MAKING HORSE SENSE; EQUINE PSYCHES TOUGH TO FIGURE.

Byline: Kevin Modesti Daily News Staff Writer

The crowded stables at most U.S. racetracks look nothing like rolling Montana ranch land. And few racehorse trainers and owners will be mistaken for Robert Redford and Kristin Scott Thomas.

No, ``The Horse Whisperer,'' the Redford movie based on the Nicholas Evans novel, is not about racing. Sorry, if you hoped to see a man reach into the darkest recesses of a horse's psyche and pull out a winning exacta combination.

But the film has struck a chord with racehorse handlers, who frequently must play equine psychologist to their flighty charges, trying to ease fears or soften violent natures or solve the infinite riddles in between.

Kent Desormeaux, the jockey for Triple Crown hopeful Real Quiet, referred to ``The Horse Whisperer'' in discussing his lifeline affinity for the animals. ``That's exactly what I am,'' Desormeaux said. ``I'm a person who tries to get in touch with a horse with nothing but hand and vocal (signals).''

Actually, few racing horsemen would claim to be horse whisperers, the legendary figures who (as Evans wrote) ``could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there.'' But all would say the task of keeping horses in shape between the ears is at least as important as keeping them physically fit, the part of a trainer's job with which fans are familiar.

``I think the two are very much intertwined,'' said Neil Drysdale, the trainer of five Breeders' Cup winners, at his Hollywood Park barn. In that way, he said, horses are like young human athletes.

``The major (difference) is that horses can't talk to you. But if they could talk,'' Drysdale said with a laugh, ``they'd lie to you just as much as human athletes do.''

Ideally, horses' most debilitating quirks would be gone before they get to a racetrack, the rough edges smoothed by the people who ``break'' them (the word being left over from less-enlightened times when whip lashes and brute force were the accepted ways of teaching horses to be ridden).

But when horses do arrive at the track with problems, they are likely to be deeply ingrained. In fact, trainer Mike Machowsky estimates that 60 to 70 percent of racehorses have idiosynchrasies that, if if not dealt with, would limit their racing potential.

Some horses are afraid to step onto their black, rubber bathing mats, which appear to them to be bottomless pits. Some mistake a topiary shrub in the Hollywood Park saddling paddock for a real horse.

``You'd be amazed,'' said Tim Yakteen, an assistant to Real Quiet trainer Bob Baffert, ``how many colts nicker at that thing and get turned on.''

Drysdale had an otherwise well-behaved filly at Santa Anita who, every time she was led out of the barn, would shy from, well, something.

``We could never figure out what she was shying from,'' the trainer said. ``But five years later, we had her daughter. And the only thing she ever did wrong was to shy at that exact same spot. It must have been genetic memory.''

But those are relatively minor problems.

One stall-walking filly mystified Ron McAnally, the trainer best known for his success with the belligerent gelding John Henry and the anxiety-ridden mare Bayakoa. One day, a McAnally friend, who happened to be an astrologer, visited the barn to watch the trainer work. The man was fascinated by the nervous filly. He pointed to an empty horse pen outside and said, ``Why don't you put her out there?''

``What he said it was, was that she was claustrophobic,'' McAnally said.

Desperate, McAnally tried it, and the filly settled down. Since then, he has used outdoor pens for lots of horses, including the current stakes mare Alzora, who seems to be reassured by watching the races from a spot above the Hollywood Park backstretch.

Usually, it doesn't take an astrologer to solve ``problem horses'' - or, as Redford's horse whisperer would say, ``horses with people problems.''

Sometimes it's as simple as an equipment change, like adding or removing blinkers, or finding the right exercise rider, which seems to have helped Drysdale's unpredictable turf star Labeeb.

Sometimes, if, say, the horse fears the starting gate, forcing him to go through the gate repeatedly could make it second nature.

The first step with a problem horse, the trainers say, is to make sure the misbehavior isn't a sign of injury or illness.

``Sometimes they're just outsmarting us'' by refusing to run, Yakteen said. ``Sometimes they're trying to tell you something. People don't give these horses enough credit.''

Or the personality quirk might be the result of heredity, of mishandling or misadventure early in life, or of the abrupt change in scenery from a farm to a racetrack.

``It's like a country boy coming to the big city,'' said trainer Carla Gaines, who, appropriately, counseled juvenile delinquents in her native Alabama before indulging her love of horses.

Herd animals by nature, horses frequently dislike the confinement of a racetrack stall. To cure a restless mare, Gaines lowered a side wall so the horse could ``talk'' to her neighbor. To amuse a filly who busied herself piling her straw in the middle of the stall, Gaines bought a big, purple, rubber ball.

``You can get very, very creative,'' said Gaines, who once cheered up a lonely horse by putting a mirror in the stall.

Outsmart us, will they?

At trainer Richard Mandella's Hollywood Park barn, the mare Advancing Star was soothed by the companionship of the goat that shared her stall for three blissful years. Then, one morning in April while Advancing Star was at the track, the goat staggered out of the stall and dropped dead.

Mandella's assistants scrambled. They fetched another horse's goat and put it in Advancing Star's stall before the mare returned.

Advancing Star never seemed to notice it was a different goat.

TRIPLE CROWN HISTORY-MAKERS

For those who don't know their personalities, horses' most distinguished features are their names. Real Quiet is named for his parents, Quiet American and Really Blue. Here's how the 11 Triple Crown winners got their names, according to the new book ``The Names They Give Them'':

Sir Barton (1919) was the third of three ``Sirs'' out of the dam Lady Sterling.

Gallant Fox ('30) was sired by Sir Gallahad III and his great, great grandsire was Flying Fox.

Omaha ('35) was named for the city; an ``O'' name was chosen because his pedigree is traced to Ormonde.

War Admiral ('37) was by Man o' War.

Whirlaway ('41) is a play on his dam, Dustwhirl.

Count Fleet ('43) was by Reigh Count out of Quickly.

Assault ('46) was by Bold Venture and had Commando in his pedigree.

Citation ('48) was named for the distinguished-service citations that some World War II soldiers received.

Secretariat ('73) was named for a Meadow Stud secretary who had worked for the League of Nations.

Seattle Slew ('77) was named for the owners' home regions - Seattle and the marshy sloughs (``slews'') of Florida.

Affirmed ('78) was another ``Aff'' horse for Patrice Wolfson, who loved Affectionately, a champion sprinter trained by her father, Hirsch Jacobs.

--- Kevin Modesti

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