The Breeders Cup 2007 will be held at Monmouth Park, New Jersey this weekend. I have been to Monmouth Races a few times and while it is quite a nice course, I did not expect that a major event such as the Breeders Cup would be held there.

I wanted to go to the Breeders Cup a few years ago when it was held at Belmont as Galileo from Europe was due to take part and I had been very impressed and wanted to see him run. However I struggled to get confirmation that he was actually running and when the weather was very cold, I decided not to go. He did run but not particularly well and finished fourth or fifth.

We were planning to go to the event this year but there are no general admission tickets on the day and there only appear to be 150-200 dollar seats left. There are due to be 45,000 people attending but I’m not sure how they are all going to fit in. The weather forecast is also bad so I expect we will be watching this on TV this year.

There are a number of major European horses taking part this year, the most well-known being Dylan Thomas who recently won the Arc de Triomphe. There are a number of major US winners including Curlin. One major US contender who will not be taking part is Rags to Riches who is currently injured. She suffered a hairline fracture to her right front pastern in her latest run and will be rested for 6 weeks of box rest. This is not expected to be a career-ending injury but she will not race again this year.

I was caught out last year when the cold weather arrived and I realised I had not sent my winter rugs away in the summer to be cleaned and repaired. I didn’t forget this year and know they are going to be ready when the weather starts to turn cold and wet.

The range and quality of rugs today is a massive improvement on the basic canvas New Zealand rugs I used with my ponies. They were heavy and once wet, they took days to dry out. If it was a very wet day the ponies would still be wet under the rugs and by the end of the winter, they usually had bare shoulders from where the rugs had rubbed the hair off.

My horse loves rolling in mud and is a bit of a rug escapologist, so often spends the day out in the field with his nice rug laying on the ground in the middle of the field. We usually have to experiment with the various straps each year so they are loose enough that he has sufficient movement but tight enough so he doesn’t escape.

I have an old horse so am often asked how long horses usually live for and how old this is in human years. I always thought the ratio was about 3 to 1, so I usually say my 21 year old horse who is semi-retired is approx 60 in human years.

However I came across a horse to human age conversion on the internet which uses a ratio of 2.2 to 1, so this makes my horse mid-forties (and makes me think he maybe shouldn’t be semi-retired). There are also a number of reported cases of horses living into their 40s and 50s, so maybe this ratio is correct.

I have also read that you can’t use a straight conversion ration as it varies with the age of the horse.

I’d be interested to know of other horse owners views on this.