by Andrew Rule
Or was he seeing a future where he would be loved and neglected by our children in equal measure, hugged and adored and patted and all too frequently forgotten-to-be-fed and unwalked? Was he seeing the inevitable hours of loneliness, when nobody would be at home to give him his kitchen-sink drama to watch through the back door? Could he see the six-month period when we would, finally, own a cat (Bobby McGee, a hand-me-down from a hand-me-down from a hand-me-down, eventually lobbing with us via my wife’s mother)? Could Bruce, while shitting and puking in the car, somehow sense the violent hatred with which Bobby would respond to his attempts at play? Was the presentiment of rejection making Bruce sick? Or the presentiment of Bobby’s death, under the wheels of a passing car, and his subsequent karmic burial in the backyard that Bruce would restlessly patrol like a cemetery guard?
I can’t say what Bruce saw while he was projectile-vomiting and shitting on the back seat. I can’t say he didn’t already see right through me to the type of dog owner I was, and knew that I would get so exasperated with his habit of chewing up tennis balls or losing them in the local lagoon that I would unleash the most vitriolic personal abuse upon him and call him names that no dog deserves to be called. Perhaps he was seeing the kind of master I would be towards him, feeding him and walking him and letting him inside, sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly; but he was also caught in the grip of the genetically programmed loyalty he would show me, having designated me as pack leader, a baton I never asked for and didn’t merit. The tragedy of fealty sworn to the undeserving: Bruce’s future would make you want to puke.
Or perhaps he was seeing the holidays he would spend at my parents’ house, three squares a day, a toastie or morning tea, and a warm berth in front of a heater every afternoon and evening. Perhaps he saw all the things we would believe made him happy: runs in the park, meetings with other dogs, more runs, more dogs, more arses to sniff, more balls to chase, more filthy ponds to swim in and puddles to lie in, more home-cooked meals, more raw meals, more family holidays, more belonging, more treats, more pats—and maybe foreseeing all this love was what was making him sick. Maybe a dog is a Sartrean existentialist. La Nausee: hell is other people.
Greeny and I were other people, in the front seat, given our own twenty minutes of hell in the miasma of Bruce’s secretions. Greeny would hold out in the granny flat for another five months, long after he got a job and regained his driver’s licence. Bruce would go absolutely nuts whenever Greeny came home, hurling himself at him and scraping his dirty paws down Greeny’s front. Greeny would shout ‘Bruce! Bruce, down! No!’ while vigorously flapping his hands at chest level, as if working a pump. I think I could read Bruce’s mind. He was hearing Greeny saying, ‘Bruce! Bruce! Jump up at my hands! Great to see you! Yes!’
Or maybe Bruce just wanted Greeny to move out, so he could have his space to himself. Greeny’s weekend respite turned into nine months by the end, and his intentions were often as opaque as those of Bruce, who now sleeps in what was Greeny’s kitchenette and study.
And Greeny never took him for one walk.
A week after driving Bruce home, I went to the letterbox and found that on that trip from Ingleside I had broken the speed limit in a school zone by more than 15 kilometres per hour and was now several hundred dollars and three demerit points poorer.
That was seven years ago. Today he is curled by my feet. His ears are pricked: he sleeps like a dog. To humans, he is a devilishly handsome beast, and all who know him comment on what a lovely, loving, sweet-natured dog he is. When I walk him, I have a halter on his snout, because even though he is a seven year old, a senior dog, he is still a puppy at heart and would pull my arm out of its socket if he saw a cat or a rabbit. Sometimes on walks a parent will wrench their child away from Bruce, sheep in wolf’s clothing, and warn, ‘Don’t go near that dog, it has a muzzle.’ I leap indignantly to Bruce’s defence, explaining that a halter is not a muzzle and he is not a biter, the halter is only to make up for my own inadequacies. If they remain frightened, I am quick to anger on Bruce’s behalf. Humans are the strangest beings, but I guess we all see what we want to see.
