Sweet Dreams, eh

My 4-year-old daughter, Alice, is learning about the letter f in her pre-school. She has been singing a little ditty, sung to the tune of Jingle Bells, that goes like this:

Friendly Fish,
Friendly Fish,
Swimming right and left,
Tell me all the things you see that start with letter f,
Fast firetrucks,
Flashing lights,
Firemen on the run,
Friendly frogs and firecrackers and fairies having fun!

Now what does that song have to do with horse racing? Absolutely nothing. I just thought it might put a little smile on your face.

However, it does bring to light other things that start with the letter f. F is for Foggy - may his equine soul rest in peace. Also, f is for filly, an especially promising and exciting filly that caught my attention in a big way this past Sunday. That filly is Dreaming of Anna.

Once a year, I hear the call of the Great White North and have a natural instinct to sojourn to Lone Star Park and follow the races at Woodbine, most notably the Woodbine Mile (gr. I). But this year, it was not the Woodbine Mile that attracted me, but instead the Summer Stakes (gr. III). I had recently marveled over a Mott-trained 2-year-old, Marcavelly (Johannesburg), the word "marvel" meaning "won a lot of money on him when he won the Continental Mile at Monmouth on August 19th". I had gone to the track on Sunday with a solid intent to marvel over that colt once more.

But what I found intriguing about the Summer Stakes was, in fact, the filly Dreaming of Anna (Rahy), racing against the boys. Her connections, Mr. Catalano and Mr. Calabrese, know their way around the winner's circle. She had previously won the Tippett at Colonial Downs, setting a course record. Dreaming of Anna soundly beat the male competition by more than 3 lengths at Woodbine, and for her amazing talent, the attractive chestnut filly, or blue chicklet as depicted by Trakus, received the prize of a six-pack of Molson and a pound of back bacon as well as a sizeable portion of the $250,000 purse. Okay, I made up the Molson and back bacon part, but not the money thing. Unknown by this blogger if that would be US or Canadian currency. Today's conversion rate, it should be noted, is 1 Canadian dollar is worth 0.8872 US Dollar.

Those associated with Dreaming of Anna may be dreaming of the BC Juvenile Fillies. And we are hoping that all those dreams are sweet indeed.