[QUOTE=Midge;3950947]
I was just wondering why back barn was in quotes in your statement when it wasn’t part of McClain’s quote. (Also probably not admissable in a court of law :rolleyes:) The sales barn I ran had an upper, lower and back barn. No one stayed over in the upper barn.
Since we aren’t a court of law, thank god, we have no reason to expect any statement from anyone. Since the law WAS involved, I am guessing the shipper did make a statement to those who matter in this situation.
Once again, I am astonished this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. Like losing your luggage at the airport. The luggage is tagged and heck it’s even travelling with you and it ends up in another city. The number of times some shipper has walked up to me in the middle of the night, looking for so-and-so’s stall is endless. Shippers bring horses in (WHY always in the middle of the night?) find the empty stall waiting for them and put the horse in it. Often, no one is there the make sure it is the correct horse or even make sure the horse is healthy from it’s trip. Granted it is often the regular shipper of a big customer and he knows the horses, but just as often, it’s not.
Some of the things posted on this thread indicate a lack of mileage by the posters. That the lack of front teeth is something to be concerned about or even would require a special diet. The first time the teeth were noticed and maybe commented upon is when the groom put on the bridle. The trainer looked and said, ‘Huh.’ and that was the end of that. Missing front teeth is not that rare.
That the groom would somehow know he had the wrong horse and that they surfed the net looking for pictures of their charges, or as a friend said, "
I, too, laughed at the idea that the grooms would realize it was a different horse when the trainers didn’t know. I can just picture one of his guys walking up to Frank and saying, “Hey, Patron, we have the wrong caballo aqui.”
It also seems some people think Barney has been living in a state of suspended animation for the last 25 years. He had not. He has a rather large sale operation that has been very active for all of that time. He sells a lot of horses. It is completely possible he never saw the horse he took in on trade before it stepped off his van.
McClain’s quote also seems to indicate both horses were on the van at the same time and had already enjoyed a layover somewhere else. I am guessing the shipper was planning on dropping the horse at Ward’s then travelling on to Frank’s, but since no one had been checking up on the horse, he figured he’d hang with his friends a day or two. If someone called he could say, I had to stop, but I am on the way and will be at Frank’s in just a couple hours."[/QUOTE]
Me? You very well may be right. I have not been a groom on the A circuit in H/J since the 80’s. Back then we had 3-5 horses each in our charge and we actually knew then and cared about them. We considered ourselves part of the “team” and an important one. We loved horses. That’s why we were grooms. We were proud of them and liked to know about them as they were a reflection on us as well and the animal we spent 12 hours a day with and had our hands on more then anyone else in the team. The GP horses were the stars. We knew all about them and just like any other sports fans did not find it a bother to want to learn more.
When it became clear being a groom was not the most pleasant life, I would sometimes just go to PB for 1 month and fill in at barns who needed permanent help but hadn’t found it yet. While I will admit I called every big bay horse in my charge “Jasper” for some reason, I still knew their real names and histories, results, and every inch of their bodies. I was still interested and delighted to see their show results in COTH for years after they left my charge.
I barely remember the people though. I think I worked for a barn called Norwood with Tim Keen and Jeffery Wells and I worked at Sandron with some guys named Joe and Conrad in 1984-5. But they must have been low class or something since they were dong it all wrong. I did manage a barn for Susie Humes and we did hire inexperienced, not really interested in horses people, but that was because she was broke an cheap and was only doing local shows. But I can understand how people like her that are now in the top ranks may have caused the standards to drop so far that the idea of a mere groom actually caring about the horses and being as thrilled to be part of the team as anyone else is just silly now.
Somehow, due to youth and no particular need for sleep, I managed to both pay attention and care for the horses and get drunk and stay out all night having fun. Its quite possible in this modern times such multitasking is no longer the norm. And I still managed to read my copy of COTh every week and even the tiny print results. But yes, you-tube would be much harder then reading a magazine. I mean you have to click a button and all and have some kind of power source.
As for the teeth, I do not find that all common. A few months ago I posted pics of a similar mouth because it was as shocking. In fact, in the weeks before I posted 2 Vets and one dentists said it looked like the horse had mouth cancer. They had not seen such an unexplainable mess either. We did recently finally get a specialist in from another state to examine the mouth and decide what to do, so for him it was a common site. Of course that horse was a Hol. that hunts and was not for sale and never will be, not some GP jumper that was to be vetted out by potential buyers with a $200K price tag. Since I am an old school old timer, I know not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I sure as hell would look a $200K horse in the mouth.
But from your comments it seems things have changed. You make it sound like a big show barn these days resembles a large scale poultry operation. The grooms are either minimum wage workers with no actual interest in horses or the have so many to care for there is no time to care about each one. That’s a shame, because back when I was a groom we were expected to know every detail about a horses in our charge since the riders and trainers actually did deal with 20-30 a day. But now its just an assembly line of horses who are either grey or chestnut or dark and why bother about details??? That’s a shame, but it does explain why some of us old foggies had to spend quite a long time explaining the use of a rub rag to many new fangled COTHrs.
Of course you might just be wrong and have no idea what grooms think or do or care about. Maybe you have never been one or do not take the time to know yours or respect their opinions? Maybe your grooms are just stall cleaners and not highly trained professionals who do a job they love and do it well? Thats a shame.
Even my neighbors who barely speak English still have 25 years experience with high quality race and show horses and our local trainers bother to learn Spanish because those guys will notice if one hair is out of place and be concerned. They take great pride in their jobs and are very well respected. But I suppose that is why the trainers sponsored their relocation and immigration expenses because where they came from working with horses is a highly respected and lifelong profession. In fact I think both sides of my street for 1/2 a mile each way are families originally imported by Sandy Cassett to care for is race, show, hunt and chasing horses. They say that their jobs are even easier and better then in the old days. 5 das work weeks, only 8-10 hours a day. That just may be a local thing though. Because, you know, some of the former grooms are now trainers who beat the pants off of the Dogwood horses last weekend, but, you know, you wouldn’t ask them anything important because they were just grooms and because hey have accents they must not know or care about anything to do with the horses they rub.
I did not work for BW. All I knew about him was that you should not work for him, that he hit a groom several times across the face with a whip and that he rode horses down icy roads to make sure they broke legs. That was before all the really bad stuff came out. So yes, he is on the list of people I do not even know. By choice.
I do not think he is guilty of anything here because there does not seem to be any real profit motive, not because I am sure he would never do something dishonest. But back in the 80’s times were tough and the horse markets were crashing. People did some really bad things out of desperation. In our current economic state I am sure there is no reason for anyone to feel pressure to go back to tried and true tricks for surviving in a business that gets hit pretty hard when people have less money to spend.
But of course I would not have any first hand knowledge about that at all. Things were so crooked back then I left the H/J world all together. Its nice to know that its all so clean and fine and dandy now. Because with grooms taking care of dozens of horses costs must be really low and maybe showing is less expensive? And I even hear the fences are low! They have classes for people who jump under 3 ft? So the horses must be really cheap too. Its like summer camp. That sounds so fun!
