Horses don’t lie. They either feel better or they don’t, and Tax Ruling’s win in the $150,000 Calvin Houghland Grade I Hurdle Stakes at Iroquois Steeple-chase, May 14, proved he’s gotten over his melancholy in a big way.

The 8-year-old son of Dynaformer was hardly the favorite, despite winning this race last year and setting the track record in the three-mile hurdle mara-thon in Nashville, Tenn.

But that victory seemed like a fluke, a flash in the pan, as he failed time and again to win his next four big money jump starts.

Tax Ruling’s lackluster performances last fall and this spring did not go unnoticed by his owner, Irv Naylor. Soon after parting ways with trainer Des-mond Fogarty in April, Naylor shipped Tax Ruling to trainer Brianne Slater with a few other hopefuls.

Slater worked on getting Tax Ruling fit for Nashville, even trying acupuncture and equine massage therapy on the big dark bay. Whatever she did in the short time he was in her stable, it worked like magic because the horse that started at Iroquois was every bit of the former champion and more.

Tax Ruling didn’t just win the feature race; he dominated the field of champions from the first hurdle to the last, besting the favorite—2010 National Steeplechase Association’s Horse of the Year and Eclipse Award winner Kenneth Ramsey’s big gray Slip Away (Paddy Young)—by almost 5 lengths in softer going.

Tax Ruling’s sudden turnabout surprised his rider, Darren Nagle.

“I never lost faith in him, but he just wasn’t getting it done this spring,” Nagle said.

“Brianne has done an amazing job with him. I just stayed out of his way. Last year we chased Slip Away. This year they chased us. Slip Away had a bad last fence, but I’m not sure he could have caught my horse. By far, this is the best race I have ever ridden and won on any horse.” Nagle added,

“He’s a big horse and has been hard to train. He’s tough on himself. Right now I think he’s a better horse than he was last year. ” In the past, Tax Ruling has been a poor traveler, fussing and fretting, but Slater said he didn’t have those issues on the trip or while he was in Tennessee. “He was a good boy the whole time,” she said.

“When we got back to the farm on Sunday I turned him out and figured he would be dead tired from everything. But no, not Tax, he was running and bucking and carrying on. I thought I might have to bring him back in.”

This is the first grade I win for Slater, 31. Before she ventured off on her own four years ago, she was an assistant trainer to Sanna Neilson Hendriks and helped with another well-known son of Dynaformer, three-time Eclipse Award winner McDynamo. When Slater heard she was going to be training Tax Ruling this season she was excited.

“I was so nervous too,” she said. “This is a horse with a lot of class. It didn’t help that I saw Slip Away out being hand-grazed a few days before the race. He looked so good there and walking in the paddock. I had my doubts, but Tax was just great.”

Hat Trick

In addition to the feature, Nagle won two more races for Naylor on the day. The first came with Chess Board in the $35,000 amateur starter hurdle for trainer Tom Foley. Carrying a whopping 168 pounds, Chess Board managed to keep Bruce Miller’s mare Dynaskill (Keri Brion) at bay in the stretch to win by less than a length.

“Chess Board really gutted it out,” Nagle said.

“That was a tremendous weight for him. Dynaskill was only carrying 150. He really has turned out to be a good purchase for Mr. Naylor.”

Nagle was especially pleased with his win on Decoy Daddy in the $75,000 Marcellus Frost Grade II Hurdle Stakes. The pair had won the $50,000 Temple Gwathmey at the Middleburg Spring Races (Va.) on April 23. Foley had him cross-entered in the feature, but Nagle and Foley thought he might have a better shot at the shorter distance.

Decoy Daddy took the lead and never looked back, winning by 1 length over the former novice champion The Fields Stable’s Left Unsaid (Young).

“He’s really a 2- to 21⁄2-mile horse,” Nagle said.

“Looking at the other horses in there, we thought he had a legitimate chance against them all.”

A New World

Nagle first came to America as a wide-eyed 18-year-old. He liked what he saw in the steeplechasing program here so much that he went back to Ireland, got a working visa and returned as a 19-year-old. Like so many Irish and English jockeys before him, the 23-year-old Nagle has carved out a life in the United States. “It’s so hard to get a break over there,” Nagle said.

