24 hours of the fast down.  I'm thinking about eating at 8 am and just doing a 32 hour fast.  I don't know if I could make it through work tomorrow.  There have been a couple times I thought about eating.  But I was wanting junk food.  If I break my fast, I will break it with something healthy.  I'm thinking either oatmeal or an omelet (egg + water + veggies + seasonings) or something healthy for breakfast.  Maybe an apple or green beans instead.  I don't know yet.  I'll take my time to decide.  It'll probably be 150 calories or less.  And I'll eat a cereal bar or cereal or something small (150 calories or less) on my break at work.  It'll help my body get ready for supper that way.  I have no idea what supper will be.  I'm hoping it isn't too high in calories.  I'm hoping to be able to restrict really well from now on.  I can do.  I know I can.  I've had about 160 calories so far.  I've had water (0), tea (5 - I used some Splenda so I'm going to count it as 5), broth (5), and 3 V-8 V-Fusion Energy drinks (50 cals each for a total of 150).  I was wanting either an energy drink or some diet pop for caffeine and I found those.  50 calories seemed reasonable since it's flavored with real juice.  I guess I'll do a few comment responses.  I'm not responding to everyone.  Just the ones with questions.  But a big thank you to all who comment.  It makes me happy to see new comments.

Karolina - I've been doing terrible at restricting.  More like I haven't been trying at it.  I attempted to restrict yesterday to prepare for today, but ate more calories than I should have.  I'm hoping to be able to restrict once I'm done fasting.  Like an average of 750 calories or less a day.  With working, it should be achievable.

Lottie -  No, she doesn't live with me. My daughter lives with her dad.

Heather[Hunger] - I don't have a protein shake.  Even if I did, I probably wouldn't have drank it because they are quite high in calories.  Or at least the ones I have seen are like 180+ calories for 8 oz.  So I would only be able to have one or two.  Diluted juice and broth would mean I could have more and spread out my servings easier.

I'll try to do pictures of the stuff I bought shopping when I get back from work.  And hopefully be in a good mood and do a longer post.  But it's after midnight and I have to work tomorrow morning.  Just kinda wanted to update since I was at the 24 hour mark and my plans changed.  I'll probably do a thinspo post in the morning before work and not write until after.  I need to sleep, not wait for thinspo to upload.

~Kes

I weighed less today than I did yesterday.  Like 1-2 lbs less.  I'm hoping to be less than 115 tomorrow.  It could be possible.  My fast is going well.  I feel hunger but I don't really want to eat.  Or even drink anything for that matter.  I need to leave early so I can pay my phone.  I have to wash the dishes (so no one will know that I didn't eat because washing the dishes is easier than trying to figure out how many dishes to dirty and how to dirty them).  I really need to clean my room because it's getting really messy, but I never have time.  I have to work and when I'm not working I have so much shit to do around the house (dishes, laundry, ect.) that I don't have time or I'm too tired.  If I didn't have to pay my phone, I would work on it today but after reading and commenting on blogs and making this post, I kind of lost the extra time I had.  I'm sick of working 6 days a week.  I really wish I could just work 5 and have like 6-8 hour shifts instead or something.  But no.  I have to work 6 days and get 4-7 hour shifts.  And I have to work everyday until Friday of next week.  I work a 12 1/2 hour shift and they don't give me a day off until next Friday.  Like WTF?!  I have to work 10 days straight and close 5 of those days and one day was a 12 1/2 hour shift.  I hate my job.  But I doubt I'll be able to find another job that gives me enough hours.  So I'm stuck with it until I can either move or go to college or something.  But my room really needs cleaned.  I hate it.  I'm always running into/stepping on/knocking over things.  It's really getting on my nerves.  I said I was going to post pictures of clothes and things but I really need to do the dishes and get ready to leave, so maybe tomorrow or something.  My mother decided she's going to have my daughter over this weekend.  I have to work 4-10:30 Saturday and 10-4 Sunday so I'll only see her from like 10:30 am Saturday until like 3:30 Saturday and maybe a little Sunday morning but that's it.  I'm going to be exhausted and in a terrible mood.  I'm probably going to end up having a breakdown soon with all of this shit.  So yeah...  I was in a good mood earlier up until D decided to call me to ask for money.  Again.  No.  No.  And no again.  Dumbass needs to get his shit together.  He claimed he had a flat tired and that it was going to cost $30 (the same amount of money he asked me for last time) to fix it.  He claimed his friend would send him the money through Western Union tomorrow and he would pay me back.  His friend can just wire the money today.  I'm not giving him money.  And he got all pissed at me because he said he always gives me money when I ask him for it.  Bull.Shit.  I would ask and ask and ask for him to pay me back when I used to loan him money and it would take weeks to months before I would see any money.  My phone is due today.  I told him that and I told him that if I gave him the money that I couldn't pay my phone and that it would be shut off.  And he still got pissed at me.  The only time I will loan him money will be when he goes to turn in his divorce papers and I will be there and watch him do it because I don't trust him.  And then I'll have like 20 days to turn mine in after that.  I'll shut up now before this gets any longer.

