Suns out-Dogs out!

This Saturday’s Pegasus card is the nutz, y’all. Big ol’ fields, big ol’ races, and enough tricky little dilemmas to make you dust off them number-two pencils and grab a clipboard.

This ain’t a lean-back card. This is a sit up straight and pay attention card.

And like always, turf racing is sittin’ there like the quiet kid in class who actually did the homework. Half these horses got that little (d) next to their name for workin’ on the turf around the dogs, and most folks don’t give it a second glance. Why? ’Cause they’re too busy hawk-eyein’ raw times like that’s the whole damn story. Figures, times, stats—that’s their whole repertoire. And coincidentally, that’s also why they keep losin’.

Now some of ’em will pretend to gander a workout report. They’ll squint at the rating, nod real serious, and never bother readin’ the actual comments. Which is like readin’ the headline and skippin’ the article, then actin’ shocked when they gotten all wrong. Any edge they might have had? Gone. Vaporized. Vamoose.

I get it. Ratings are fast. Easy. It’s real comfortable to just ask, “Did the clocker like it or not?” and move on with your day. Insight takes effort, and most folks ain’t interested in that. So they toss the average grades in the trash, prop up the flashy numbers, and worship the fast works like golden calves.

That, my friends, is Joe Blow Handicapper in a nutshell—and that’s why Joe Blow keeps reloadin’ his account and bellowing his poor luck. That's why Joe Blow is becoming an endagered species.

Turf works? They can be pure gold. But only if you slow down, pay attention, learn the lingo, and actually understand what the hell you’re lookin’ at. Otherwise, you’re just starin’ at numbers hopin’ they’ll love you back.

And for the serious folks, bullet works don't mean a hill of beans on the turf. Nada. Tuck that in your jean jacket pocket.

Now look, dogs out—or “(d)” if you’re readin’ workout lines like the Good Book—might not sound like much. Sounds like somebody forgot to put their hounds away. But I promise you, they didn't let the dogs out, they ain't real dogs, but they matter. A lot. And if you’re ignorin’ it, you’re handicappin’ horses with one eye closed and the other squintin’ through a beer koozie.

Dogs out just means they shoved cones off the inside rail. from 8 feet to as many as 170 feet.

Why?

‘Cause turf course ain’t made out of magical fairy dust. Grass gets beat to hell if you don’t give ‘it a breather. So they move the rail out to save ground for later, or keep the inside from lookin’ like a mud wrestlin’ pit before post time.

The Universal notation is (d), but here’s the scam: that little (d) don’t tell you a damn thing about how far the dogs were out.

And that, my friends, is where Sherlock Holmes gotta clock in.

In California, you might already be 36 feet off the real rail, then add another 24 to 36 feet with dogs. That’s like runnin’ your horse damn near in the parking lot—72 feet from the rail. Over at Palm Meadows in Florida, where Gulfstream’s horses go to do CrossFit, dogs can be anywhere from 8 feet to 120 feet out on any given mornin’.

I used to get real scientific and get the model of the turf grass mower, and be able to measure the rings on the grass for how far out the dogs are on an given day, a 6-8 foot wing span on that Sweet Toro 8000 series one seater would create rings, two rings 16 feet, and so on. I am mighty proud of reconnoitering and implementing.

Alright now, lemme say this real slow so it sinks in.

A “good” work with the dogs out seventy-two feet? That’s subjective as hell. And if the first thing you do is look at the time, congratulations—you already missed the point.

When them dogs are out, these horses ain’t runnin’ in the same zip code they were last week. They’re coverin’ a whole lot more real estate on them turns, and real estate ain’t free, even for rich people and racehorses.

Now if you got a teamwork goin’ on, yeah, two horses, technically both horses are workin’—but that outside horse? Buddy, he’s out there payin’ extra rent. He’s coverin’ more ground on the turn and more ground comin’ into the stretch. And while that’s happenin’, physics is sittin’ there doin’, all things physics.

Centrifugal force, gravity, whatever you wanna call it—science don’t care about your Beyer figures. That outside horse is gonna drift a little, ‘cause that’s what happens when you’re runnin’ fast on a curve. Meanwhile, the inside horse is cuttin’ the corner like he knows the bartender.

So yeah, they might be just a head apart on the far turn, lookin’ real friendly and equal. Then they straighten out for home and suddenly the inside horse is two in front like he found a cheat code. Ain’t magic. Ain’t effort. It’s geometry.

And this right here is why a raw time ain’t worth a damn in this situation. The clock don’t tell you who ran farther, who fought the turn, or who got slung wide by Mother Nature herself. If all you see is the time, then all you’re gonna get is confused when the race don’t run like your handicapping said it should.

Pay attention. Context matters. Physics matters. And the stopwatch ain’t gonna save you from either. In fact, on the turf put it in your back pocket.

