Perhaps trainer Roger Attfield is just young at heart.
At 71 (and heading precipitously toward 72), he's already won honours as Canada's leading thoroughbred trainer eight times, and he's been in the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame for 12 years, but these days Attfield is trying something new: stuffed toys as training aids.
Musketier, a 9-year-old grey and one of Attfield's two entries in the $1.5-million Canadian International Championship Stakes on Sunday at Woodbine, is enamoured with a straggly stuffed chimpanzee with a backside that emits stuffing.
"You just try anything you can to keep them happy," Attfield said, just before Musketier drew post three in a record field of 16 for the International, a race that Attfield has never won. You can buy balls to hang in stalls, even road cones will do, and it's not uncommon to see horses paired up with goats, to stop the boredom of looking at four walls. They're just like kids."
Never mind that Musketier is long in the tooth for a racehorse and has his own collection of geriatric problems. Before Attfield began to train the horse, he suffered a condylar fracture in a hind leg which still has three screws in it.
But with teddy bear close at hand, Musketier has won $240,000, with a victory in the Elkhorn at Keeneland racetrack in Kentucky, a closing second in the Pan American Handicap at Gulfstream to Rahy's Attorney, and a win in the Singspiel Stakes at Woodbine in June.
Attfield got the idea for teddy bears from his girlfriend, Tina Konyot. She's a U.S. dressage rider who won a string of Grand Prix events last year with her black stallion Colecto V, who travels everywhere with an enormous teddy bear. The horse also has a load of toys in his stall, all apparently spurring him to excel at piaffe and passage.
Musketier, who has a few personality quirks, feels cramped in his stall, so Attfield keeps him outside in a pen near his office on the backstretch as much as possible. When Musketier is in his stall, the monkey lives in a back corner.
Musketier will interrupt his dinner to give intruders a dirty look if they try to remove this pet from his perch.
Attfield said he also got a stuffed toy – a rabbit – for his stellar 5-year-old mare, Miss Keller, who sleeps nuzzled against the teddy. Miss Keller will run in the $1-million E.P. Taylor Stakes at Woodbine on Sunday.
Miss Keller's toy is immaculate, but Musketier has gone through several teddies. "He chews the ears off them," Attfield said. But this time, Musketier has gone for the other end, nipping the toy's backside.
Musketier's toy looks as though he's in the $8 category. But it would be a good investment if he were to win the International. First prize is $900,000.