Saddle

Two years in the saddle - that's all the 15-year-old wanted when he set foot on the race course. A few turns round the track to fulfill his dream, before he outgrew his britches. "That would have made me happy," says Mario Pino. But the jockey lingered. He started winning, stopped growing, kept going. On he rode, steadily, unobtrusively, flying under the radar. Pino's horses responded; the victories mounted. As of today, as Pimlico opened its fall meet, he had 4,991. Surprised? Join the crowd.

The top local entrant for Friday's 89th running of the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Pimlico took one wrong step on Thursday and had to be scratched. Walkwithapurpose, a Maryland-bred owned by Sagamore Farm in Glyndon, was expected to be one of the top contenders in the $500,000 Grade II race run at a mile and one-eighth for 3-year-old-fillies. Thursday afternoon, however, the Sagamore Farm filly had to drop out of the race after bruising her foot earlier in the day during her final gallop on the track at Pimlico in preparation for Friday's race.

Fire Sykesville: Firefighters from Sykesville, Gamber and Liberty Road in Baltimore County responded at 5: 16 a.m. Monday to a house fire on Saddle Drive. Units were out an hour and 34 minutes.

Friday night's 11-8 setback to No. 4 Maryland extended Navy's losing skid to five consecutive games, which is the second such streak in the last three years for the program. The last time the team lost five straight, the academy jettisoned former coach Richie Meade and replaced him with current coach Rick Sowell. With Army (6-4) this Saturday and No. 15 Johns Hopkins (6-4) on April 20 remaining on the schedule, the Midshipmen (3-8) are in danger of setting a low with what could be the longest losing skid in the program's history.

Bright Bills Saddle-bill storks are found from Ethiopia to South Africa. They are easy to spot with their beautifully colored bill, which has black, yellow and red markings. The female and male look nearly identical, but the color of their eyes gives the away. Females have yellow irises, and males have black irises. What's for DINNER? Storks eat fish, bugs and mice. Do you know? How many eggs will a saddle-bill lay? Answer: Typically, they lay only one egg, while other storks can lay as many as five.

Bureau of Recreation sponsoring overnight trip to New York The Carroll County Bureau of Recreation is sponsoring an overnight "Big Apple Days and Night" trip June 10-11. Cost is $198 a person for double occupancy; other rates are available. Cost includes staying at the Novotel Hotel at Broadway and 52nd Street. Spaces are available. The bus leaves Westminster Town Mall at 7 a.m. June 10 and returns at 9 p.m. June 11. Information and reservations: 410-386-2604. Nature center schedules variety of activities Bear Branch Nature Center holds numerous club meetings and activities.

ISSUE: Though former Navy football star Lamar S. Owens Jr. was acquitted of rape charges, he isn't in the clear. Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, the Naval Academy superintendent, must decide whether to graduate him and give him a commission or expel him for violating academy rules and saddle him with $140,000 in debt and no degree. YOUR VIEW: What should Rempt do? Tell us what you think at arundel.speakout@baltsun.com by Thursday. Please keep your responses short, and include your name, address and phone number.

It started as a personal challenge: I watched Billy Crystal and the "City Slickers" ride roughshod across a movie screen, and decided if they could do it, and still sing afterward, so could I.A few weeks and half a lesson later, with the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver echoing in my ears, I am trotting around a riding ring in Monkton astride the nice mare Toby.We are moving together, running in rhythm, heirs to the great frontier tradition. How wonderful it would be to do this often, I think, to have my thighs grow sleek and strong as I gallop along, graceful and self-assured.

The set for Babel: How It Was Done in Odessa features a large leather saddle suspended in front of a stunning modern tapestry of the sun. The saddle hangs there, unused and uncommented on, throughout the five short stories by Isaac Babel that make up the production. Possibly, the saddle is intended to suggest the omnipresent specter of the Cossacks, who plague the Russian Jews who are the protagonists of Babel's stories. But that's just a guess. Basically, the saddle remains a mystery -- like too much of this latest Theatre Project offering.

"The Man Who Listens to Horses," by Monty Roberts. Random House. 258 pages. $23.This ought to be a fascinating book about a remarkable person. Monty Roberts says he has learned to talk with horses, and there is a substantial amount of evidence that he speaks the truth.Roberts claims to have discovered a body language he's dubbed Equus. He uses it to earn a horse's trust and persuade it to accept a rider -- without resorting to the time-honored subjugation known for good reason as "breaking" a horse.

