Del Mar’s Neigh-Sayer : Race-Track Veterinarian Jock Jocoy Decides If a Horse Is Up to Scratch or Not

On the final day of the recently completed Del Mar racing season, the 2-year-old maidens running in the 4th race were warming up.

When the field got to the track and galloped past the stands, Jock Jocoy, a veterinarian who works for Del Mar, noticed something wrong with first-time starter Westerly Road’s stride. Jocoy watched the colt for several minutes, and when the field approached the starting gate, Jocoy paid particular attention to Westerly Road, then scratched him.

“The jockey (Luis Ortega) thanked me,” Jocoy said. “He could also feel that the horse had a problem.”

Although Westerly Road had never run a race, Jocoy had seen him before--early that very morning, in fact, when the 62-year-old veterinarian had examined all 86 of the starters in that day’s 9 races.

It’s a routine that starts at 5 a.m. for Jocoy and other veterinarians at Southern California tracks. The track vet spends 5 hours, moving from barn to barn with the entry list, checking whether any of the horses are not physically qualified to run that day.

“I don’t think the public has any idea of how it’s protected when it bets on a horse,” said Jocoy, who just finished his sixth summer at Del Mar.

Actually, the bettors are not the only group that Jocoy and the other vets are trying to protect.

“There’s the humane aspect,” Jocoy said. “A horse shouldn’t be risking injury by running when he’s unsound. And the owners are a consideration. They have substantial investments, and their horses shouldn’t be risking injuries. And there’s also the safety of the jockey that’s at stake. A rider’s life could be on the line if he’s on a horse who’s not ready to run.”

For 30 years, Jocoy had a private practice and treated horses for numerous trainers, including champions Ack Ack and Cougar II for Charlie Whittingham.

Rapport with trainers helps in his current assignment, but as Jocoy says, “scratching a horse is a judgment call.” Sometimes a trainer wants his horse to run, sometimes he wants him out of the race.

Jocoy also has an obligation to Del Mar’s management, which ideally would want no scratches and full fields in all of the races. Full fields make for better betting races.

“My horse didn’t eat up, he doesn’t feel right,” a trainer wanting to scratch a horse said to Jocoy on a recent morning.

Jocoy took the horse’s temperature. It was 100 degrees, normal for a horse. “His eyes are bright, he looks all right to me,” the veterinarian said, denying the scratch.

Another morning, Jocoy told a trainer he was going to scratch his horse and got an argument.

“Give me some more time, he’ll be all right,” the trainer said.

Trainers have to live with their owners, and some owners consider it an embarrassment if their horse is entered and then scratched.

“You’ve known me for 40 years,” Jocoy said to the trainer. “You know I wouldn’t be scratching this horse if I thought he should be running.”

When Jocoy makes his morning rounds, he carries with him a file card for every horse. The card contains the horse’s name, tattoo number, color and sex and a record of veterinarians’ examinations. Young horses are tattooed on their inner upper lips for identification throughout their careers.

On Precisionist’s card, for example, there was a notation that the champion sprinter from 1985, now a 7-year-old, has had an ankle operation and has a pin in his leg.

“A horse like this, you pay particular attention by checking his ankle and watching his knee,” Jocoy said.

On the morning that Precisionist won the Del Mar Budweiser Breeders’ Cup Stakes, Jocoy completed his examination and noted on the horse’s card: “Racing sound, temperature normal.”

The advantage that Jocoy has in seeing horses in the morning is that they’re not wearing bandages. They also haven’t been recently medicated, because pain killers must be administered the day before, and medication used to discourage bleeding from the lungs is not given until 3 hours before a race.

If Jocoy has doubts about a horse’s condition, he will ask a trainer to remove the animal from the stall and jog or gallop him. Jocoy said that he makes this request for about 1 of every 5 horses scheduled to run.

If a horse has a fever, he automatically goes on a vets’ list and can’t be entered to run again for at least 5 days. A horse scratched because of unsoundness is prohibited from running indefinitely, until he satisfactorily works 5/8 of a mile in front of a veterinarian.

“And he must run that distance in race-horse time,” Jocoy said. “He’s got to show us that he’s improved enough to race again.”

The system is not perfect.

“There could always be an accident involving a horse between the time I see him in the morning and by the time he’s scheduled to run in the afternoon,” Jocoy said. “That’s the reason I’m on the track to see the horses in the post parade.

“Our aces in the hole are the jockeys. They don’t want to ride a sore horse, because their lives are at stake--the life of the jockey riding the horse and the lives of the other jockeys in the race.”

There is pressure on jockeys not to independently ask that horses be scratched in the post parade. For instance, Chris McCarron drew the ire of Whittingham at Hollywood Park this summer when he felt uncomfortable with the way Fitzwilliam Place was warming up before a stake. The filly was scratched.

“I don’t know about that situation, because I wasn’t there,” Jocoy said. “But I do know that McCarron is 1 of the most astute and most intelligent jockeys around.”

Jocoy remembers the days, not so long ago, that track managements discouraged late scratches. If a jockey refused to ride a horse, the stewards would call the jockeys’ room and get a substitute rider.

Via walkie-talkie, Jocoy is connected to the outriders, who escort fields of horses to the post. If they see something that the veterinarian doesn’t, the information can be relayed.

Once the field reaches the track, Jocoy, who starts in the paddock during the saddling period, stays on the track as long as the horses do. He might see something in the running of the race that belongs on the horse’s record.

“After a race, I might ask a jockey why a horse drifted on the turn,” Jocoy said. “If a horse is lugging out down the stretch, it can be a signal that he’s having a problem with his left foreleg and is trying to protect it.”

The worst thing Jocoy has to do is put a horse to sleep on the track after he has broken down.

“The key to making that decision is if the horse is beyond repair,” Jocoy said. “And if the horse is insured, I have to do an autopsy.”