“I’m from New York. I moved here in 1971 because of my job. I trained race horses. At Santa Anita. I walked into the racetrack in Belmont Park in Belmont, New York and just started walking horses. Just walked in. And that’s how I started. Now, when I was 21, I became a trainer. I was the youngest trainer at Santa Anita at the time. I trained from 1974 to 2002. I worked for one employer. I was a private trainer. Very good job.
I started in New York, working there. And then I moved to California with a trainer. And then I started training on my own. Yeah, it was a long time, but … you have to learn. You have to know what you’re doing. If the horse isn’t happy, you know the legs, how they get with duration – it’s a lot of work. You have to make a schedule if you want to run a horse in a particular race. Yeah, you have to train them for that distance, you know? Whether he goes 5 furlongs, ⅝ a mile, maybe a mile and the eighth or further.
I don’t know [why I like horses]. I think it’s in my genes. My grandfather had a milk cart that was pulled by a horse. In Queens, New York. So that was the first horse in the family. My grandfather loved horses, but my parents – they liked horses, but they didn’t care. I was the only one in the family that wanted to be a horse trainer.
A favorite horse I trained was Lou Rowan. He raced about five years. Five years, that’s all. I bought him in Kentucky as a yearling. I paid $8,000 for him at a yearling sale. That’s kind of a low price. You know, they can go for a lot of money. They can go for, like, 10 million. I don’t have 10 million. So I bought him for myself. He won stake races. You know, and I ended up selling him for $135,000. Plus, he won about $100,000 in purses. So he was, he was a really good horse. He was a thoroughbred race horse.
I used to show German Shepherds. And I raised 12 champions. And I was doing that the same time as I was training race horses. And sometimes I would have a dog show, 8 o’clock in the morning. And so I go to the dog show. And then I get back in the car and rush to Santa Anita because I have a horse in the races.
2003, I had the number 3 top producing female in the United States. Her name was Ponca Hill’s Desi of Zoni. In 2003 also, her son was named Zoni’s Kurt Russell, like the actor. And he was the number six dog in the United States. Not bad for a small time guy. I was very smart. I’d look for bloodlines, conformation, and they’re so much like horses, you know. You look for the movement. And so, that was probably … the last year I showed dogs was probably 2006. It was too much for my ankle. Because I fractured this ankle, five chips. Five fractures. And they told me I wouldn’t be able to walk again. It took me six months before I could walk in crutches. And I eventually walked again.
Then I decided I wanted to get back into training, if my ankle would hold up. I was going to go back 2011. But I wasn’t feeling good. I was feeling, started feeling bad. And then I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, stage 4. So I had to go for surgery, and I was 50/50 coming through the surgery. You know, doctor said, ‘Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t.’ Took my thyroid out. After, I did 22 shots of radiation. Here, it was in my neck, they took ¾ of my sixth vertebrae. Right? So they had to go in there, fuse it – I still have a brace in my neck. 22 shots of radiation. And after radiation, I had to go in for one dose of radioactive iodine. They put you in a room, and everything’s covered in plastic because you’re radioactive. And even the toilet bowl is made out of steel.
The first day, they give you the pill of radioactive iodine. And it goes through, wherever in your body all over where you have the thyroid cancer. Even though with surgery, I had a couple things here in the lungs. So that’s where the radiation iodine comes in and goes and kill it. And uh, I was in there like four days. Every day, the doctor comes in with a Geiger counter to see how radioactive you are. He stands like fifteen feet away from you. And the nurses come in, and there’s a big curtain across the entrance to the room, and they put your stuff in the tray – food – and they run out! You have to change your bed, and your sheets, and all that. Three showers a day because you got to get that stuff out of your system.
The first day wasn’t bad. The next day, boy I – I mean, I could barely change the sheets on my bed. It was very bad. Weaker. Very, very weak. You know, I mean, I was having trouble just getting out of bed and walking. And plus, I had to shower three times a day.
So far, everything’s normal. The only thing with thyroid cancer is there’s always a chance it can come back in 7-10 years. But they have treatments to check you again to see if it does. Every three months. And I take one chest x-ray every year. So it’s been two years now. I had my surgery March 16th, 2012. The day they took my thyroid out. It’s even a miracle I’m still here. That’s why my voice is like this. They had to scrape my right vocal chord to get the cancer off it. My vertebrae, my neck, they grew back normally, but the brace stays in. So knock on wood.”
Excerpt may be edited for clarity.