~Kes

The Perfect Horse

--Sue Finley

Yesterday, Airdrie Stud announced that they were pensioning Slew City Slew. Many will recall him as the sire of 54 black type winners, or as a two-time Grade I winner, or the sire of Lava Man. But 25 years ago, he meant the world to me for entirely different reasons.

I was a terrible hotwalker. Really, truly terrible. My `real’ job was working in the NYRA press office, where I had been hired my senior year in college in 1984. Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that if I were going to promote racing, I really should understand it not just from the fan’s perspective, or from the company’s perspective, but from the backside perspective as well.

Being the mid-eighties, I had interviewed Woody Stephens about a million times during my first year or so of the job. He was not only in the middle of his incredible run of five consecutive Belmonts, but had assembled some of the most amazing equine talent and pedigrees in history. It seemed like a great opportunity to learn about horse care and training from one of the true legends of the sport. So, one day, during the spring of 1985, I tentatively asked him if I could maybe walk hots for him a couple of days a week. He said that pay day was Friday, and that some of the hotwalkers would go out and get drunk Friday night and not show up for work on Saturday, so if I wanted a job on weekends, it was mine, as he could use the extra help. Simple as that, and I was in.

The legendary Woody Stephens

The pay was $25 a day, or about $41 per weekend, after taxes. I was taking home $160 a week at the time for NYRA, so this was a serious boost to my finances. Now, after my rent, car and student loans were paid, I would now actually be able to afford dinner, if not every day, at least sometimes.

Woody had two barns back then, Barn 3 and 4. Barn 3, run by Sandy Bruno and Phil Gleaves, was where he kept the older horses. Billy Badgett was in charge of Barn 4, and the two-year-olds. They told me that the barns alternated sets, so I would walk a horse in the first set in Barn 3, then in the second in Barn 4, and so on, back and forth all morning.

I showed up the first day, and was sent to Barn 3, where a groom led a cold horse out of a stall, and handed her over to me. Her name was Soli, by Alydar out of Nicosia, and she was on the shelf at that time, but had won the Shirley Jones at Gulfstream that winter, and they expected big things out of her. The groom pointed to a bucket, hanging out the outside wall, and told me that was her bucket. Every two turns, give her a drink, he said. She walked very placidly for me around the barn, and I noticed all the other horses drinking out of the big communal tub in the middle. A couple of turns, and I tried to steer her to the outside wall, which proved to be much harder than I thought. She wanted to drink from the tub in the middle. It seemed so much easier...so I let her. The groom looked at me like nobody could be that stupid. She was sick, and I had just risked passing that infection to the entire barn. Disgusted, he changed the entire water tub.

My next horse was Alexandra My Love, a Danzig filly. She hadn’t been out of the stall in three weeks with some sort of injury...and they gave her to me. She took about 20 steps to each of my three, and since I was holding her head, this meant that her rear would swing around in front of me and she would end up facing me every three strides or so. I tried to walk faster...but I wasn’t even close to keeping up. Literally, I had no idea how to solve this problem. So around the barn we went, with her wheeling, and me straightening her out, every three strides, for a half an hour. More `I can’t believe anyone could be this stupid’ stares followed from my co-workers.

Soon, I discovered that walking horses in Billy’s barn, full of young two-year-olds not yet nearing a race, proved to be a much easier task, so I took to hanging out there, until one day, I was walking Two Punch and someone startled him by adjusting his blanket from behind, and he lunged forward, knocking me into the water tub and sending it flying, and then running out the center doors with me holding on. I was somewhat proud I hadn’t let go, seriously bruised...and from then on, scared to death.



Two punch provided me an early scare
Barbara Livingston photo

 I lasted the summer and fall at Woody’s, until he headed south for the winter. The next spring, I decided to give it another go. I had interviewed John Hertler several times, and he seemed like a really nice guy, so I asked him if I could work two days a week for him. My friend, Cathy Riccio, was working as a groom for him, and promised me that she’d lay me into the easiest hotwalking spots there were, keeping me far away from the crazies. My general unease with the whole situation was never far from the surface, however, stoked by incidents like the day Proud Truth got loose, charged into our barn, and took a serious interest in the filly I was walking.

