A Little about the Author and How Virgil’s Story Came About

When I was nine years old I moved with my family from New Jersey to the foothills of the San Fernando Valley town of Chatsworth, California. There were three things that were magical to me: mountains, orange groves, and horses. I immediately traded in my ballet slippers for riding boots.

We lived near a private road, and on that private road there were ranches and horses. I started riding at a couple of rental places. I wanted a horse so bad I could taste it, but my father told me to get on my bicycle and ride up the private road, knock on doors and see if someone would let me exercise their horse. Believe it or not, I actually found someone that would let me ride their horse. I met a girl who kept her horse at the West Hills Hunt Club, and that's how I got involved with fox hunting. The next 10 years I was up at the hunt club exercising horses and helping train and exercise the hounds.

Hold everything! I have to stop here and tell you how I feel about fox hunting now. I have been a vegetarian for 25 years and a vegan for the last 10 years. I am against any kind of hunting, any kind of animal testing, and anything that even slightly smacks of animal cruelty. That includes circuses, marine parks, and zoos. And, honestly, it was NOT the hunting of the poor fox that I enjoyed. Actually, in California there are no foxes, so they hunt coyotes. In fact, I was only on a hunt twice, in the ten years I rode with them, that there was a kill. But for the few times that happened, it didn’t outweigh the rest of what fox hunting consisted of, although it does now, and it is absolutely wrong. It was everything that you are going to read about in Virgil the Hound, and what the rider in the story learns from Virgil.

Things change in a decade. I graduated from high school and got my first car which, as was appropriate, my father’s Mustang. I went to college and graduated from UCLA with a degree in English. I hold a teaching credential in English and Social Science. With my new freedom of having a car, I was lured to Thoroughbred horse racing.

About a year after we moved to California, my grandparents came out from New Jersey to visit. My father took us to Santa Anita Park. It was 1963, the year that Candy Spots won the Santa Derby, and I actually picked him to win! He also won the Preakness that year. I was entranced by the horses at the track. I vowed that I would one day be one of the pony-people that rode the saddle horse, which takes the thoroughbred and their jockey to the gate. I never really thought about it much after I started riding at the hunt club, but somehow I was lured back to the races and since I had a car, I would cut school and go to Santa Anita. I ended up surpassing my wildest dreams of being a pony-girl and became an exercise rider, exercising the racehorses at Santa Anita. I also became a racing journalist.

My life on the racetrack is another story. Another long story.

Getting back to Virgil, I actually wrote the poem “Virgil the Hound” when I was nine-years-old. In the years between then and now I have edited the poem, as well as edited the way I think.

Virgil’s story has become my way of life.
“…but enough about me.
Now let us begin our fabled story.

Back in time, we will travel for the start.
To the beginning, the logical part.”