by Dan Rosenberg

My greatest thrill at the racetrack was watching Gorgeous win the 1989 Ashland Stakes (G1) at Keeneland Race Course. Winning a Grade 1 race with a homebred and in front of your friends and peers is just about as good as it gets.

Robert Clay and his father, Albert, owned Gorgeous's dam, Kamar, in partnership with Warner Jones. Kamar had a yearling filly from Slew o' Gold's first crop and a weanling filly by Seattle Slew when Jones decided to disperse all his bloodstock.

We assumed we could not afford either Kamar or the Seattle Slew filly at the November 1987 dispersal sale, and we were right. Kamar, in foal to Danzig, sold for $2.6-million. The Seattle Slew filly, subsequently named Seaside Attraction, went for $1.05-million and won the Kentucky Oaks (G1) in 1990.

Still, we wanted to keep a filly from the family and bought the Slew o' Gold filly privately in July. Robert asked, "What do you think of the name 'Gorgeous'?" "Great name," I said. "I'm sure it's taken." It wasn't, and Gorgeous was gorgeous in every way. She won $1,171,370 and gave us a lot of thrills, including beating champion Bayakoa (Arg) in the 1990 Apple Blossom Handicap (G2) at Oaklawn Park.

She was one of the favorites for that year's Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1) at Belmont Park when I got a phone call from trainer Neil Drysdale saying she had injured herself and would not be running. It was like getting kicked in the stomach. Robert was on a plane on his way to New York. The press was calling, asking me to confirm the rumors that she was being scratched.

I didn't want Robert to walk into the lobby of his hotel and hear the news from someone else. This was well before cell phones, e-mail, or text messaging, but I did succeed in getting to Robert first.

We were heartsick. But that was the race in which Go for Wand went down. I couldn't help but think how lucky we were as I watched that tragedy. Gorgeous would have been right there with her. We still had our filly. Gorgeous was also a great mare for us, producing one stakes winner and three stakes-placed fillies. She died in a freak paddock accident and, because of her importance to Three Chimneys Farm, is buried in the stallion cemetery alongside Slew o' Gold rather than in the broodmare cemetery.

Lochlin arrives

I got a phone call one day from a man I had never heard of, telling me a story about his mare and asking if he could board her at Three Chimneys. That was the beginning of a lasting friendship with Earl and Shirley Daynes. They had claimed Lochlin and ran her successfully a few times, including a third-place finish in the 1989 Mazarine Stakes (G3) at Woodbine.

Lochlin subsequently developed a large, unexplained abscess on her gaskin that opened and ulcerated all the way to the bone. She was shipped to the University of Florida Veterinary School at Gainesville, where it was quickly determined that she was unlikely to survive and euthanasia was recommended. The insurance carrier agreed. Earl and Shirley loved this mare. Although they were told that the cost of treatment would very likely exceed the mare's insured value, they elected to persevere, and after a long and costly battle, the mare made a full recovery.

The Dayneses wanted to breed Lochlin to Seattle Slew. Because she had no family to speak of, the application was denied. Earl and Shirley believed in this mare because of the heart she had shown on the racetrackÑshe finished in the money in 12 of 16 starts and earned more than $100,000Ñand because of the heart she had shown in surviving her injury.

They believed in her so much that they went out on the open market and bought a no-guarantee season to Seattle Slew. She aborted the foal, and her second by Seattle Slew died without racing. The Dayneses put up the money to buy a season to Wild Again. The resulting colt, Wild Jazz, won four of nine starts, including a small stakes race at Calder Race Course.

They anted up again for a Seattle Slew season. That foal, a filly named Lochlin Slew, sold for $1.25-million as a two-year-old in 1999. After producing a Capote filly, Lochlin returned to Wild Again in 1998 and produced graded stakes-placed Stephentown. A subsequent foal by Pulpit, Da Cardinal, also was stakes-placed. Their faith in Lochlin was justified.

She was the only horse the Dayneses owned, and they came to Kentucky often to see her. I have only rarely seen such devotion from an owner toward a mare. They loved her, they took care of her, and she did not let them down.

When Shirley developed cancer, she and Earl continued to travel to Kentucky to visit Lochlin. It was easy to see what this mare meant to both of them by looking in their eyes.  Today, at 21, Lochlin is pensioned at Three Chimneys, and I am expecting to see Earl again this spring.

Tough to catch

Some mares leave a lasting impression even though I cannot remember their names. One was a mare who was blind in her right eye and very hard to catch. You had no chance whatsoever approaching her from the left. Even from her blind side, you had to approach her from downwind and very quietly. And when you did take hold of her halter, you had to hang on tight because she would try to bolt. Once she realized you had her, she was fine. As much as she was a pain, she was a challenge I enjoyed.

Other hard-to-catch mares I would have shot dead out of frustration if I carried a gun. There are all sorts of tricks to catch horses that do not want to be caught and ways we can slowly alter their behavior to make them easier to catch. But some are just plain too smart, or too stupid, as the case may be.

The toughest I remember also shall remain nameless. My good friend Steve Johnson, who was there at the time, remembers her just as I do (although he was no help in coming up with the name). She would stand at the far end of the field or paddock just looking at you. She would stand quietly and let you walk within ten feet of her and then bolt to the other end of the field, turn around, and stare at you again.

You could not corner her with ten men because she would run you over. You could not tire her out because by the time you had walked all the way back across the field she had caught her breath. She did not care about oats. She did not care if it was cold and raining. She just did not want to be caught.

And spending all that time trying to catch her always put us behind in our work, which did not help our attitude and compounded her reasons for not wanting to be caught. Finally, she would tire of the game. I hated her. If it had been up to me, she would have spent day and night in a stall until I could get her to a sale.

One other mare stands out forever in my memory. I do remember her name but will not identify her to protect both the innocent and the guilty. A client called to say his trainer had let him know his filly was ready to be retired to the broodmare ranks and to ask me to arrange shipping to the farm. I asked the assistant trainer if she was okay to turn out. He said: "She hasn't been out of the stall for six months. She's three-legged lame."  She got off the van and limped into the barn with an ankle the size of a softball. Radiographs revealed a fracture that should have been repaired surgically months earlier. The prognosis was poor. Her owner came to see her and stood at her stall quietly while huge tears poured down his face. How could I ever forget her?

Rod the teaser

One stallion is buried in the Three Chimneys broodmare cemetery. His name is Rodriguez, and he is among my favorite horses of all time. Rod was a teaser. A big bull of a horse at 16 hands and weighing probably 1,400 pounds, he was by a teaser and out of a nurse mare. His ears had been frostbitten as a foal, and the tips had fallen off so they were very short and rounded on the ends, very much resembling a teddy bear.

Although an aggressive teaser, Rod could be handled with a shoelace. He never offered to bite or strike or kick. He was very vocal and would talk to his mares. No matter how docile a mare appeared, if he wasn't interested in her, she was not in heat. No matter how aggressive a mare behaved toward him, he would not back down if she was in heat. He would quietly mount the toughest maiden mares no matter how often they kicked at him. He would come down so gently he would not have broken an egg placed on her hind quarters. He was my teaser into his 20s, when he finally retired. And when he died, I thought it most appropriate to bury him with his mares. I like to think of them all together now in a big, lush, sunny pasture just enjoying being horses.

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