Morgan's Belief in Young Horse Pays Off

Chicago driving kingpin Tony Morgan is one of North America's most prolific all-around horsemen-participating in harness racing as driver, owner and breeder. He's also one of the most persistent.

His horse-the pacer Toys In The Attic-has been plagued by a life-threatening illness and countless operations which would have spelled certain doom for many horses. But due to Morgan's belief in his young equine, the pacer has survived and is thriving as a racehorse.

"I own the dam of this horse, and the stud fee for his sire Jate Lobell, is $10,000. So I had a lot invested in this horse from the get-go," Morgan said. "Then, when he was two-years-old, he came down with pneumonia."

Morgan bred the now four-year-old gelding, who has just three pari-mutuel starts to his credit. In fact, Toys In The Attic only graced the track for the first time in mid-December, winning his qualifier at Maywood in 2:03.1 with Morgan at the lines. The royally bred gelding scooted around Chicago's half-mile oval, winning easily by five and a quarter lengths.

When the youngster became ill at initially at two, Morgan shipped him to The Ohio State University Veterinary clinic in Columbus, Ohio for treatment.

"When the horse got to Ohio State he had such a severe case of pneumonia, that it had caused lesions to form inside of his chest cavity," Morgan explained. "These lesions had gotten so bad that they began to adhere to one of his lungs on a daily basis. So the veterinarians at the clinic cut a large hole in the horse's side so that every day they could stick their hand inside of his chest cavity and pull the lung away from those lesions."

Morgan said that despite having an open wound in his side, Toys In The Attic was otherwise acted unscathed by the ordeal.

"For six to eight months this horse was on two different kinds of antibiotics every day, and then once a month those prescriptions had to be changed," Morgan noted. "The horse would keep getting better. He'd heal up and the all of a sudden he'd become re-infected again, and they'd have to open him back up again. This happened to him four or five times and it cost thousands of dollars to treat him."

Finally, after missing all of his two-year-old season, Toys In The Attic was shipped back to Illinois and seemed to be in perfect health once more. Tony turned the gelding over to Paw Paw, Illinois-based conditioner Jerry Grevengoed to begin the youngster's race training.

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