KEY POINTS:
John Wheeler shakes his head every morning he pulls The Pooka out of his box.
The Taranaki trainer rates The Pooka the best male juvenile in the country and the most frustrating horse he's trained.
All will be forgiven if The Pooka takes Saturday's $175,000 Ford Manawatu Sires Produce at Awapuni.
Well, almost all.
"You wouldn't believe this horse," said an exasperated Wheeler yesterday afternoon.
"You just can't imagine the trouble he can get into - any single thing that can go wrong with a horse he's had in the last four months.
"Fair dinkum, I'm going to write a book about it."
Wheeler rates The Pooka so highly he strongly fancied his chances to take the Ellerslie and Manawatu versions of the group one Sires Series.
That winning double would have made The Pooka a valuable stallion proposition.
But the youngster got flattened twice, Leith Innes and Lisa Cropp being suspended for the two incidents and Wheeler's dream evaporated to the point he gelded The Pooka immediately after the Ellerslie race.
"Unless they win both Sires Produces they don't want them as a stallion.
"To be fair, if he won on Saturday as a colt and went on to win a Cox Plate, he'd be a valuable stallion, but I'd had in the back of my mind he might have been pinching one of his testicles."
Wheeler said often The Pooka would work in sensational style on a Tuesday morning, be scratchy on Wednesday and Thursday and be right again for the weekend.
"To be honest I don't believe many horses pinch themselves, but he had one testicle lying the wrong way, so there was a chance it may have been that.
"We left Poetic Prince a colt and we made nothing out of him as a sire and being an entire meant we got only two full seasons on the track out of him.
"Had he been gelded we probably could have raced him through until he was a 6 or 7-year-old.
"I'd much sooner have a racehorse than a stallion prospect."
Wheeler's list of woes with The Pooka was added to when the youngster got his leg hooked up in a fence only five days after being gelded.
"He didn't do anything like that as a colt and you geld him and he does that. He's a real quiet horse, but he's got his brain at only half-mast most of the time."
Wheeler fancies his chances on Saturday.
"At absolute worst he should have been second in the big race at Ellerslie and may well have won.
"He copped two serious hammerings and still finished less than five lengths from the winner.
"In group one racing you can't afford to get even one hammering like he got."
* Mark Sweeney will get a few trials meetings behind him before deciding on a date for a raceday comeback.
Sweeney, who has been injured for two years, had his first two trials rides at Te Awamutu on Tuesday.
The Te Awamutu jockey had to battle serious complications with the multiple injuries he suffered in a Cambridge barrier trial accident.
"I'm moving quite well today," said a delighted Sweeney yesterday. "The body's feeling pretty good, but the lungs took a bit of a workout."
Sweeney won a maiden heat on Lucky Prize, trained by his wife Debbie and father-in-law Graeme Sanders.
He says he wants to pick out the right ride to come back on. "I think it's important to kick a goal first up. The boys were giving me stick about my weight yesterday, but I'm lighter than most of them."
Sweeney ballooned to 61kg when on crutches, but is back to 54kg and says he will be 52kg soon.
