KEY POINTS:
Don Walker is unsure how last start winner Jacob will handle a rain-soaked track for today's $50,000 Champagne Stakes at Ellerslie.
He suspects Jacob may struggle.
But he's not worrying about it.
That's Don Walker - he got into horse racing when he sold his dairy herd a decade ago to get enjoyment from life and he's not letting anything stand in his way.
So far there haven't been too many cloudy days.
Some of the runners in today's Champagne Stakes came with a reasonably high price-tag.
Walker bought Darth Vader and Jacob's grand-dam with Jacob's dam My City Girl at foot for a package deal of $2400.
With no idea how to train a horse, the South Auckland farmer called into the horse tack shop at Takanini owned by Olympian runner John Walker.
"I didn't know John, but I figured if anyone knew anything about fitness, training and speed, he did."
The most pointed piece of advice John Walker gave Don Walker, who is no relation, was to get them fit.
"John said they must be fit. He said forget speed, speed is inherited.
"His idea is that fitness is training and speed will look after itself.
"And I suppose he knows what he's talking about, after all horses and humans are both athletes."
Don Walker must have taken something useful from that advice because he won seven races with Darth Vader, including the A$60,000 ($68,000) winter stayers' championship in Melbourne with Nash Rawiller in the saddle.
"I'd never travelled a horse, but there was nothing for him here so I thought I may as well head over there for a couple of weeks and it turned out pretty well."
Walker says his involvement with horses stops him from getting lazy.
"If you haven't got anything to do, you just sit around and get more and more lazy. Racing gets you travelling around and you meet a lot of different people."
Although not a trader, Walker has had several pretty useful offers to buy Jacob, but because of the youngster's tendency to occasionally windsuck he has kept him off the market.
Walker produced Jacob to win impressively at Te Aroha last Saturday and the jump up to 1600m today would normally suit, but the ex-cow cockie says the track condition may trip him up.
"His mother could handle the wet, but the couple of times there's been rain around he hasn't gone that good.
"Having said that, he is a lot stronger now than he was a couple of months ago. I reckon he's been through a growing spurt and is just out of it because he's pretty strong at the moment.
"Maybe that will make a difference to him managing the ground.
"Either way, I ain't worrying about it. I just turn up and race. That way the stress levels don't go up."
Walker has a Hunza Court filly from one of the three broodmares he breeds from in alternate years.
He has just put her into work and wants to get a barrier trial into her before the weather packs up because he doesn't want to be working horses in the middle of winter.
"That's when I holiday. Don't know where yet, I'm more of a spur-of-the-moment person. Maybe Europe."
No stress in that. Until you pay the Visa account. Maybe Jacob can help with that this afternoon
