Canterbury Park: Dirty jobs at the horse track

Long before the trumpeter's Call to the Post echoes throughout Canterbury Park on a summer evening, many of the facility's employees have already put in a full day's work in order to take care of the 1,550 horses that live on the grounds. ¶ More than 600 call the stables — hidden by the tiered grandstand overlooking the Shakopee track — their office. They might never be seen by the crowds that flock to the races, but these employees have created livelihoods by performing the dirty jobs that keep race days running.

It might be the most dangerous job on the racetrack, Larry Davila says, but 50 years ago, being on a gate crew was like being a part of an elite club. So when Davila, who exercised horses in the 1960s, was offered a job working at a gate, he jumped at the chance.

"I only weighed 130 pounds," said Davila, who has been the starter at Canterbury Park for 19 years. "I had to make those horses think I really loved them because I wasn't big enough to fight them."

Now Davila, 68, has a team of 11 assistants who work together in order to get the horses into the starting gate before each race. On most days at 7 a.m., Davila's team will spend an hour standing horses that have misbehaved in the gate before races. Then for another hour, they'll work on breaking young horses that are being trained to race for the first time.

The assistants, who weigh but a fraction of the often-unhappy animals they attempt to train, are dressed head to toe in gear to protect them against uncooperative horses. The job of wrangling the horses is a lot safer now than when he did it with little protective gear, Davila said.

His crew members sustain bumps and bruises on a regular basis. Only a few weeks ago, a 230-pound assistant was kicked by a horse and sent flying. Despite the danger involved, Davila said he feels privileged to do his job. It's everything he dreamed it would be from a young age.

"And then some," Davila said.

At first glance, the 12-foot-deep swimming pool at Canterbury Park looks just like any other put to use on a hot summer day. Put a 1,000-pound horse in it, however, and Don Bridge's job is a bit different from the average pool operator's.

Canterbury Park has one of two on-site horse swimming pools in the nation, said Bridge, who has operated it for four years. Bridge, 60, began galloping horses as soon as he could get a license at 16, and in 1969 he began working at a horse swimming pool in Colorado, one of the first he'd ever heard about.

Having horses swim helps them take pressure off joints and tendons while still keeping their heart rates up. Most horses, Bridge said, enjoy the cool break from the monotony of the track.

"It's a natural instinct for a horse to swim, but not all of them are good swimmers," he said. "They're like humans — good ones and bad ones."

Bridge went to school to become a certified pool operator in the state of Minnesota, and he takes pride in his ability to keep the pool's cleanliness up to human quality. Each horse is hosed down before it enters the pool, and Bridge's wife and daughter help him lead the horses around the pool on ropes as they swim laps.

Earlier this summer, while swimming a young horse for the first time, Bridge got his hand caught in the rambunctious animal's rope, and it broke his finger.

"That's the hazards of the game," Bridge said. "It looks like an easy job, but it's not really an easy job."

Wally Reyes, sweat dripping from his brow, sits in the back of his truck to take a break after shoeing a horse. Behind him lie the tools of his trade.

"It's kind of hard to say every single one," said Reyes, 34, a blacksmith and farrier. "I think I have maybe 80-something tools."

Reyes, who spends part of his year at Canterbury shoeing eight to 10 horses per day, learned the craft while working as an apprentice to a blacksmith in Oklahoma City. There, Reyes learned everything he knows about how to care for horses' feet.

On average, shoeing a horse is a 35-minute process. Reyes must take off the old shoe, clean and trim the horse's hoof, then make sure the new shoe fits before nailing it in place. Sometimes he must glue a horse's shoe on its hoof, something that can take 25 minutes per foot.

The chaps Reyes wears help protect him from being stuck by nails and allow him to prop a horse's hoof on his leg while he works. But being so close to a horse's feet makes Reyes' job risky.

"Sometimes horses lose patience," he said. "They lose it quick, and you don't know when they're going to kick you."

Reyes said he enjoys his job because it allows him to make good money while spending time with horses, something he has loved doing since he was a boy growing up in Texas.

"The most important thing about a horse is its feet," Reyes said. "I like to make them feel good."

Inside a barnlike shelter, horses stand in numbered stalls as they get saddled and await their races. Then, one by one, Mark Bader checks to make sure each horse is where it's supposed to be.

For two years, Bader, 60, has served as the identifier at Canterbury Park, a job that requires him to inspect the mouth of each horse for an identifying tattoo before it races to make sure it matches what the program says. Bader, who trained horses for 35 years, used to train at Canterbury Park before taking his current job.

Each horse has a tattoo on the inside of its upper lip, a letter followed by five numbers. The letter helps identify the age of the horse.

Once a horse is put in a stall, moments before it makes its way to the track, Bader walks around and asks groomers to lift the lip, exposing the tattoo. Bader isn't allowed to touch the horses himself because of fear of cross-contamination. If a tattoo is too faint to be seen, he will then look for other identifying qualities, such as body markings and color.

His appreciation for horses was passed down from his father, who trained them. Bader said he likes being around the racetrack in any capacity.

"There's electricity every day," he said. "There's a little bit of danger in here. If you get hit with one of these horses' legs, it's like getting punched by a boxer with a metal plate in his glove."