I know that I’m a heartless bastard with absolutely no emotions. My kids tell me that all the time. So I need your help in understanding this.
Why in the name of whatever your heart holds Holy should any of us give a rat’s ass about Barbaro? It was a horse that could run fast. That’s it. Animals don’t have emotions like people do. They simply live from one survival impulse to the next. Trying to put our emotions onto a beast is like saying that my car likes me because it cranks every morning.
Barbaro was a horse that was bred and trained to run. The fact that it wanted to run at the Preakness doesn’t show that it had heart. It shows that it had been trained well and responded well to that training. It shows that the owners who had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the horse spent that money well, at least in the context of how they chose to spend it. That’s it. Nothing more.
Heart is a soldier that wakes up with the possibility of death everyday because he chose that life. Courage can be found at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where little kids with cancer try to be happy while they get poked, prodded and radiated in hopes of getting better. Beauty is the single mom that finds a way to be at her kids’ school functions, hold down a job, teach her kids morals and values without going nucking futs.
Don’t talk to me about how great an example of these things a horse is. If a work animal is where you find these things you have a very sad life.
–
TC
