I lived on a Thoroughbred horse farm in Maryland from age 11 until I left home at 18. My dad trained horses for our landlord and also had his own Thoroughbred, Jiminy Christmas.
Thoroughbred horses are working animals, not pets. We could not ride them, that was only for the jockeys. They are very feisty and you always had to be on the lookout since they loved to bite and kick.
There was always lots to be done on the farm. I helped with the hay baling by riding on the wagon. As the bailer spit out the bales, my brother and I would stack them up neatly. We also cleaned the stables. Danny would be in one stall and me in the one across from him with the manure spreader backed up between us. We cleaned the stalls with pitchforks, throwing the manure into the spreader. I remember Danny being very strong since his forkfuls of manure would travel through the air, completely missing the spreader, usually landing somewhere on me!
I thought the worse job was feeding them. To me, they were giant, biting, kicking machines and I remember easing their stall doors open quietly, throwing the feed in their buckets and slamming the door shut quickly before they knew what happened.
My dad has a picture from the 70's in his apartment of the winners circle. Danny is standing there in his striped bell bottoms and newsboy cap, holding Jiminy Christmas and Dad is standing beside of him with his stogie and handlebar mustache and I can tell my the look in that horse's eyes, he couldn't wait to get home to bite me.
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