Horse Creek

06/12/2026

This version of “Don’t Fence Me In” is very distracting (maybe mute the volume ) but these old photos are great!

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BbV7jMYMc/?mibextid=wwXIfr

06/11/2026

One of my neighbors is offering hay for sale:

Finished baling 1st cutting yesterday evening. Have 400 available at $5.50. Fescue/timothy/orchard grass.

Text 419-889-0840

06/05/2026

She didn't just run. She *hunted*. Every rival. Every track record. Every soul foolish enough to think they could keep up. Ruffian wasn't a racehorse — she was a reckoning in horseshoes, and the world would never be the same for having witnessed her.

Born in 1972, Ruffian entered the world as if she already knew what she was meant to do. Standing over 16 hands tall, she was built like something out of myth — a towering, muscular filly whose graceful stride concealed enough raw power to shake the earth. When she ran, the dirt didn't just fly behind her. It fled.

# # The Record That Shouldn't Have Been Possible

Her debut as a two-year-old should have been a warning shot. She won by 15 lengths — not gasping, not grinding — barely breaking a sweat, as if the race itself bored her. Five races. Five victories. Five track records shattered like they were made of glass. Not a single filly dared challenge her. Not one.

By the time she turned three, she wasn't just a racehorse — she was a phenomenon. The Filly Triple Crown fell at her feet: the Acorn Stakes, the Mother Goose Stakes, the Coaching Club American Oaks. She was never behind in a race. Not once. Not for a single stride. She ran like the concept of losing had never occurred to her — because to her, it simply hadn't.

# # The Race That Stopped a Nation

But dominance over her own kind wasn't enough for the world. It wanted more. Could she beat the c**ts? Could she beat *the* c**t — Foolish Pleasure, Kentucky Derby champion, the best the boys had to offer?

1975. Belmont Park. Over 50,000 fans packed the stands, and millions more pressed their faces to their television screens. The air hummed with something electric, something historic. This was the ultimate battle of the sexes — and Ruffian, for the first time in her life, had a worthy opponent.

The gates burst open, and she launched forward like a thunderclap. Stride for stride with Foolish Pleasure, neither giving an inch — and here's the thing that should make your heart ache: it was the first time she had ever truly been *pushed*. The first time the race actually asked something of her.

Then came the moment that broke a sport.

Less than halfway through, Ruffian took one wrong step. Just one. Her right foreleg shattered — the crack so violent that jockey Jacinto Vásquez felt it the instant it happened. He pulled her up immediately. But Ruffian — *Ruffian* — kept fighting to run. Her heart, that enormous, undefeated heart, refused to accept what her body already knew. She had never stopped in a race. She didn't know how.

She was rushed into surgery. She fought through that too, the way she had always fought — with everything she had, and then some. But this was the one race she couldn't win. The next day, the decision was made, and the racing world went quiet in a way it hadn't before, and hasn't quite since.

# # Why She Still Runs in Our Hearts

They buried her at Belmont Park, in the infield, facing the finish line. Because even in rest, Ruffian faces forward.

Her story is not simply one of tragedy. It is one of a creature so purely, ferociously herself that the universe couldn't contain her for long. She was speed made flesh. She was will given four legs and a heartbeat. She was proof that greatness doesn't always come with the luxury of time.

Ruffian didn't just race. She *ruled*. And decades later, when the talk turns to the greatest racehorses who ever lived, her name still rises first — whispered with reverence by those who saw her, and spoken with awe by those who only wish they had.

Some legends fade. Ruffian just runs faster.

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06/05/2026

05/31/2026

Most people only remember the winner. But what happened to the horse who refused to quit — even when every stride was destroying him — is the story that racing history forgot to tell.

Secretariat's Triple Crown journey reached its thunderous conclusion at Belmont Park on June 9, 1973, and what Big Red did that afternoon still defies explanation over 50 years later. A 31-length victory. A world record of 2:24 flat that has never been beaten on American dirt. A performance so otherworldly that people still argue it couldn't have been real.