On April 1, 1986, however, my salvation arrived in the form of a tiny, quiet two-year-old. By Seattle Slew out of Weber City Miss, Slew City Slew showed up in John’s barn the first day two-year-olds were allowed on the backstretch. He was dark, with few markings, and so placid, you could set a bomb off and he wouldn’t turn a hair. He never startled, paid no attention to loud noises, which made him, in my mind, about as close to perfect as a horse could get.

He would take three steps in the shedrow, stop and sigh, needing some mild encouragement to move along. Oftentimes, when he would stop, he would rest his head on my shoulder, just content to stand still with me. I let no one else walk him, and started to stretch out our allotted 30 minutes of walking time, just to delay the time when they would hand me a fit monster, like Mugatea.

`How long have you had that horse?’ the groom would ask me after we had been out 45 minutes or so. `15 minutes,’ I would tell him. If I could hose him, and hold him in the tub, some days I could get away with spending two hours or so just on him; me sitting, and him resting his head on my shoulder.

He started two times that year, and was well-beaten in both. My heart was broken sometime thereafter when he was sent over to Wayne Lukas’s barn, and I remember seeing him in the paddock one day before a race. He had grown into a man, and was imposing, and on the muscle...far from the frail baby I recalled.

Upon his retirement from stud yesterday, Airdrie’s Brereton Jones said, “He’s been awfully good to us for a long time, and he’ll continue to live out the rest of his life in the best of care.”

He’s 27 now, and I haven’t seen him in a quarter-century. This November, when I’m in town for the sales, I’ll ask the kind folks at Airdrie if I could come visit, and rest my head on his shoulder this time, and say thanks for that tiny respite each day when my very scary job wasn’t quite so scary.

Second Chances: Maiden Watch Round III

--Steve Sherack

TDN’s Steve Sherack adds three more runners to the maiden watch in the latest installment of Second Chances. Click here to view previous columns.

Stonestreet Stables’s HIERRO (c, 2, Hard Spun--Brief Bliss, by Navarone), a $350,000 OBSMAR graduate (Breeze Video), should move forward nicely following an educational fifth-place finish going seven furlongs in his debut at Saratoga Sept. 3 (TDN Video). Given a 4-1 chance in a salty 10-horse field, the chestnut was the last one to exit the stalls and raced in eighth through an opening quarter in :22.59. With Ramon Dominguez aboard, the Steve Asmussen trainee began to gain some momentum while racing two wide on the turn for home until briefly forcing to check in traffic. Guided to the inside, he showed plenty of immaturity in the stretch, racing greenly down the lane and reporting home 8 3/4 lengths behind impressive Darley homebred firster Alpha (Bernardini). The final time over the fast track was 1:23.97; Hierro received a 65 Beyer Speed Figure. Out of the graded stakes placed mare Brief Bliss, Hierro is a half-brother to Cherokee Triangle (Cherokee Run), MSW & GSP, $330,294. He was bred in Kentucky by Sally Andersen.

PUNCTUAL JEFF (c, 2, More Than Ready--Floating Island, by A.P. Indy) ran a winning race when second-best tackling two turns in his unveiling at odds of 5-1 over the Saratoga spinach Sept. 3 (TDN Video). Trained by Chad Brown, the Paul Pompa Jr. colorbearer was away slowly and trailed the field of 12 through slow early fractions of :24.06 and :49.69. The $230,000 KEESEP yearling purchase began to launch his bid while saving ground beneath Ramon Dominguez on the turn for home, gamely split horses when tipped out at least six wide into the stretch and came flying down the center of the course to just miss 27-1 longshot Kitten’s Kid (Kiten’s Joy) by a neck. The final time for the 1 1/16-mile event over the firm going was 1:44.27. Punctual Jeff, from the extended family of MGISW Devil May Care (Malibu Moon), received a 63 Beyer. He was bred in Kentucky by Forging Oaks LLC.

The Turbulent Descent team of Blinkers On Racing and trainer Mike Puype may have another nice one on their hands in the form of CLEARLY A COWBOY (c, 2, With Distinction--Cowgirl Lucky, by Stephen Got Even). Given a 9-2 chance in his career opener at Del Mar Sept. 4 (TDN Video), the $90,000 OBSAPR juvenile (Breeze Video) chased along the inside in sixth, raced in traffic on the far turn, and battled on nicely along the rail in the stretch to just get up for the show spot over a pair of rivals, finishing 4 3/4 lengths behind the good-looking winner Norm’s Passion (Artie Schiller). The final time for 5 1/2 furlongs over the Polytrack was 1:02.98; Clearly a Cowboy, bred in Kentucky by Robert and Mary Harris, was awarded a very solid 76 Beyer.