Gotta Good Feeling lives up to his name as an off-track Thoroughbred

Gotta Good Feeling lives up to his name as an off-track

Thoroughbred

The horse with floppy ears and a big white blaze exited the

sales ring at a two-year old in training sale without having moved any buyers to

take a chance, but trainer Dee Poulos couldn't get him out of her mind.

"He just grabbed me with that unforgettable white blaze,"

Poulos said of the horse who would eventually be called Gotta Good Feeling. "He

just had a special look, and I couldn't stop thinking about him. I called Homer

(Schafer) and we wound up buying him."

Poulos would take things slowly with the young horse,

giving him time to mature in advance of his career debut on March 3, 2007, a

race he would win at odds of 13-1, the first of three lifetime wins while

earning more than $54,000. During his racing career, Poulos was introduced to

Lara Filip, a volunteer with the racehorse retirement organization CANTER, who

would frequent the Arlington backstretch in search of horses in need of homes

after their racing days were over.

"Lara and I had a mutual friend, and she started coming around the barn," Poulos

said. "She fell in love with him the first time she saw him, and she started to

come visit him more often, and while he was still

racing, she told me that she would love to give him a home when his racing days

were done. We can be superstitious at the racetrack, so the one thing I didn't

want to think about was the end of his racing career."

As it happened, Gotta Good Feeling would injure his

sesamoid in a June 2008 race at Arlington, and he was taken back to the barn for

observation.

"He finished fourth in his last race,

and so we took him back to the barn just to see how things went for a little

bit," Schafer recalled. "When it became clear that he wasn't going to race again, Dee and I were

discussing what to do with the horse, and we knew that Lara was interested in

taking him.

"They were a match made in heaven; it was love at first sight, and we

knew that she would give him a good home."

Filip, who lived in Forest Park, Illinois, at the time but now resides

in Naperville, said that her visits to see Gotta Good Feeling had been slowing

down in the time leading up to his injury.

"When he was four-years old, I had

stopped visiting quite as often, because there wasn't as much of a need for CANTER's help on the backstretch -- and that was a great thing,"

she explained. "I had told Dee

that I would love to have the horse when he was done racing, and she hated me

saying that, so we never spoke of it again, but once it was clear that he wasn't

going to make it back to the races, she called me and said, 'If you still want

him, he's yours.'"

Filip took Gotta Good Feeling to Versailles Farm near Elburn,

Illinois, for additional rest and time to recover from his injury.

"We started slow

on him once we knew he was sound again, because that kind of injury isn't easy

to overcome. I started riding him, and then eventually started him over a few

small jumps because I have a hunter/jumper background. He loved it, and after

that I moved him closer to me so I could keep working with him on that."

Filip helped "Gibson," as she calls him now, move forward

off his injury, but it would not be long until she needed him the way that he

needed her.

"I was diagnosed with cancer just before Christmas in 2009," she said.

"I had had Gibson for almost a year and a half at that point, and we were doing

so well together when this came out of the blue -- I was young and there was no

history of cancer in my family. The first thing I asked my doctor was whether or

not this would impact my riding."

Filip credits a network of family and friends for helping

her continue her trips to the farm to ride Gibson.

"My friends and family were so great to me, but they all

thought I was crazy. They would wonder how I wasn't OK to drive, but I was

okay to ride. There were days that I didn't want to do anything; it was

difficult to get off the couch and it was pretty easy to think about sitting

around and feeling sorry for myself. Gibson was the reason that I didn't give

myself a chance to do that, because the only thing I wanted to do most days was

go spend time with him.

"Some days I did feel horrible," Filip continued, "but even

when I wasn't strong enough to ride, I still wanted to go hang out with him. I

would sometimes take a saddle pad out into the paddock and just lay down, and

he'd graze the grass right next to me.

"You know, I don't think he was ever a really spectacular

athlete, but he's got an amazing work ethic, and he figures out what his job is

and then tries as hard as he can to be good at it. I think that served him well

on the racetrack, and it made him the perfect partner for me. I really believe

that he figured out that his job was to take care of me."

Filip credits that intuition for Gibson's ability to be

such a key ally in her battle with cancer, but his ability to pick up on her

mood didn't always make things easy.

"We only fell once, and I blame myself for it. I wasn't

completely into it, and I was feeling weak from treatments, and he picked up on

that. I wasn't 100 percent, so he didn't think he had to be either. When I

needed him, he was there, but when I was lazy, he thought it was time for us to

be lazy together and we didn't make it cleanly over a jump and I got tossed

off," she laughed.

Those types of miscues between the two were rare, however,

and Filip reflects on her successful battle with cancer with a sense of

thankfulness in her voice.

"I've been in remission for 2 1/2 years now, and I am so

incredibly grateful to Homer and Dee for giving me such an amazing gift. Gibson

was such a huge part of my recovery, and I think of Dee every day. She's just a

wonderful person, and having this horse helped me through so much. I kept

thinking that I had to get better because I had this amazing horse in my life,

and I needed to be there for him like he was there for me."

Poulos, for her part, isn't surprised that the horse once

known as Gotta Good Feeling would live up to his name.

"In Greek mythology, the horse is considered a messenger,

and in my life I've been through difficult things and there has always been a

horse there for me," Poulos stated. "Lara was so positive throughout her treatments, and I'm not

sure I could have done that. It was almost like this horse was intended for

something else from the very start. He was meant to be with Lara and to help her

through her battle with cancer."

The horse with the floppy ears and big white blaze that

nobody wanted turned out to be the exact horse Lara Filip needed.

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