I dearly hope Bruce’s is a happy life, if happiness is a thing for dogs. Whenever he gives us what we think is a smile, we joke that he is thanking us for getting him out of that animal shelter. But we can’t know. Getting into that car was his moment of destiny, when his roulette wheel slowed and his ball fell into chance’s slot. He found himself with me and Greeny. At such a vertex, who would not feel sick?
Stud
Garry Linnell
The Irish boys are putting on helmets and tightening leather straps. The boss is squeezing his scrubbed hands into a pair of germ-free latex gloves. The room is heavy with the odour of antiseptic lotion. It can only mean one thing: love is in the air.
And so it is time for Stick Man to go to work. Adrian O’Brien, Stick Man’s boss, enters his stall. ‘C’mon, lad, time to go,’ he says, patting his charge on the rump. The Stick knows this routine off by heart. If a horse could shrug, he’d be doing it now.
It’s late on a warm spring afternoon at the elite Coolmore Stud, deep in the Hunter Valley. In the next few minutes the brutal efficiency that lies at the heart of the global, multibilliondollar thoroughbred industry will be on display. But first, Stick Man, a 9-year-old white pony with the tousled mane of an 1980s rock star, must do what he does best—start a job he always leaves half-done.
O’Brien, tall, freckled and with the clinical demeanour of a surgeon, leads Stick Man out of his stall and into the vast breeding barn. Waiting there, shifting nervously, is Tempest Morn, a plain brown mare.
Trained by Gai Waterhouse, owned by the Filipino brewing billionaire Eduardo Cojuangco, and with a reputation for courage on the track, Tempest Morn won two Group One races. Now she’s a sex object. She arrived only a few minutes ago, trucked in from Mudgee. She was taken straight into a padded stall, where O’Brien bandaged her tail before wiping down her rear with a sterilising solution. The indignities only grew worse. Led into the cavernous mating arena, with its soft light, peaked ceiling, padded walls and freshly laid woodchip floor, she had thick felt boots strapped to her rear feet by two of O’Brien’s assistants. She hated that, kicking out in a hopeless attempt to remove them.
Now one of her amber eyes is widening as Stick Man approaches. A groom tightens the twitch—a stick with a loop of rope at the end that is twirled around her upper lip. The twitch is supposed to be a distraction, as well as a trigger to release a rush of pain-dulling endorphins. She shivers and whinnies.
In the horse-breeding industry, Stick Man is a teaser stallion, the warm-up man for the main act. But he’s also the equine version of the royal food-taster. He gets to sample this and that, but a seat at the banquet will forever be denied him.
If Tempest Morn, about to experience her first mating, kicks out with those booted feet, it will be the Stick who takes the punishment, not the hundred-million-dollar thoroughbred being prepared a few hundred metres away in a separate barn.
Stick Man nuzzles her flanks and she calms a little. But when he rears, clearly aroused by her scent, she scurries sideways, avoiding him. The Stick flashes his teeth and moves forward again. This time Tempest Morn allows him to land his forelegs on her back. He humps into fresh air.
O’Brien decides the mare is ready for the real stuff. He yanks on Stick Man’s lead, and the pony dismounts. His erection disappears by the time he placidly leaves the arena. He might do this thirty times a day, maybe more. O’Brien is smiling. ‘Good lad, good lad,’ he says.
Now, Giant’s Causeway is being led from his stall to the breeding barn. You can hear him long before you see him. Even from a distance, his primal roaring and bellowing is enough to make you swallow hard and take a step back. He’s a liver chestnut with a white blaze on his forehead rising like a curl of smoke from just above his left nostril.
As he approaches the barn, his surging testosterone levels physically lift him. He rears like a moto
rcyclist on one wheel, forelegs flailing, punching the air. You can see why they nicknamed him ‘The Iron Horse’.
This stallion won five Group One races as a three year old in Europe, but it was the manner of his victories that stunned everyone. Headed a few times in the straight and looking as if his fuel tank was empty, Giant’s Causeway kept coming back, surging again. He has heart, just like the virgin waiting nervously for him in the barn.
