broken neck-not for the cowboy, but the steer. Some cowboys also prefer to ride with locked rowels. As long as the rowel, or wheel of the spur, can spin freely it can goad the horse but not actually cut him. A rowel taped down or locked stationary by an added cotter pin can slice like a razor. The horse, understandably, moves a little faster. The ASPCA exercises no control over what happens at rodeos outside of New York; but within state boundaries, locked rowels, busting and the hooligan are forbidden. Stock owners and the cowboys themselves have been glad to cooperate, although ruling out these methods makes the sport more of a sport and less a foregone conclusion. The Society hasn't had over a dozen provable complaints in as many years. The ASPCA, however, continues to inspect all rodeos. Reading the advance publicity for a big rodeo opening in Madison Square Garden, Ryan noticed something that made him feel uneasy even before the show started. Putting the notice in his pocket, he drove to the garden and looked up the rodeo manager. "Is it true," Ryan asked, "you got wild horses in this show?" The manager, a New Jersey man named Oklahoma Dutch, said that it was. "If I advertise wild horses," he added, "this crowd's going to see wild horses."