A recent letter to the editor about my smugness and being on high horses really Mark
Goresmade me stop and think for a minute. I thought to myself “Gee, I bet Canterbury Park is opening soon.”

I hopped online and, as usual, I was right. Live horse racing begins this Saturday, and I couldn’t be more excited or self-complacent for having remembered that race day is upon us.

I’ll never forget the day I hit my first big payout at the track. This is mostly because my memory has so much more awesomeness than the average person, but also because it was an exciting day. It was a warm, sunny spring Saturday, the kind of Saturday that doesn’t exist in Minnesota anymore due to my brilliant theory of local cooling, and there was a crisp, light breeze from the northwest that carried with it just enough manure extract to sting the nostrils.

My complex betting strategy of predicting the odds-on favorite to place and collect my 10 cents on the dollar, wait for a half hour for the next race and repeat just wasn’t going according to plan. I decided I needed to mix it up with the common folk, rub elbows with the average Joes. I made my way to the paddock not knowing that a life-altering event would soon take place.

I was trying to fit in with people who I would never associate with normally when the No. 3 horse caught my eye. I believe the horse was called Watch Your Own Bobber. Our eyes locked in a deep stare. I walked closer, and the horse kept staring at me. When I got to the fence, she actually talked to me. I’ll never forget those four words that Watch Your Own Bobber said to me that day. She said, and this is absolutely true, she said, “Neigh, neigh, whinny, snort.”

I knew this was a good sign. The last horse I had talked to just kept telling me, “Hee haw, hee haw,” and I think he is still trying to finish. I bet the rest of my budget that day on Bobber and ended up a winner. Since that day, I have been able to add “horse whisperer” to the long list of ways I’m a better person than everyone.

Nowadays when I go to the races, even though I’m a horse whisperer, I’ll still read through the racing program. I clearly am not the intended audience for the programs, and I don’t even fully understand half the jargon they use, but I still like to mock the way they go about writing them. They use all these numbers and codes that only a select audience understands to predict the winning horses when all they have to do is leave their smugness aside and pick the horse that tells you “Neigh, neigh, whinny, snort.”

 Mark Gores, a 27-year-old realtor, lives in Prior Lake with his wife, Emily. To comment on this column, call the editor at (952) 345-6378 or e-mail markgores@yahoo.com or editor@plamerican.com.