Runaway Joe trotted down the wrong side of the huge oval Keeneland racetrack, following the other early risers onto the track. It was barely dawn, still dark enough for the clockers to find it hard to get a good look at them. For a few minutes, they’d have a little privacy as they worked on their tactics, or came back from an injury, or just did what they loved to do: run.

Joe was running early for another reason: he had things on his mind, offers from farms to consider, a life after retirement to plan—retirement that was still a long way off, but not something he wanted to leave till the last thing. Not unless he wanted to end up like his one-time rival Gray Dawn or any of the other horses who lived it up while they were winning with no eye to the future until it was too late.

In the old days, no racehorse had privacy—or free will. In the old days, some horses didn’t want to run and were made to anyway with whips, drugs, medical procedures, sterilization—to get a horse’s mind on the game and off mares—and whatever else the two-leggers could think of to make their investments pay off.

Most of the time it didn’t matter so much what happened to the horse himself. Horses broke down; they died, right on the track. Horse racing was the only sport where an ambulance followed the players around the course.

The ambulances were still on call now, but it was the horses who did the deciding if they could walk or not. Although Joe always told his kids to listen to the vets. “Don’t let pride ruin your career. If the vet tells you to get in the ambulance, do it.”

Of all the two-leggers, Joe trusted the vets most. Well, after Haley, of course.

Back in the old days, two-leggers hadn’t been employees or partners of racehorses like they were now, more the other way around. The horses had been the employees—if by employee you meant more like slave. Back then two-leggers had ridden on the horse’s backs, whipping all the way. Joe tried to imagine what he’d do to someone who whipped him—just imagining anyone up on his back was sort of mind boggling.

He turned so he was going counterclockwise and moved faster, trot turning to canter turning to a controlled gallop. He stayed out from the rail, to let the horses really working have the inner—shorter—path around the oval. He wasn’t out here to go that hard; he’d learned early in his career a near-dark track was the place he did his best thinking. Sometimes he just stood off to the side at the outside fence—his black coat blending into the early morning murkiness—and watched the others, weighing options: what race to go in next, what mares to have foals with, what his kids were up to and if he should worry about them.

In the old days, stallions went to a stud farm and made babies, and they had no choice in what mares came to them. They never saw their kids again unless the foals happened to be raised at the same farm or their sons came back as sires when they retired. No horse ever had any say in the matter.

And some horses didn’t get to go to the stud or broodmare farms. Only horses who won or had impeccable bloodlines were assured that life. For the others, if they were lucky, they found a new life in show-jumping, or therapy or being a track pony for the trainer or the racetrack, or even a pasture pal for some other horse. If they were unlucky…well, two-leggers in some countries liked the taste of horse. Or they fed horsemeat to their pets.

Joe shuddered at that thought.

Things changed, at least for thoroughbreds, for good when a couple of geneticists, who were also big horse lovers, started experimenting. They knew that over time, such things as drugs and inbreeding and early retirements of less-than-sound horses had led to racehorses who were downright fragile. They began tinkering with thoroughbred DNA, adding things like goat to make the horses more nimble, a bit of cat so they’d land softer when they ran. Some squirrel for the limberness. A little bit of crow and wolf and chimp for increased ingenuity and intelligence. And then they added dolphin, and the horses started to talk.

They had a whole lot of interesting things to say, too. They were sick of things being the way they were. But they wanted to run—just under their terms, not the two-leggers.

Naturally, the old-school horse-people were not about to let genetic freaks run against “real” horses. So the hybrids ran against each other, and they didn’t break down, and pretty soon their races were faster and more exciting, and the press conferences had horses taunting each other directly rather than through proxies like trainers or owners or jockeys, and it made racing super interesting for fans. It made it fun again, and two-leggers went where the racing was the most fun.