“There’s so much more racing, but there are also more jockeys all trying to get rides too.” Nagle decided to remain an amateur so he could ride his dream race: The Maryland Hunt Cup. Of course, had he been a professional, Nagle would have received 10 percent of the purse for each of the races he won. “I’m pretty tall and broad in the shoulder,” Nagle said.

“I’ve struggled with my weight, and I figured when I came here I would just be a timber rider and ride the Hunt Cup, and maybe sometime I will be able to return home and ride in the amateur races there, too. I’ve been lucky to be able to ride in these hurdle races.” But Nagle has yet to catch a ride in the Maryland Hunt Cup.

“I haven’t given up,” he said. “I will get a ride in that race one day. Right now, I’m concentrating on becoming a better rider.”

Six Decades

Naylor was floored by his good luck at Iroquois. Just a few weeks before, the owner and former jockey, who was paralyzed in a 1999 racing accident, was fighting to breathe with pneumonia and spent the week in the hospital.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime day,” Naylor said of the meet. “Especially after what I just went through. I knew my horses were going to be competitive, but I never dreamed it would end this well.”

Naylor, who has a farm in Glyndon, Md., has always had a rule: If a trainer finds him a horse that he likes, that trainer gets to train it for him. Hence, he has quite a few horses spread out among many trainers, but until a few years ago, hurdles were only an afterthought to his love of timber racing. For years, Naylor called his hurdlers “timber horses in training.”

Then Tax Ruling started winning big races. With that horse’s help last year Naylor won his first NSA Owner of the Year title. Going into the summer major track season, Naylor is well on his way to a second title right now with his horses amassing $222,275 so far this year to Merriefield Farm’s $77,750.

“I’ve been in steeplechasing for 60 years,” Naylor said.

“I rode my first race at My Lady’s Manor [Md.] in 1952. Satur-day was the kind of day you will never forget as an owner.”

Le Dolce Vita

Sweet Shani doesn’t race very often, but when she does, she leaves no doubt who is the veteran in the field, besting fillies and mares half her age. For the second year in a row, the 9-year-old gray mare and jockey Danielle Hodsdon galloped off with the $50,000 Sport of Queens Hurdle Stakes for trainer Jonathan Sheppard.

Hodsdon kept the mare, owned by Mary Ann Houghland of Tennessee, covered up for almost 2 miles, gamely running down the competition and overtaking Lonesome Nun (Young) and Green Velvet (Ross Geraghty) respectively.

“She’s a lovely old mare,” Hodsdon said. “She’s just all class and runs her race every time she goes out there. I hit the front a little earlier than I would have liked, but I didn’t ask her to get there; she just did it on her own. She’s older than the others, but that experience certainly counts for something.”

These days, the New Zealand-bred Sweet Shani only races lightly during the year, coming out to run in the bigger stakes in the NSA filly mare series, and once in a while Sheppard will put her in a race against the boys. On more than one occasion Sweet Shani has taken on some serious grade I winners and brought home a sizable check for her effort. “She’s big,” Hodsdon said. “But she’s very quick and agile on her feet.”

Finding His Niche

Virginia trainer Jimmy Day hasn’t had a timber horse in more than eight years. But he has one now, after Michael Smith’s Triple Dip (Young) won the $50,000 timber stakes at Iroquois in his first sanctioned timber start.

Day has always been particularly fond of his grade I stakes horse Triple Dip, but after the 8-year-old son of Storm Broker was T-boned and rolled in an accident at Morven Park Races (Va.) in 2009 he never seemed to be the same. At a loss at what to do, Day finally gave him to his wife Emily Day, a show hunter trainer.

“Emily worked with him all winter at her facility,” Jimmy said. “I give her all the credit for getting him ready. He was always a good jumper but very charismatic in his style. You can’t get away with that over timber.”

Jimmy was amazed at the effort the horse gave in the softer going.

“He was 42 seconds faster than the time last year,” Day said.

“He’s bred to go 3 or 4 miles and likes a good honest pace. I’m not sure where we’ll go now. I might just put him away until the fall.”