Dr. Bowman’s Inn Filling Fast
It’s like trying to remove sand that slides back into the hole after being piled at the edge. Sometimes it’s even worse, like trying to bail out a boat that is filling with water faster than it can be removed. The effort we speak of here belongs to Dr. Dick Bowman, whose pastures sometimes fill […]
A True Magician
The most famous magician and escape artist in the world at the turn of the century was one Harry Handcuff Houdini, who escaped from straitjackets, handcuffs, and storage chests chained shut and then dropped into the bay. He was so widely known that even novices capable of no more than beginning legerdemain were sometimes referred […]
A Novel Idea for a Racehorse
Who knows, maybe someday this particular thoroughbred will appear in a best-selling novel, assigned perhaps to literary flashbacks or streams of consciousness when the world was just starting to emerge in the young writer’s imagination. There might be scenes in which she directs the anxious horse through the next jump, reveling in the adrenaline rush […]
Paying it Forward
If a horse gets a second chance, shouldn’t that apply to a teenage boy, too? Or is it the other way around? It’s hard to tell sometimes at Sioux River Stables where the Pay it Forward program has been giving racehorses a chance to give young boys a chance, or vice versa as the case might […]
It Takes Three to Tango
Why would a man leave the land of the gauchos, the pampas and the tango for someplace miserably cold and snowbound during the winter and – it is now clear – the spring as well, a place devoid of the romance and history associated with his homeland. The answer is lengthy and includes a couple […]
Retired Racehorse Makeover
It’s a moniker, a handle, an appellation, a diminutive or, just plain and simple, a name. Yet, the process by which a racehorse acquires his or hers is sometimes complex, convoluted and misunderstood. Often, the horse’s dam or sire is taken into consideration, and just as often a process never before applied results in the given […]
Puppylove at First Sight
Thoroughbreds often evoke mystery, myth and misconception for those in the horse world unfamiliar with the breed. Sometimes Suzanne Wepplo can’t believe the ideas – some approaching folklore – that she hears about this horse, particularly thoroughbreds who’ve had careers at the racetrack. The beliefs run varied and deep, although Wepplo is doing her best […]
Wiley, The Wily One
A horse once owned by Dana Isaacson is now being used in mental health therapy after a racing career that included a victory in the Claiming Crown Iron Horse. His name is Superman Can. Local HBPA executive director Patrice Underwood was reminded of that tale recently because she, too, has a horse once raced by […]
Tiny… the Big Horse
She wasn’t quite sure what kind of horse he was the first time he walked past the barn, and there are times yet today, 12 years later, when she must wonder, too. This much seems clear: The horse doesn’t know when to quit working, and he chows down as if he hasn’t had another meal […]
SecretsforAshley Enjoying Rodeo
The lyrics to Hadley Murphy’s song might not fit Chris LeDoux’s lamentation of the loved one left behind while he chases the buckle every cowboy – or cowgirl – covets. The rodeo, in this instance, had to wait on Hadley. There is college, of course. Murphy is a senior at Winona State studying mathematics and […]