Milestone

On Tuesday, Aggie won her eleventh race and pushed her earnings up to over $103,000. When Ty and I got her back in the Fall, this was one of our goals with her and reaching it was extremely gratifying. Especially with Aggie.

Tammi has done an excellent job off riding her.

I guess I need to go back a ways to explain why getting her as far as she has come has been so difficult. Before I start I do want to say that Aggie isn't mean. She's actually very affectionate and loves attention. Okay, maybe DEMANDS attention would be more accurate. She isn't a monster. She is hot, smart, and hard-headed though. She can tell if you're scared of her from a mile away and finds intimidating those who are quite entertaining. There are certain things that just set her off, who knows why. She is insanely tolerant of situations that freak most horses out. The things you think she'll kill you over, Aggie handles with great composure. It definitely took a long time, a ton of patience, and a lot of trial and error to figure her out. All of the headache and heartbreaks have been worth it in the end. I really do love this mare, as impossible is it may seem once you learn more about her.

The time I tracked Aggie. She was very good, but I'm not going to say the possibility of her freaking out at any minute wasn't in the back of my mind. Hey, if she can scare the hell out of some jockeys, then I don't think I have to be too ashamed of being slightly hesitant to get on her.

In August of 2011, I flew home to Boise to watch the Idaho Cup and to haul horses from Boise to Denver. I'll never forget seeing Aggie for the first time.

I'm watching the paddock and there Aggie (as a three year old) is with everyone around her wrestling to get the saddle on (this was her second lifetime start). It wasn't pretty, but the job got done. She continued to be a handful in the paddock and then it was time to leg the riders up.

She got the rider off twice before they made it fifty feet onto the track. Eventually they got her going, through the post parade, and to the gates (ironically she is quite good in the gates usually).

As soon as they were off, she looked like the winner. There have been very few times that I've been completely mesmerized with how a horse looks running, she is one. Her stride was unbelievable! Aggie looked like she was just gliding over the surface, so smooth and fluid. Effortless. She opened up about eight lengths and I was sitting there thinking how she was gone and was going to win by twenty lengths looking like she was just out for a morning gallop. As this thought was going through my head, dear Aggie shot to the outside rail. The rider had her almost pulled up when the others horses came running by and she took off again. She still ran third, beaten only by 5 1/2 lengths. Obviously she had more talent than anything in the race, but her mind was a serious issue. I didn't know that Aggs was going to be sent to us at this time.

The next day another owner had asked if we would be interested in training Aggie, he was working to convince Aggie's owner to send her to us. I'm not going to say I didn't initially hesitate to say yes, but the vision of her running kept going through my head and the hesitation didn't last more than a second. I told him I had to ask Ty, but I thought that we would be fine with training her. Ty didn't hesitate at all.

I went out to her owner's place to check her out. She was sweet and friendly, wanted attention. I was just about to convince myself that she can't be THAT bad when she just wigged out over whatever random noise she heard, flew out of the stall ninety miles an hour into her paddock and grabbed a heel. I'm sitting there checking out the cut thinking "Oh shit! Training her is definitely not going to be easy. At all."

A couple more days go by. My dad and I had loaded another horse in the trailer and then it was Aggie's turn. Two hours later we were on the road. I'm not going to lie, the temptation to say "Screw it!" and leaving her there was definitely in the back of my mind. On the other hand, I was so pissed that she was going to get on that trailer, even if it killed me, my dad, and her owner.

She eventually loaded and I learned a very valuable lesson about Aggie: If she doesn't want to do something, you're going to have one hell of a war on your hands for a very long time. There is no coaxing her. Fighting her doesn't work either. A load of patience and the hard-headedness to not give up until she gives in is key with her.

She loves other horses.

To keep from getting too deep into Aggie's "diffiulties", I'll just write a list of some of her antics we had to work through.

1. Saddling-let's just say it was like trying to dress an 1,000 lb. crack-head. Tying her up only made her worse. The saddle hit the ground and I hit the wall more times than I'd like to admit.

2. She refused to go on or around the track without a pony, with the exception of when she broke off from the pony to breeze.

3. After she figured out she had to go to the track without the pony, she decided bucking once the rider was legged up was a good idea.

4. Aggie would pretty much do the opposite of what she was asked. Left meant right, slower meant faster, and vice versa.

5. She didn't (and sometimes still doesn't) have the ability to handle being in a stall. She would pace, kick the walls, and pace some more. She's pretty good now, but it still isn't easy to keep her from stressing herself skinny.

6. She had no respect for personal space. If something set her off, it was like we weren't even there.

 7.Aggs would get herself completely worked up before a race. It takes four times as much work to get her calmly through a race day as any other horse, but we've managed to find a way. I don't think Aggie will ever be a horse that you can just show up a couple hours before she runs and get her ready. It's pretty much an all day affair.

8.You can't talk on a phone in her stall, she absolutely loses it. My ribs hurt for two weeks from learning that lesson.

9. She was a freak in the paddock, as I mentioned before. We schooled her a lot before we ever ran her, so never had any real problems. It still took a long time to get her to chill out and not start sweating up in there though. These last two or three times we've run her have been the first times that I felt like she was completely relaxed walking out onto the track. Yes, it took that long.

10. The first time we ran her two turns, she blew the second turn (like in Boise). We'd told the rider to just stay out of her way and not fight her, but Aggie's reputation had unfortunately preceded her. I don't blame him for not wanting to just sit there with loose reins, riding on faith. I can't imagine it's easy to do when a person had heard the horror stories of her mishaps in Boise. She has now won all but two or three of her races going two turns.

Dennis and Aggie. He was the first rider to get on her in Phoenix with absolutely no fear. She had taken his horse out when she blew the turn in the turf race and he still didn't hesitate to ride her. Dennis was key in our figuring out how Aggie needed to be ridden and who knows where we would have gotten with her if it weren't for him.

So I'm not bragging about the win or reaching the $100,000 mark. She's certainly not the first horse to do it by any means (I don't think there have been many Idaho-bred mares that have accomplished that, though). I am however, very proud of the hard work we put into her and the results we have gotten from doing so. It wasn't easy and took a whole bunch of effort to get her there. I'm not saying it was just Ty and I either. There have been several other people including equine therapists, trainers, exercise riders, jockeys, and grooms that have strongly contributed to her improvement over the years.

Dennis cares about Aggie as much as we do, so when he won his 2,000th race on her, we were all beyond thrilled. Five of her wins have been with him in the irons.

I also have to give some major credit to her owners. They have always been extremely patient and have never tried to force us to rush her. If Ty didn't feel like she was 100% for a race then they were okay with Aggie not running. They only want what is best for their horse and have been great whenever things didn't go as planned. Because of that, they're horse has been able to perform as well as she has.

This was Ty and I's eighth win with her and about $70,000 of her earnings were with us (again, not bragging as we've had her longer and had more starts with her than anyone else). She now has 31 starts with 11 wins, 3 seconds, and 5 thirds. We've won more races with her than any other horse. She is a lot more valuable as a broodmare now.

Aggie is way better than she used to be, yet will always be difficult to train one way or another. It's worth the effort. She is a truly amazing horse in so many different ways. Despite her eccentricities, she really is my absolute favorite and I'm so thankful for what Ty and I have both learned from her. Winning is always rewarding, it's even more so with Aggie because you truly earn every win you get.