They've had impressive results. The majority of the horses are back racing. Nobody is really sure how it's working. But it's understandably intriguing.

She pulled up when she got to the front. She's really only as good as the horses she's racing against – she only just does enough.

Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.

Failure was startling, really. So startling that I hardly noticed it at all.

I think he raced good. He's starting to impress me. Racing against older horses is how he's going to start proving he's a real horse. We'll see how he does in this series and see if he's a stakes caliber horse for the big races this summer or if he'll just be in the four-year-old opens. This is the test.

But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses