by Dan Rosenberg

The people I worked for were not my only mentors. I was lucky enough to work alongside the last of a breed of men who had spent their entire lives grooming horses.

One of the first was an old man whose name was "Wild" Bill Zook. I was just a kid, and Bill had stories that made my jaw drop. Fact and fiction surely were blurred, but Bill was old enough to have traveled as a small child with his parents to homestead in Montana in the late 1800s.

He told stories of putting the livestock up in the barn for the winter, never cleaning a stall, and in the spring jacking the barn up and moving it. He told of being a cowboy in the Southwest, riding fence alone for weeks at a time with only some flour and bacon, coffee, and a rifle. He talked about wild-cow milking contests, and one story of stopping a horse that was running away with him over the prairie by shooting him between the ears. True stories or not, Bill had quite a way with horses. They would do anything for him.

They knew horses

These old-timers were not well educated, as a rule. But they knew horses inside and out. They knew every trick in the book. And they were characters.

George weighed probably 300 pounds, always had a wad of tobacco in his mouth, always wore crisply ironed clothes and a big Stetson hat. I once playfully took his hat off his head and quickly learned that a man justifiably can be killed for doing so, no matter how playfully done. George could tuck a 100-pound sack of oats under each arm and walk off with them as though they were filled with Styrofoam.

Once in the breeding shed, a mare was acting stupid, would not stand still, and would not allow a twitch to be put on her. George watched us quietly for a few minutes before saying, "Give me that shank." He gave one quick jerk on the shank and a sharp word to get her attention and then looked her straight in the eye. She stood quietly. It was a great example of mind over matter.

Arriving at the barn one morning, I looked in a stall to see a mare with a hind leg that was so filled it looked like a stovepipe. Never having seen such swelling, I called George over to have a look. "Oh my god, it's the Limpin' Jesus!" he said. Later when the vet arrived, I learned that the mare had an inflammation of the lymphatic system called lymphangitis, but if you have ever seen a case I think you'll agree that "the Limpin' Jesus" is appropriate.

Jerry's wife shot him in the stomach while he was asleep but did not kill him. When he went back home after getting out of the hospital, I commented that he probably wouldn't want to live with her anymore. "Aw, she didn't mean nothin' by it," Jerry said. I don't know, but I sort of thought she might have.

Once he said to me, "I don't know why they call them barren mares. They ain't bearin' nothing." Jerry worked with the broodmares and was as quiet with them as could be. He could walk up to mares that did not want to be caught. Skittish foals came right up to him and would lead alongside him. Watching him and picking up on how he behaved around horses was a great experience.

Many in this older generation of horsemen were drinkers, which was generally tacitly accepted if not discussed openly. A favorite place for them to hide whiskey bottles was in the oat bin. It was mean of me, I know, but when the oats got low in the bin, it was fun to open the chute to allow oats from the loft to come pouring into the bin below and watch them all come running as they heard their bottles being buried three feet deep.

Rusty water

One old man, Stub, had worked in the foaling barn for 40 years and was pretty good at telling when a mare would foal. Every afternoon just before quitting time, I would make my last check in the foaling barn, and there would be Stub with a glass of bourbon. "I just don't know what it is, but every day about this time the water in this barn gets rusty," he said.

Ed Houp was a frail 85 when he finally retired. One day we were bringing in a large group of mares, one in each hand with Ed in the lead. One of the mares farther back bit another mare in the behind, and in the ensuing ruckus five or six of them ran over Ed. I was terrified. We were all asking, "Are you all right?" as he stood up, brushed himself off, and said, "Shoot, you can't hurt a feather!"

Ed had a scoop shovel that he had used for more than 50 years. Not the plastic or aluminum shovels used today, but a heavy steel shovel. And he kept that shovel spotlessly clean and shiny by washing and drying it every time he used it and filing at the edge when it got nicked. When he retired we gave him his shovel with his name on a brass plate. I hope someone in his family still treasures that shovel.

Generational change

As this older generation reached retirement and as Thoroughbred racing and breeding transitioned from more of a game to more of a business, many younger and better educated men and women were drawn to Lexington and other breeding areas to learn the business by working as grooms.

