Originally Posted by
Thunderground
It's beautiful. I've read it several times. Good to know there are trainers like that out there (you must have been one of them, or you couldn't have noticed all that detail).
I have an unusual question. Do you think that there is such a thing as herd awareness and herd behavior, possibly at a subconscious level, in a group of horses going around the track? I suppose the underlying question is about herd behavior and hierarchy in wild horses. It's a strange question, but it has to do with patterns I've observed that determine those strange days when the longshots come in. I slowly learned to recognize those situations, but I don't know why it's happening. Could it be, for instance, that there are scenarios, in wild horses, where there is a sense of danger, and the herd responds to that by rearranging the order of the strong and the weak? In other words, if there was danger the strongest wouldn't race ahead, but would drop back to keep an eye on the weaker ones, and the weaker ones would know to go towards the front. It's just a hypothesis. If it's nonsensical, I have to look in another direction for an explanation.