Up Till Now: The Autobiography

ride—literally and figuratively. But that was the beginning of what has grown to be a substantial horse breeding business. A very expensive horse breeding business. Eventually I bought a ranch in Lexington, Kentucky, Belle Reve Farm, an eighty-seven-acre spread. At various times I’ve owned as many as sixty horses. But of all the horses I’ve owned, the most magnificent of them all was Sultan’s Great Day. A two-time World Champion in his category, Sultan’s Great Day was all black, and when he ran he looked like a silhouette in motion. Just looking at him made it clear his choice would have been to be running free in the woods; he did not easily accept being domesticated. I rode him at his leisure. We put him outto stud and his offspring have won almost one hundred World Grand Championships and Reserves in all the major saddlebred divisions. I admired him, loved him, and respected him. He was a great thrill to own.
    But by 2004 he was done. It was time to end his life. I wanted to be there when the vet put him down so I flew to the ranch. And then, on a warm spring afternoon, the two of us went for a final walk in the pasture. I led him into a shady dell and then stood there, content to watch him graze. Wanting to stop time, really. I was anticipating, and dreading, the moment when the vet would arrive to give him his final shots. All of a sudden, from across the field, three horses came running toward us. Great Day raised his head and then, in an instant, became the stallion of old, the great protector of the herd. His instincts took hold and on his feeble rear legs he reared high, proud, pawing the air with bandaged front feet, neighing his defiance. The other horses rightly turned tail, and ran.
    He was a champion. A champion.
    Great Day settled back down, defiant and proud. As someone remarked later, he went into the next world feeling like a stud horse.
    Probably the least expensive aspect of owning horses is the initial cost of the horse. It’s everything that comes after; the housing and feeding and training of that animal. The cost of medical attention and the proper equipment. If it’s a competition horse there is the cost of getting to the competition; the trucks and the feed and the care. And then there are the people who actually run the operation, the good people as well as those who quit and those who cheat. And then, if you choose, there are even more esoteric ways of spending your money—for example, consulting an animal psychic.
    While I was growing up in Montreal, I’m certain I never thought that someday I would be successful enough to consult an animal psychic. There is one woman I know who channels dogs.
    Fish who talk is a concept I have for an animated undersea movie. A woman who channels dogs is a person I’ve paid to find out what my dog is thinking. I don’t actually remember how I found her. But what happens is she focuses on an animal and sits at a computer andgoes into a trance and types the animal’s thoughts. This is for real, this is not seeing aliens in the desert again. Often she doesn’t actually see the dog or its environment, but she told someone I know that their dog was barking like crazy because someone had taken away its plaid blanket a month ago—and sure enough, the owners had thrown out that dog’s ripped plaid blanket.
    I consulted this psychic when a dog I loved very much got sick. This was Kirk, a champion Doberman who was dying from what is known as wobblers, a condition in which vertebrae come loose and impact on the central nervous system. When this dog started to show the first signs of wobblers I was desperate, hoping that I could save his life. So I went to see this woman whose expertise is talking to race horses before a race to build up their confidence.
    She lived in Southern California. I put the dog in the car and we drove to her house. When we got there she had a psychic conversation with my dog. Truthfully, at no point did I think of Leonard doing a mind-meld. “He says he’s got a headache,” she told me. “He’s been dropped on his head. Have you shipped him anywhere lately?”
    Several weeks earlier we had shipped him to Seattle to breed. “He says they dropped his crate. He’ll be fine, but you need to take him to an acupuncturist.”
    I believed every word she said. I mean, how could she have known that he’d recently been on a trip unless he told her? That is the extraordinary power of hope. And it is how I ended up taking him