Many of us are now managing farms, and I know we all have our own memories of the old-timers and what they taught us. I think we all lament the fact that these men are not around to teach the next generation.

The Lexington area changed, too. Toyota and other businesses came to town and created new jobs. Grooms then typically worked 6 1/2 or seven days a week with no health insurance or pension plan. All of a sudden, the new businesses offered weekends and holidays off, health insurance, and pensions. Plus, you didn't have to work in the snow, rain, or heat of summer.

We could not find enough people to take care of our horses. Most farms went to six-day workweeks, wages rose, and farms began to offer health benefits just to compete. There always have been—and hopefully always will be—young Americans wanting to be in the horse business.

Often now, they come from college equine programs around the country for summer internships or permanent jobs. For instance, the Kentucky Equine Management Institute (KEMI) has done a tremendous job of bringing many of them to Kentucky, as have programs at Midway College and the University of Kentucky. But we still could not attract enough grooms.

Hispanic workers started showing up, first in a trickle and then in significant numbers. I remember one of the first that I hired. His name was Chico, but the Kentucky boys could not (or would not) get that right and called him "Taco." These newcomers, both men and women, quickly proved themselves to be good workers with a good feel for a horse and a desire to improve their lives.

I was very concerned about a sick yearling confined to a stall, so I went to check on him several times a day. I walked into the barn and saw his groom working at the other end of the barn but wearing headphones and listening to his Walkman. I went in and out of the yearling's stall and left the barn, and he never noticed that I had been in the barn. A few hours later, the same thing, and this time I walked out of the barn annoyed.

The next morning, I walked into the barn, saw the groom with his headphones, went in and out of the stall unnoticed, but this time decided to say something to him. I walked up to him intending to say, "I don't ever want to see you with those headphones on again." But something stopped me, and I asked instead, "What are you listening to?" "English," he said. Another lesson learned.

Global workforce

To fill our labor needs, we also started obtaining trainee visas for young people from overseas to come work for periods of 12 to 18 months. We have had fantastic people from Canada, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. They learned from us and how we do things, and we learned about other cultures and other methods used in raising Thoroughbreds.

One trainee learned a particularly valuable lesson about American wildlife. Cleaning a stall one day, he encountered a strange small animal, which he poked with his pitchfork. Big mistake. He ran out of the stall screaming and throwing up because the animal was a skunk, and this poor guy got it at point-blank range.  These men and women became ambassadors for us. They developed friendships and networked with other young people in the industry from Kentucky and around the world. I am proud to say that many of them are now highly successful in their home countries, and we remain in touch.

Well into the 1970s, only a very few farms had female grooms. Women entering the workforce have also been an extremely positive development. The old-timers did not think women could handle the physical work or tough horses, and they were afraid that men and women working together would lead to yielding to temptation rather than working.

The old-timers were proved wrong by the women on all accounts. (Although I did have two grooms once who seemed to have mistaken the hay room for the breeding shed.) At a recent KEMI lecture, a young woman asked me if I thought there was a glass ceiling for female managers. The class was predominantly women. "Look at this class," I said. "Who else are they going to hire?"

Not enough horse owners appreciate how hard grooms work, how important they are to the welfare of their horses, and how dedicated they are to those horses. Grooms spend more time with the horses under their care than most of us spend with our spouses or children, and they know them as well or better.

A good groom keeps his or her horses healthy and happy. A captain of industry will rarely walk onto the production floor and ask a worker operating a machine what he thinks of the product or the process. But that same man will ask a groom how his horse is doing and value his opinion.

When an ice storm shut down all of Central Kentucky in 2003, grooms for farms across the Bluegrass made it to work knowing they would have no room to warm up in or even a cup of coffee. They showed up because they knew the horses needed them.

I'm very proud of those who worked at Three Chimneys Farm and have risen through the ranks to positions of responsibility in the Thoroughbred industry. I claim no credit for their success but like to think their experiences at Three Chimneys were at least a positive influence. And I especially value my friendship with each of them.

Dan Rosenberg, owner of Rosenberg Thoroughbred Consulting, is a consultant  to "Farm Management News" and a regular columnist