Fear ripples through Tempest Morn’s velvet coat. She doesn’t know what is going on, but every instinct tells her she’s about to find out. The choir of Irish voices in the room—Coolmore’s world empire is based in Tipperary—returns to its favourite chorus: ‘Good girl … good girl … be still now. Attagirl … Attagirl …’
Giant’s Causeway’s handler leads him towards the mare. The stallion’s nose twitches. The barn falls silent.
O’Brien leans forward and pulls Tempest Morn’s bandaged tail to one side. More silence.
And then it starts. The stallion, fully aroused, roars and rears high as his handler rushes to one side, pulling at the rein.
Then 500 kilograms of muscled horseflesh crashes onto Tempest Morn’s back. Someone is yelling, ‘Giddup, giddup, giddup.’ Giant’s Causeway’s forelegs are splayed across the back of his mount. His head is shaking and tiny bits of froth are being flung from the corners of his mouth.
The four men below are moving quickly, like tiny stagehands. O’Brien, the mare’s tail in one hand, is reaching under the stallion, grabbing the animal’s penis and guiding it to the right spot. One of the helmeted assistants is straining against Tempest Morn’s chest and shoulder to stop her from moving forward.
The groom with the twitch is out to one side, tightening its hold.
Giddup, giddup, giddup.
For twenty-five frantic seconds, the barn is filled with whinnying and human shouting and raucous horse farting as muscles spasm and spinal cords grind.
Giddup, giddup, giddup. Attagirl. Attagirl. Comeongirl, that’s it. With one last thrust, Giant’s Causeway, his feet still splayed awkwardly, falls silent. A bloodline stretching back more than three centuries has just been passed on at the cost of $137 500. The stallion leans forward and nibbles gently at Tempest Morn’s mane, caressing it almost affectionately with his teeth.
Then, with a final, tired heave, he dismounts. Moments later he is heading back down the lane for a feed and a roll in fresh straw. He doesn’t look back.
Tempest Morn, still stunned, still with her tail in the air, is led out the rear door. She passes by Stick Man’s stall on her way to an old blue truck outside. The Stick’s left eye peers out through a tumbled mass of white hair and he watches her pass. For a brief moment, you imagine a flash of envy. But he quickly looks away when he spies you staring at him.
He doesn’t want your pity. Stick Man just wants a little action.
Racing people often talk about the romance of the turf, but there’s nothing romantic about the act that underpins it all. The ritual has all the intimacy and warmth of a visit to a dental surgery. It’s brutal and swift, the closest the animal kingdom has come to simulating a date between Mike Tyson and a beauty pageant contestant.
‘There’s no foreplay and no afterplay,’ says Brett Howard, Coolmore’s sales manager.
‘For most of them it’s wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. As far as we’re concerned, that suits us. If we have thirteen stallions operating, we like to keep them moving … like a production line.’
But there’s another reason for the carefully choreographed routines and sterile surrounds. With hundreds of millions of dollars riding on such encounters—Kevin Conley, the author of Stud: Adventures in Breeding, declares the mating act the most expensive thirty seconds in sport—thoroughbred reproduction is an incredibly risky business. One stray wiry hair from Tempest Morn’s tail could have cut Giant’s Causeway’s penis, potentially putting him out of action for weeks. With stallions mating up to three times a day throughout an Australian breeding season that lasts from 1 September until Christmas, losses can soon reach huge proportions.
These are not just reproductive machines but highly prized corporate assets worth tens of millions of dollars. You might wonder why, in an age of fabulous technological advances, when scientists claim to be on the cusp of bringing extinct species back to life, racing even bothers allowing its horses to procreate in the old-fashioned way.
Horse mating appears to be a clumsy, hit-and-miss affair that, without the guiding hand of a stallion manager, leaves you wondering how the species has managed to survive the past 55 million years since Eohippus first appeared in the Eocene epoch. Other sports that use animals long ago jumped on the safety-first artificial insemination bandwagon. Some of the world’s greatest trotting sires are technically still virgins, mounting wooden pommel horses and ejaculating into sterile containers in order for their genes to be flown to all corners of the globe. And it’s not as if the sport is run by Luddites—horses are DNA tested to certify their breeding credentials, and thoroughbreds at the track are regularly scrutinised for the tiniest quantities of performance-enhancing drugs.
