Hello, this is Tom Battaglia and welcome to the podcast. Today’s show is how can one trainer claim a horse and immediately show improvement two or three weeks later? When I’m handicapping a race, one of the things I’ll look for is a horse making his first start for new Barn. You know you always check the stat how the barn is the first time with their claims. You know 20% is pretty good. 30% thirty six percent, 40%. You know how do these trainers claim these horses, and then immediately that horse shows improvement. This is especially true when a good trainer claims from a bad trainer. That’s the ultimate angle you want. When a good trainer claims from a from a bad trainer, this is how he improves on that horse. Now I’m speaking from experience. I had some some really good luck when I was growing up. I got to work with some really good people on the backside learning about, you know, training what goes into it and all that. I worked for trainer. His name was Ron Powell. Probably one of the nicest guys on the track you’ll ever meet him and I were. We became really good friends, best friends. He passed away a few years ago. Great guy. Anyway he had about 56 horses in training at his peak and he was really good first time off a claim because he would always look for trainers who really didn’t know what they were doing. You know 10% or less he would claim from them and here’s what he would do to improve on his horse. The very first thing he would do when the horse got back to the barn after the races had the vet come over and scoped him. Now I’m not sure if you’ve heard that term or if you know what I’m talking about, but it’s pretty crazy. So what the vet does is he brings over. It almost looks like a garden hose, not quite as long, but you know pretty long with a with a scope
on the end of it and what he would do is just take this tube like hose and just start feeding it down the horses nostril, like all the way down into his lungs and it didn’t seem to bother the horse, but for me the first time I saw it, I was like, holy crap, you know this is. It was weird. Anyways, once the the the tube gets inserted into the lung, the vet. Looks for any sort of a lung infection and we would love it if we claimed a horse or if he claimed the horse and the vet immediately found a lung infection. Meaning the horse wasn’t breathing properly and at some of the smaller tracks. For sure, lung infections are all over the place. In the backside, you’d be surprised you know how prevail and it is over there. The second thing, of course, if it was an infection we would get medication treated three to five days. The infection is gone and you have a brand new horse. The second thing, now this is not in any order after that, but one of the other things he would do was he would have the dentist come over the dentist. Look at the teeth and you know if the horses mouth is sore. If his teeth are bothering him, he’s not going to take instructions from the writer, and he’s not going to run his best race because he’s in pain. So if the dentist found a bad tooth or a teeth, this is crazy too. He would pull out what should look like. Bolt cutters. That’s the best way. Maybe they are bolt cutters. I didn’t get to see him that close, but very similar to bolt cutters. Just put it on the horses tooth and just squeeze pop. The tooth had come out come flying and it was done again. It didn’t bother the horse at all, but for me I hate the dentist. So I was like holy **** are you? You know you’re kidding me, but now the horse was fine. One of the last things that they would do is check the shoes. He would have the blacksmith come over, replace you, know all four shoes. Men. You
have to think that a smalltime trainer who’s struggling to win races you know this stuff costs money, so he’s going to cut corners somewhere. Maybe it’s the dentist. Maybe it’s the shoes you know. Also, all feed is not created equal. Just like for humans, it seems like the healthier we eat, the more expensive it is, and the junk food is the cheapest that I’m not sure why it is, but it’s like that for the horses too. So we start to take all these things better feed. Take a look at his lungs. Make sure he’s not sick. New shoes. Make sure his mouth OK when you just roll those things together. You can show immediate improvement on a horse almost right away, so when a sharp trainer claims from a bad trainer, you know that’s how he’s able to improve on the horse so quickly. Well, hope you enjoyed it. Have a good one. And like always, let’s get some winners.