Big Sexy,
Thanks for your updates. Keep up the good work and best wishes for a great 2026.

In all fairness, Per improves off just about everyone. Quite often I claim horses and improve off others also, and they don’t necessarily improve once I lose them. I’m no different than anybody else. Some horses succeed on my program and some don’t. But if you watch enough races up here, I rarely have horses going out that are crippled and with big head nods. But if one races poorly and gets beat 15 lengths, mine are constantly getting put on the list for no reason. She’ll find something “oh he’s lame
Left hind” on a horse that has never been lame in its life and even after the driver tells her he isn’t lame, just raced like shit.  Then in that case, they get put on for being sick, without showing any signs of being sick. Is it right for a vet to just speculate that a horse is sick just because it got beat 15 lengths? They don’t scope it or pull blood or even look at it for more than 20 seconds. Couldn’t there be other reasons? Could the horse have shut its air off, or maybe got driven like an idiot and got tired? Obviously like anybody else, I have the odd one that hurts itself in a race. It happens, and obviously those are justified. But I’ve had wayyyy more horses scratched and/or put on the list than any other trainer up here in the last 10 years, and it’s not because I am trying to race lame horses that shouldn’t be racing.

Last night had nothing to do with me lol. Hennessy was filling in as vet. Flight Crew didn’t race great but wasn’t horrible for the conditions. The claimant noticed a trickle of blood in one nostril, likely just a broken blood vessel or something, and low key started freaking out, calling for the commission vet and the judges to reverse the claim, he should get his money back blah blah blah. The horse drank two buckets of water and wasn’t in any distress at all. The claim cannot be reversed. We have new rules coming into place next year that might have reversed the claim in this case, but that’s not til February of 2026. As of right now, a horse could drop dead in the race and it is yours. I’m somewhat a fan of the new rules coming in, but as of right now, the claimant has to take this horse home. He kept causing a stink and earned himself a long term vets list for bleeding and has to qualify. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I guess Hennessy did scope her afterwards and she showed a bunch of mucous with a tiny bit of blood. Consistent with being a bit sick, which is how she raced.

i’m getting quite an education of this guy Mike I suspect his lackey/trigger will come on to defend him