But the industry remains defiant—and not just because the stud ritual is somehow romantic. Here’s the rub: artificial insemination would topple the breeding market and financial empires created by the multinational entities that dominate the sport. The world’s top sires work in both hemispheres and command stud fees approaching $US500 000. Imagine how those fees might tumble if just a little bit of that sperm went a much longer way. ‘The market would be ruined,’ says one breeder. ‘You would be flooded with the foals of the world’s best sires and the industry would collapse.’
And Stick Man would find himself out of a job, no longer in charge of unfinished business at Coolmore.
Shepherds
William McInnes
Peewee was a bit crook. That’s what the old bloke with the thick-bottle-lens glasses said to the young woman behind the counter at the vet clinic. Said it very slowly in an old man’s voice, deep and furry. ‘Yes, poor old Peewee’s seen better days.’
‘So he’s a bit unwell,’ said the young woman.
‘That’d be why he’s here, I’m afraid. He makes me look like Johnny Weissmuller and I’ve got more rot in me than a house full of borer.’
The young woman smiled a little and asked who Johnny Weissmuller was.
The old man tilted his head back. ‘That shows me age, doesn’t it? Tarzan. He makes me look like Tarzan.’
And he pulled gently at the ears of his old dog, Peewee. I think he was a fox terrier and he looked as old as Moses.
I don’t know what it is about old men and old dogs, but looking at them across the waiting room it was almost as if I couldn’t imagine them ever being any other age.
But they must have been. The old bloke must once have been a little boy watching a Tarzan movie starring Johnny Weissmuller as the king of the jungle.
Now he gently pulled at his old dog’s ears as he waited for Paddy the vet to call him in. He was next in line and my daughter and our two little puppies were after him.
I held Ray and my daughter held Delilah. I’m not sure how they got their names but they sort of suit them.
Ray Delilah. If you run the names together it sounds like a winger from the Valley Diehards in the BRL in the 1970s.
We weren’t really holding the pups; it was a case of juggling the little kelpies, as all they wanted to do was tear around the crammed waiting room.
People and their pets.
Apart from Peewee and the old bloke, there was a man with Nina, the fuzz-ball German shepherd puppy. She was cute, as most puppies are, but I had a history with German shepherds.
When I was a kid, we would indulge in a little thrillseeking on a lazy Saturday morning by engaging in a little Karl racing.
We lived next door to a fire station, and through its grounds was the short cut to the BP servo on the corner, which had a small stand, filled with treasure—jelly snakes, fruit gums a
nd chewing gum. The chewy was the most sought-after pleasure because, for some reason, the selection was huge. Besides the Wrigley’s PK, Juicy Fruit and Spearmint, there was a collection of gum called Beachies, which came in musk, grape and peppermint. Along with that lot was a lower shelf that was like a chewy bazaar, where you could find Big Charlie gum sticks, Black Cat blocks and Bazooka Joes.
All this lolly currency was wagered and traded between us kids. And Karl was the opponent. Karl was a psychotic German shepherd that would occasionally prowl the fire station grounds.
Karl belonged to one of the officer’s sons, a young man with cerebral palsy and quite a few pets. He kept pigeons in a coop by the incinerator in the fire station and would occasionally bring along the family cat, a great ginger tom with a happy, lazy face. And, of course, there was always Karl.
‘They make him feel happy,’ said my mother, ‘and that is a gift.’
Even Karl. It never once occurred to me that Karl could be an affectionate companion, for to all of us kids he was the instrument of chance and fate, a four-legged furry roulette wheel, with teeth.
‘Going out to race Karl,’ one of us would say, for no particular reason; then it was on.
‘Betcha you don’t make it past the bomb shelter.’
‘Betcha I can.’
‘Betcha you can’t.’
‘Betcha a packet of Beachies Musk I can.’
I was the youngest by six years and easy prey for Karl but had enough Irish in me to love to bet up big.
I seldom made it past the bomb shelter, a strange round brick building that had been built in the 1950s as a training facility for the firemen, but was given its nickname by my mother.
So, I would lose lots of Beachies.