Bacio's filly foal with foster-mum Jessamine
All those years ago I sent Perfect Gift to Del Sarto. Who was to know what a broodmare sire he would turn out to be.
Perfect Gift was one of the less illustrious daughters of the great Party Time family – Colin Cohen also now gone and Lionel departed for Aussie.
My children helped me name the foals. Jeannie, who now lives in her cold wet Vancouver, came up with the name Bacio – a kiss. the perfect gift. She had an Italian boyfriend at the time. The beautiful name did not much to the tiny filly with the little sticks for forearms she had a bum though.
Del Sarto was dead meat in the sales ring by the time she was a yearling.
New to breeding, I turned to the family in the game. I asked my cousin Alec if he would lease her. Alec, with his gentle ways, shrugged his shoulders and said “ She’s not my type “I asked Dennis,the hunk, but he told me “what a piece of sh**t , and by a sh**t sire to boot” His good friend Eric Sands also didn’t think he could find owners for her, but he knew a young trainer with potential.
That’s how I met Andries Steyn for the first time. Andries came out to the farm with Manuel Gouveia, Vlam de Vries and Frankie Rodrigues. They leased her there and then. For years we were never short of Manny’s fantastic fish! She ran fifth in her first start and then disaster struck.
Andries bought in oat hay contaminated with Chinkerinchees. His yard went down with this dreadful poisoning and he lost 3 horses. Bacio was very badly affected and the Vet gave her no chance of survival. After days on drips and twice daily tubing with that awful messy charcoal., they gave up. Her neck veins were by now both blocked. They carried her out on a blanket to the little paddock outside the stables to die.
When Garth Puller arrived for work riding, he found her staggered to her feet, nose in the ground for extra balance. He hosed her down, grabbed a tube and poured more electrolytes and charcoal down. For days she refused to die and Garth refused to give up on her. Slowly she turned the corner and the bloody diarrhea stopped. She came back to the farm for a rest and the children cried when they saw her.
Slowly under the care of Time, Sun and Grass she filled out. In time back to Andries and I will never forget the words of the Cape Times reporter “The dimunitive Bacio showed the field her heels “She ended up winning six races including the Durbanville Oaks. Back on the farm she promptly kicked the wall – she had a temper on her in those days. X rays – fractured pedal bone! But did this deter her?
She had her modest successes as a broodmare. In her Golden years, keeping company with the “Blanket Brigade” of Jessamine, Jazz Champion and a few others, she conceived against all expectations on a 15th January cover to Windrush. She duly foaled down and I was personally there to assist the old girl – a big filly – not an easy delivery. She was in trouble all night and I just kept her painfree these older mares ofter bleed internally after foaling as the bloodvessels lose elasticity and rupture easily.
The foal was very vigorous and drank her fill during the night. At 6 am Bacio gave a heave, fell over and died almost instantly. Now an orphan foal is at the best of time a nightmare for the whole farm. Early in the season, one often finds a mare who lost a foal.
Now just before Christmas there were no more foals being born. On the spur of the moment I had Jessamine fetched from the camp. She walked into the stable, took one look at her best friend’s little orphan – to give her a big lick and take over. The old Queen’s udder is dry, but little Bacio soon took to the bucket and is growing up a storm. She is lovely and has her mother’s cheeky personality to boot
Perhaps I will still have fun with this little Windrush filly in my Golden years.
In Memory of Bacio 1990-2011
Marianne Thomson
