Janice Walsh didn’t know what she was going to do.
It was November 2007, and her husband – Mike Walsh – had just been told his leukemia had returned.
“I was in shock,” recalls Janet. “I called Robert (Shepherd) and said ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do but can you please feed the horses for me.’”
He said yes, of course.
She hung up the phone, but within moments, Mike’s friend and fellow trainer -- Rod Boyd -- called to say he would take care of the horses and jog them.
It was a relief for Janice who, in the last few years, had ended up with more on her plate than anyone could handle alone.
At the time, aside from the horses at Emerald Isle Training Centre, the Walsh’s had an Armbro Richochet trotting colt named Moms Last Hope. His mother – I Quiver Not – was a less than stellar broodmare, who the Walsh’s bought as a racehorse. Her first three foals never raced, then her fourth foal – Fiddleronthetrot – was a slightly successful but highly erratic racehorse. So when the last colt was weaned, the Walshs got rid of I Quiver Not. “We couldn’t breed her the way we wanted to with her bloodlines,” admitted Janice. “Not having the money meant we didn’t get to breed her more fashionably.”
So Moms Last Hope was trained down to 2:35 and then, in the midst of a family crisis, was sent to Doug Bowins’ farm to be put on the grass and mature.
Standing in the hospital right then, the colt was the last thing on Janice’s mind. “I was so worried about Mike I didn’t really care where he was as long as someone was taking care of him, and I didn’t have to worry about him. At that point he was very low down on my priority list.”
After the initial diagnosis, Mike had gone through a round of chemotherapy. It did its job reasonably well -- forcing the disease into remission. Following the treatment, Mike would share the daily chores with Boyd on his better days. But for the most part, he could only head to the barn when he really felt up to it -- and so he and his wife stepped away from worrying about the horses almost entirely.
Then, on that day in November, Mike and Linda learned the leukemia was back.
After another grueling month of chemotherapy at Chedoke-McMaster Hospital in nearby Hamilton, Ontario, Mike was told in January of 2008 that he was losing his battle with the disease, and the longtime horseman passed away in June of 2008.
* * *
Bowins took care of Moms Last Hope for almost a year before Mike’s death. Despite the pain of loss that so many felt over losing Mike, Bowins knew the colt should start back training. He threw the harness on him and took him to the track, with minimal success. “He was an idiot at first,” Bowins laughs. “He was probably one of the most unintelligent beasts you’d ever deal with in your life.”
In the barn, the young trotter had no issues. But as soon as he had a harness on his back and his feet on the track, a different horse came out. “You’d be jogging him and he’d be fine and in a blink of an eye he’d take to running away,” shrugs Bowins. “It was like his brain would shift on occasion and something would just snap.”
Dealing with the colt was one of the most trying episodes of Bowins’ life, he admits. “Most people wouldn’t have fussed with him. He was just an ignorant, ignorant horse.”
But sticking it out, in the end, has proved to be well worthwhile. Originally, Bowins wasn’t convinced the horse would make it. Today, he’s banked $120,000 and claimed victory in 18 starts -- making it, indeed. “I figured it would be an accomplishment if he even raced,” says the trainer, “and he has far, far exceeded that.”
The whole time -- through all the fuss and struggle that Bowins endured -- Janice had no idea the horse was being trained down. It wasn’t until Shepherd came into her office at Flamboro one day and told her Mike’s old colt schooled, and schooled well, that she realized he’d been so well looked after. She was shocked to hear it -- she couldn’t believe the kindness Bowins had showed. “He was amazing,” Janice says, at a loss for words. “The generosity was amazing.”
After all she’d been through, Janice had neither the time nor the money to look after the horse on her own.
So she gifted Bowins with a half-ownership in the horse, while her brother Don Brinkman hung onto his half. But before she did, she had one last order of business.
The colt was still going by Moms Last Hope -- a name that seemed relevant some time ago -- but Janice wanted him now to be testament to Mike. “I really wanted to rename him something everyone would remember him by.”
