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Turk, as
we call him around the barn, just turned six years old and is
currently enjoying a little month-long vacation on Plum Grove
Farms, a small stable in Palatine, Illinois. Up until last week,
Turk was stabled with trainer Danny Miller at Hawthorne Race
Course in Cicero, Illinois where he's spent the better part
of his racing life.
He gave
us all a big Christmas present early, when he won the fourth
victory of his career just two days before Christmas and pushed
his lifetime earnings to over $100,000. The win was a big surprise
for everybody--it was his first win of the year and he went
off at odds of 40 to 1! Turk or Treat is a son of Turkoman out
of a mare named Be A Treat, who was owned and raced by my mother
and father, Cathie and Raymond Metzler. My husband, Doug Bredar
and I, planned the mating and made the decisions regarding the
care and training of Turk since he was born, April 27, 1995
at Harvey Vanier's farm in Waterloo, Illinois.
Since Turk
is an Illinois-bred, he's eligible for better purse money by
racing in Illinois and since we don't live in Illinois and my
Mom does, the horse races in my mom's name, along with the trainer's
wife, Patti Miller.
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Turk has
spent most of his winters in Florida and has been a very healthy,
sound horse with one exception. In the fall of his two-year-old
year, during one of his first breezes from the starting gate,
he suffered a very slight fracture--a condylar fracture--of
his right hind cannon bone. The injury required surgery and
time away from the track to recover, but when he came back to
Hawthorne Race Course the summer of the following year, he was
as good as new.
Turk raced
as a three-year-old, then won three races as a four-year-old,
two on the dirt and one on turf. When he comes back to Sportsman's
Park this spring, he will be running in some very tough allowance
races, but he likes to run from off the pace, and since Sportsman's
has the longest homestretch in North America, we're very hopeful
that he will like that track. In the meantime, he's romping
in the snow and having a great time at the farm. He's scheduled
to return to the track around the first of February.
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