pet connection

So, you go around thinking that Harper is a pretty cool name, shared only by Harper Lee and Charlaine Harris’s fictional character Harper Connelly (who finds dead people; sort of apropos for a dog that likes finding dead things). Then you meet a woman at Starbucks, who fusses over your cute Cavalier puppy as the two Labs in her truck look on. As she walks away, you say, ‘Harper, come,’ and she turns around, surprised. ‘What did you call your dog?’

Turns out one of her Labs is also named Harper. After alt-rock folkie musician Ben Harper. ‘My boyfriend will be disappointed that we don’t have the only Harper,’ she said.

Not only does he not have the only Harper, there are six Labs in the Los Angeles area named Harper, not to mention three German Shepherds, two Golden Retrievers, a Beagle and, well, you get the picture. Twenty-two Harpers just in the LA area. The LA Times has a new search function that allows you to plug in your dog’s name and find out how many other dogs in the city share it. There are only three Twylas (four, if you count mine) but 1,594 Bellas.

Gina, Joe, Jerry and I enjoyed our afternoon at Del Mar. I used my patented “pick the horse with a name you like” method of betting. For the third race, I advised Jerry to put his $2 on Mr. Wolverine or Bold Chieftain. He placed a bet on each one and walked away with a whopping $4.80 when Bold Chieftain won. I went all out in the ninth race and put $10 to win on Silver Z (I used to drive one). That was silly, because Zenyatta, an unbeaten filly, was running. ‘The only way she’ll lose is if her starting gate doesn’t open,’ we heard. But that’s why they call it gambling.

What an amazing race! Silver Z was out in front, Zenyatta toward the rear. Maybe it was my lucky day! Then, still looking as if she were taking a stroll in the park, Zenyatta moved up. And up. And up. And won. It was such a pretty thing to see, I didn’t even care that Silver Z lost.

Sadly, we also saw the ugly side of racing. Crazy Cash broke down in the seventh race. You could tell it was going to happen. His jockey tried to slow him down, but the horse tossed him and then you could see the leg go. He was taken away in the ambulance but later euthanized. Rest easy, Crazy Cash. It’s difficult to reconcile the beauty and the rush of watching horses race with the awful reality that even under the best of circumstances, horses don’t always survive the competition.

Trainers like Kristin Mulhall, with whom Gina and I spent a little time today, give me hope for the sport, but I’d sure like to see a lot more of them.