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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
One of your alter egos has an alter ego! Here's the article from our paper. I will put the link because of the picture (whoo-wee!), but be warned there are ads, including a danged pop-up. courier-journal.com > Sports
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Joe Friday is tops – and that's just the facts
By C. Ray Hall
The Courier-Journal
If Joe Friday were human, he'd be a lot more compelling than Joe Friday, the television detective of few words and fewer expressions.
Joe is only 4 years old but apparently bound for as much glory as a show horse can handle. And he already has a better back story than the other Joe Friday.
Born on Friday the 13th in the heart of Kentucky. Named for a TV icon. Been in the show ring five times and won every time, by unanimous decision. Apparently makes some spectators forget to breathe.
And, on the budding-folk-hero end of the scale, he doesn't mind an occasional chew of tobacco -- though "chew" might be too delicate a word. He'll just have whatever his trainer is having.
"Beech-Nut," said John Conatser, "because it's the mildest I can find."
Conatser's wife, Tammie, explained the horse's taste for tobacco: "Hey, he was born in Kentucky."
Is bourbon far behind?
"He doesn't drink," Tammie said, "but if he did, it would be Budweiser."
Kenny and Ceil Wheeler of Keswick, Va., own Joe Friday. Their assets also include Anheuser-Busch distributorships in Virginia and Arkansas.
"I'm a beer salesman by day," Kenny said two nights ago at the World's Championship Horse Show in Freedom Hall. "This is just a hobby."
The Wheelers bought Joe Friday, a dark chestnut gelding, from the Conatsers a year ago. Joe lives on the Conatsers' Carriage Lane Farm near Nicholasville, Ky.
Joe Friday is a fine harness horse who might redefine the word "fine." His latest victory came Monday in the world championship show at Freedom Hall. He could return to the ring tonight against other 4-year-olds -- or shoot for greater glory against older, much more experienced horses Saturday night in the $15,000 Fine Harness World's Grand Championship.
"I'm thinking Saturday," Conatser said yesterday, a few hours after the horse's 5 a.m. workout.
Joe Friday isn't one of those regal horses who haul stern-looking humans in fancy coats and boots. Joe is a regal horse who pulls a 300-pound buggy -- and 220 pounds of Kenny Wheeler, who's in the driver's seat.
"It's just a whole lot of power in front of you," said Wheeler, who is 40. "But he's a very smart horse. He's a very kind horse. There's not a bad bone in his body.
"And when the crowd gets behind him, it's like pouring gasoline on a fire."
If Joe Friday were human, his handlers would probably couch their praise the way pro football coaches do. But Joe's competitors can't read -- or paste newspaper clippings to their lockers or vow to rearrange Pretty Boy's face this weekend. So Joe's intimates are free to speak their minds.
The only trouble is finding adequate praise.
"There really aren't any other horses with the physical ability to go with the perfect conformation (build) this horse has," Conatser said.
Can he think of a human comparison?
"I'd say maybe he's an equine Tiger Woods."
Chantell Coetzee (pronounced Coat-ZAY-uh) came to America from South Africa seven years ago to learn to train horses. She was Joe Friday's groom at his former home, the Nelson Green Stable near Nicholasville.
"The minute he hits that ring, he just explodes," she said. "You can't help but look at him."
Even if you stop him -- in a photograph, say -- he looks as good as he does in motion.
"You can look at any horse's picture, here and there you see kind of a bad one," Coetzee said. "Every picture of Joe Friday, you say, 'This is the best picture,' and the next one is even better -- and the next one."
Same with the superlatives. They just get better.
Renee Zubrod, a former world champion rider who is now a trainer in Prospect, Ky., said: "Joe Friday is, bar none, the most impressive horse I've ever seen of my time."
(Zubrod is 21, so her serious horse-watching stretches back only 16 years. Still, that's not inconsiderable praise.)
"The way he sets himself up, the way that he moves, is just phenomenal," she said. "That's what you want every horse to look like. That's the ideal horse -- his conformation, his personality, his manners. He's the whole package."
More on his personality: "He looks awful mean in the stall," Coetzee said. "When you go in there, he bends his ears and he shakes his head. But he's not mean at all. He's just a little boy."
Like the star he's becoming, Joe Friday kicks it up a level for the show.
"At home he's just kind of laid-back and even playful," said Kenny Wheeler. "When he sees the show ring, something clicks. Something just changes in his temperament, and he's just all show horse."
Wheeler talks as if the humans who orbit around Joe Friday are almost incidental.
"Whoever trains him or drives him or shows him, we're just lucky to be around an animal like that," he said. "We didn't make him special. He just happened to come into our lives. He's what's good about the whole equation, not us." Joe Friday
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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cool! 
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