But here's what nobody talks about. There was another horse out there that day who made a choice — and that choice cost him everything.

Sham wasn't a lucky also-ran who stumbled into the wrong race. Sham was an extraordinary animal who had the devastating misfortune of being born in the same year as the greatest racehorse who ever lived. At the Kentucky Derby, Sham finished second to Secretariat — but broke the previous Derby record himself. Think about that. He ran faster than any horse in Derby history and still lost. At the Preakness, he chased Secretariat as hard as his body would allow and still couldn't close the gap.

So when the gates opened at Belmont, Sham faced a decision that defined what kind of competitor he was. He could hang back, run his own race, protect himself, and collect whatever prize money second place would bring. Safe. Sensible. Survivable.

He chose to fight instead.

Sham launched out of the gate and went straight to Secretariat's shoulder, refusing to let the Triple Crown favourite run unchallenged. Together they blazed through fractions that should have been impossible — 23 2/5 seconds for the first quarter, 46 1/5 for the half, 1:09 4/5 for three-quarters. Sprinter speed. Fractions that would have destroyed any other field in the country. And Sham was matching them stride for stride, refusing to blink, refusing to yield.

What happened next is both magnificent and heartbreaking.

Around the far turn, Sham's body finally sent him a message his will refused to accept. No horse alive could sustain that pace for a mile and a half — except Secretariat, with his legendary 22-pound heart. While Big Red impossibly accelerated down the stretch, pulling away by lengths with every stride, Sham was unravelling behind him. His legs turning heavy. His lungs burning. His heart giving absolutely everything it had.

He finished last. Dead last in a field of five horses, beaten by over 40 lengths, completely and utterly spent.

And then came the part that makes this story almost too painful to read. Sham never raced again. The effort of those suicidal fractions had broken something in him physically. His trainer Pancho Martin, who had believed so fiercely that pushing Secretariat hard from the start was the path to victory, later admitted he regretted the strategy. He should have let Sham run his own race, he said. Instead, pushing broke his horse completely.

But here's the thing about Pancho Martin's regret — and here's the thing about Sham. In the moment, on the biggest stage in racing, facing down the greatest horse who ever lived, they chose to compete rather than surrender. They chose to test the legend rather than gift him an easy crown. They went down swinging with everything they had.

If Sham had been born in any other year, he almost certainly would have won the Triple Crown himself. The speed was there. The stamina was there. The heart was undeniably there. But timing is everything, and Sham's timing was cruel.

Here's something worth sitting with. Those record-shattering early fractions at the 1973 Belmont? The ones that made Secretariat's performance look even more superhuman? Sham was responsible for those. He pushed Secretariat. He forced Big Red to prove himself rather than cruise. And in doing so, Sham sacrificed his own body to help create one of the most legendary moments in sports history.

Secretariat's 2:24 Belmont is the most dominant performance in racing history. But it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because another horse had the courage to challenge him.

Sham finished last at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. He ran like a champion who believed he could win — not like a horse settling for whatever scraps were left. There is honour in that kind of defeat. There is something deeply noble about refusing to accept the easier path even when the harder one costs you everything.

The racing world will always belong to Secretariat. But occasionally, someone should say the other name out loud.

Rest in peace, Sham. You were a great horse who just had the misfortune of running against the greatest. You deserved so much more than history gave you.

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05/31/2026

Every time I think of him scared, starving, no main or tail, patches of hair gone, lame, ribs showing, and pitiful at the horse sale, I doubt humanity. Every time, I see him interact with a child, eyes soft, head bowed, fluffy main, and patiently nuzzling, somehow my faith in humanity is restored.

05/29/2026

Cody Mathias and Jennifer Mathias, she was not thrilled at first but she couldn’t resist after a while!

05/29/2026

Cats and horses are just meant to be together ! Misty is getting lots of attention since Itty isn’t available right now!