Growing up in Newfoundland, Mike had a nickname -- Chinny. So in short order, Moms Last Hope became Chinnys Wings, a choice which on one hand symbolized the flight of an angel, but on the other gave a nod to Mike’s passion for the Detroit Red Wings.
With all in order, it was time for the newly minted Chinnys Wings, now four, to make his debut. “I qualified him in February,” recalls Bowins, “and the rest is history, so to speak.”
The first day he raced, Bowins was hoping for little more than an honest effort, and maybe some manners. “I just wanted him to behave,” Bowins shrugs. “Even to this day I always just hope he behaves and doesn’t act like a tool.”
But Chinnys Wings did more than mind his manners. The horse finished second his first start at Flamboro Downs, then broke his maiden the next week in 2:05.4. After another win and a second in his next four starts, he fired off five wins in a row at the Dundas oval, ending in the ‘non-winners of three races’ class.
Bowins was impressed. “At the start I figured he was going to be useful -- to a degree -- but I never imagined that.”
And the horse just kept stepping up, he says. In no time at all, driving Chinnys Wings became much like driving a car. “He’s as handy as a pocket in a shirt, I’m telling you,” laughs the trainer/driver.
After a less impressive fifth place finish the next week, which halted the win streak at five, Chinnys Wings would put together a dominant string of performances in his next 13 straight. This included a run of eight victories in a row, including a sweep of the Oxford County Series and $37,800 final at Woodstock Raceway, and a clocking of 1:56.2 over the half-mile oval at Flamboro Downs. This was just sticking to the plan for Chinnys Wings: keep as close as possible to Flamboro.
“I thought it’d make him a better horse in the end,” Bowins explains. “I think a lot of people make a mistake by taking them down (to Woodbine) too early.”
And besides -- Flamboro was a much closer trip for the green trotter. “He’s a meat head,” Bowins grins, “so an eight or nine minute ship is enough for him.”
The eight-race win streak came to an end with back-to-back second place finishes, and then after another win Bowins had to find a new place to race him. The issue was that Flamboro rarely cards a top trot, so the pair moved on to Western Fair – where he won the Preferred trot two weeks in a row.
“He’s defied the odds,” Bowins says. “There’s no doubt about it.”
Whenever Janice sees Chinnys Wings trot around the oval, she feels a connection to Mike. “It’s been an absolute thrill to watch him,” she smiles. “He always comes from behind and it’s such a thrilling kind of race having one come from the back like that.”
Racing from behind isn’t a necessity for Chinny’s Wings, but it seems to work better, Bowins says. He went to front in the final of the Oxford County series but it proved to be less than ideal. “Going past the other horses, he was on two lines. As soon as he cleared, he just fell asleep on his pillow. He kinda got away with it in there because he towered over them, but he’d get picked off in tougher classes.”
It wasn’t until mid-November that he got to go to a bigger stage and show what he’s really made of. Racing at Woodbine for the first time, he got locked in at the head of the stretch. When he finally cut loose there wasn’t enough track left and he finished a game third to Photo Maxx, and Armbro Doyle – who had been terrorizing the high-end condition trotters for weeks. Chinny trotted his own mile that day in 1:54.3, with a :27.2 final quarter.
Bowins sees the future as being bright for Chinnys Wings. “Barring any bad luck he’ll just bounce around the Preferred classes for two or three years, because he’s so sound.”
In the end, he’s just glad he could do something in Mike’s memory -- the late trainer was the kind of person anyone would want for a friend, he says. “A typical Newfie, salt of the earth kind of guy,” he grins. “Sometimes you get a little emotional thinking about it.”
Janice still remembers how highly Mike thought of the horse. “Mike really liked him,” she says. “He thought he was the best out of the family. The time he had with that horse getting to go out and jog him really lifted his spirits.”
She hopes people will remember Mike and his energy, even if just through the horse. “He was always so happy,” she smiles. “He just loved life, and he loved animals.”