Alright, now ask yourself this—and be honest:

Is a horse runnin’ 120 feet off the rail gonna post the same time as one sittin’ pretty at eight feet off the rail?

Not naw… HELL naw. Not unless that horse is part helicopter and filed the proper paperwork with the FAA.

Now let’s do somethin’ dangerous and look at examples, ‘cause numbers don’t lie—people lie to themselves.

Horse #1, over five weeks, turf, dogs up:

• 51.70 with dogs 56 feet out

• 1:03.30 with dogs 108 feet out

• 1:03.00 with dogs 72 feet out

• 48.30 with dogs 12 feet out (and every Joe Six-Pack on Earth circles that in red)

• 1:02.00 with dogs 25 feet out

Horse #2, same deal:

• 35.55 with dogs out 6 feet

• 49.55 with dogs out 42 feet

• 54.75 (half-mile) with dogs 120 feet

• 54.45 (half-mile) with dogs 120 feet

• 47.35 with dogs 8 feet out (handicappers immediately super-glue themselves to that)

Now here’s where context comes in and ruins everybody’s day.

Horse #1? Caught the eye outside of a workmate with the dogs way the hell out—108 feet and 72 feet in two 5f 103. works. That horse is fightin’ geometry, gravity, and probably his own life choices… and still holdin’ his own.

Horse #2’s sexy little 47.35? Yeah, that happened with the dogs tucked in close—one of the lowest settings possible—which is basically the racetrack equivalent of a tailwind and a downhill slope.

But if you just stare at the times like a racetrack zombie—mouth open, brain buffering, growling —you miss the whole story. Horse #1 looks slower… until you realize he’s basically runnin’ laps around the county fair stopping at the fried pickle stand, and deep fried oreo shack, while Horse #2 is takin’ the shortest route to the snack bar.

Turf works ain’t about worshippin’ numbers/times. It’s about understandin’ what the hell created ‘em. Otherwise you ain’t handicappin’—you’re just readin’ clocks and hopin’ real hard.

At Palm Meadows and even at Saratoga on the Oklahoma Turf course, no dogs, horses working on the rail put up insanely fast times, those works will be labeled (b) not (d) since there are no dogs.

The farther from the rail, the more ground you cover on turns. That ain’t politics—it’s geometry. You don’t need a PhD, just a tricycle and a driveway.

The inside horse in a team drill with the dogs out always has the advantage. I concentrate on the outside horses.

“Why not just adjust the times?”Buddy… if that was easy, we’d all be rich and nobody would be mad on social meida. Time is irrelevant on turf workouts, anyhow.

Trainers send horses at different speeds, different paths, four or five wide off the dogs. Palm Meadows and Saratoga’s Oklahoma turf try to adjust cones fairly—but like most things in this game, it’s subjective as hell.

You’ll have one horse workin’ inside the dogs on the rail, same mornin’ another horse is grindin’ around 72 feet out. So you see:

• 58.4b (inside the dogs)

• 1:03b (d) outside

  
  

Guess who gets the bullet?

Yep—the inside horse would be everyone's guess. .

Guess who actually did more work? Not the one gettin’ the headline.

The 1:03 b (d)

That’s a fallacy, y’all. A misleading notation dressed up as data, but y'all fall for it like its that pull my finger pawpaw trick.

Here’s the truth, straight up: on turf, time ain’t everything—it’s how they do it. Same at Palm Meadows, and at Saratoga’s Oklahoma turf course. If you don’t know where the dogs were, you don’t know what you’re lookin’ at.

How you know where the dogs at ? If you read our reports we try to tell y'all.

Hold on Tex I know what’s happenin’ right now.Y’all are sittin’ there mutterin’ under your breath like, “Why in the hell have I never heard this before today?”

And the answer is: yes… you have. It’s been sittin’ right there in the workout report we write—not the ones everybody else copy-pastes and pretends are wisdom.

I know I personally try to editorialize, inside, outside horses and whether they were around dogs, wide or down at the rail. It's right there in black and white.

Now I can guarantee you this: if you read our workout report over at Racingwithbruno, you ain’t gonna need them magnifyin’ readers to “read between the lines.” Hell, there are no lines to read between—we spell it out for you. Plain and in English. No decoder ring required.

And we don’t just tell you what happened—we tell you why it matters. We’re tryin’ to give you an edge and educate you at the same time, which I know is radical in a world where most folks would rather just look for the number and hope for the best.

So yeah, you have heard this before. You just finally listened to the part where somebody bothered to explain it without a clock in hand.

And I’ll tell you this—turf works at Palm Meadows and at Saratoga, especially with the dogs out, are one of the best sources of winners at the track in the afternoon, pinkie swear.