- As the draw for Preakness post positions came to an end Wednesday evening, Donna Peiffer's work was just beginning. Into the night she worked, turning a dozen colorful cloths into identification badges that will help millions of racing fans follow a favorite horse from starting gate to finish line. I'll Have Another, Bodemeister, Daddy Nose Best - each cloth was embroidered with the name and number around the Preakness logo. Folded neatly and placed in a plastic bin, they awaited a final inspection, a pressing and the trip to Pimlico Race Course . On Saturday, the cloths will be placed on the backs of the horses before saddles are cinched and the jockeys mount.

McDaniel College freshman Caitlyn McSorley has never let her dyslexia get in the way of helping others. Instead, it was the catalyst for doing so. "I was diagnosed with dyslexia, and throughout school a lot of the times I felt I was on the receiving end of help," said McSorley. "I wanted to give back. " And ever since elementary school, McSorley, 19, has found ways to do just that. She's volunteered with Best Buddies, an organization promoting one-to-one friendships for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

It seems that the man-made global warming scare, long promoted by those opposed to the burning of fossil fuel, is now behind us. It turns out that there is no unanimity of scientists supporting man-made global warming theory and never has been. It's also now becoming widely recognized that there is no incontrovertible evidence that global warming is caused by human activity, and that there is quite a bit of evidence that human activity is not a primary cause of such warming. It's becoming better known that for at least 240,000 years, a rise in CO2 has followed rather than preceded global warming.

The battle over the federal budget has been playing out slowly in Congress for weeks, but it came galloping toward Maryland's thoroughbred farms recently in the form of a proposed tax increase. After threatening to trim the nation's ballooning budget deficits in part by ending tax breaks on corporate jets, high-priced yachts and hedge funds, Senate Democrats also proposed eliminating a $126 million tax carve-out for the nation's horse racing industry. The idea has prompted an outcry from Maryland's already struggling horse breeders.

As the chair for the eighth annual Ride for Life — an equestrian event benefiting the Johns Hopkins Avon Foundation Breast Center — Michele Wellman was tasked with a variety of responsibilities that kept the 32-year-old hopping as she tried to balance her full-time job with Northrop Grumman in Sykesville, her horse boarding company in Union Bridge, and her personal life. Days before this weekend's event, Wellman was already amazed at the experience … and willing to tackle it again.

Howard County Executive Ken Ulman raised a few eyebrows recently when he said that if the legislature decides to transfer some teacher pension costs to the counties, as a state budget commission recently recommended, the costs should be paid by local school boards rather than out of the county general funds. Mr. Ulman argued that since the school systems have sole authority to hire school personnel, they should be responsible for their pension costs. Despite the fact that this is the very same argument state budget analysts have been making for years in questioning the state's practice of picking up 100 percent of the teacher pension tab, Mr. Ulman was quick to add that he opposes any change to the status quo. But his remark was clearly a nod to the possibility that the present arrangement may not be sustainable.

After the daily horse competition pitted riders against one another at the Howard County Fairgrounds yesterday, 12 members of the Saddle Gals and Guys Drill Team went into the horse ring to show what their animals could do when they work together. Wearing red-, white-and-blue outfits, the team members maneuvered their horses in circles, crisscross patterns and one rotating line that looked like the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes with a lot more legs. Several drill teams are offering audiences an entertaining way to enjoy horses at the fair this year.

JEANNE CARMEN, 77 Pinup girl, actress Jeanne Carmen, a 1950s pinup girl, B-movie actress and trick-shot golfer who hobnobbed with Frank Sinatra and other stars, died of lymphoma Dec. 20 at her Orange County, Calif., home, her son said. Born in Arkansas, Ms. Carmen picked cotton with her family before running away at age 13. The small-town girl was still a teenager when she came to New York. Despite having no show business experience, she immediately became a dancer in the Broadway show Burlesque, with comic Burt Lahr.

Congratulations are rightfully due to the 2.5 million students graduating from college in 2010. Their academic credentials and strong work ethic will benefit our country for many decades. Hopefully those students who incurred an average of $40,000 in student loan debts will quickly find good paying jobs. But their $40,000 student loan debt is minimal next to the $600,000 debt imposed upon each of them this year by the federal government ($1.5 trillion budget deficit divided by 2.5 million graduates)

The finest in the world are here, horses and riders. The TV trucks and reporters and VIPs in business suits have been filling the place for days. It's Preakness Week, there's a buzz in the air, and even Donald "Coos" Cusick allows a lump to come to his throat. "It's the Indy 500, the World Series, the whole deal wrapped up in one," says Cusick, a grizzled man of 55 who has broken both shoulders and one wrist, mangled each hand and even fractured his back in service to the only place he has ever worked — Pimlico Race Course.