Big Brown Smudge

By Lee Vander Boegh -

As an animal owner, I’m in a justifiable position to say that pets are crazy. That goes for all pets, including (but not limited to): Dogs, cats, fish, birds, relatives, ferrets, porpoises, Studebakers and - this is the big one for the day – horses.

It seems that every day more and more people are talking about Big Brown, and what caused him to lose the Belmont Stakes last weekend. His owners and trainers have gone over him head to hoof and haven’t found anything physically wrong. So, naturally, people are pointing fingers at the jockey. (Read about it here).

Apparently none of these people actually have pets of their own. If they did, they’d know that animals never make any sense. Just the other night my cat, Fred, purposely pushed his food bowl between the washer and dryer, then cried like a bankrupt celebrity because he couldn’t get to it.

And yesterday I saw him eating grass in the back yard. Pet owners, you know where I’m going with this… Low and behold, a nice, green puke stain was waiting on the carpet for me this morning.

So, horse people, blame Big Brown’s jockey all you want, but he probably had nothing to do with the lackluster race. When it comes to living beings, they have minds of their own. If you really want to get to the bottom of the issue, look between the washer and dryer – you might find a bowl that says “Big Brown.”