The show, going on

In racing, as in show biz, the show must go on.  Which is another way of saying that the show itself is paramount — more important than the individual performers.

Or, to pilfer a line from show biz, our troubles don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

When people ask me what it’s like to own horses, I tell them that there’s no feeling like watching your horse win.  I tell them there’s no happier place in the world than the winner’s circle.  I tell them it’s like watching your favorite sports team win, times a million.  If they push just a little, I tell them about our first victory, our cheap horse beating other cheap horses, a win that made us feel as if we’d won the Derby.

If they’re perceptive enough, they make the obvious connection: the highs are so high precisely because the lows can be so low.  All we cherish comes dear.

Cherish we do, though, in part because the good times are fleeting.  There’s always another race.  There’s always somebody else whose turn it is in the winner’s circle.  And bad news is always lurking around the good.  So you embrace the good times when they come and steel yourself against the bad news.

It’s been that kind of week.

On Monday, the vet called to tell us that our brave filly Higher Authority had lost her battle with pleuropneumonia and that the time had come to put her down.

We did that.

In truth, it was an easy decision.  She had had the best available care from the beginning of her troubles — a condylar fracture — to the end.  We had employed the best people in the best facilities with the best equipment.  They had done the best they could.  We had fought, and we had lost; simple as that.

And yet not so simple.  She was a kind filly with a gentle way around people and a competitive spirit on the track.  Everyone in the barn loved her; everyone who came in contact with her was struck by her winning personality.  She moved with an easy athleticism that promised future win photos.  She was, in her dappled chestnut coat, the physical manifestation of a bright future.  She was ours.

And then, Monday evening, she was gone.

This morning, one of the partners in Higher Authority sent me an email entitled “Congrats.”

He sent it because Tuesday afternoon, our Kim’s Dixie Tune — once himself the physical manifestation of a bright future, these days another hard knocker with a little bit more talent that that — ran a good race to earn a solid second-place finish.

It wasn’t quite a win, and even a win wouldn’t have — couldn’t have — erased the sting of losing our filly.  This game is cruel that way.

It was, in fact, just another race on just another day at Delaware Park.  But, still, it was a race, and a decent one at that. 

It was the show, going on, and we — sadder, perhaps wiser, but not so wise that we won’t expose ourselves to heartbreak again in search of those elusive highs — go with it.