Michele Boyce Defies Diabetes Amid Career Year

Every morning, Michele Boyce arrives at her Arlington Park barn, digs into a trusty bucket and heads down the shedrow to give each of the 32 horses entrusted to her care personalized attention.

“Right after I put the coffee on, I have my peppermints in hand and off we go,” said Boyce, a graded stakes winning-trainer and multiple award-winning Illinois owner and breeder, who is well on her way to a career year. “It gives me an opportunity to have each one come right up to the stall door and then I can go over them. I examine legs and anything else as need be. If one of my eager eaters refuses a mint I know right away something is wrong, like if one is coming down with a virus or is pre-colic, or anything else.”

Boyce continued, “It also gives me the chance to ask each groom about what has transpired since I last left the barn and what I need to know. I check on every horse.”

Then, she must check on herself.

Boyce battles Type-1 Diabetes, the most rare, dangerous and deadly form of the disease where one's body doesn't naturally produce enough insulin and blood sugar levels can suddenly spike sky high or plummet to precarious levels. Type-1 afflicts only 5% of the population, according the American Diabetes Association, and it can also cause kidney failure, vision loss, high blood pressure, nerve damage, amputation, stroke, and even death.

“I have to keep pretty close tabs on it, but so far, so good,” said Boyce, who earned her bachelor's degree in nursing and maintains her license as an R.N. “I wear an insulin pump but I still have to monitor my levels at least five times a day, some days many more. It's a never-ending, constant battle. I can, at times, be in serious trouble.”

Call Riley to the rescue.

Her 9-year-old Shetland sheepdog, one of the current four she shares her heart and home with and has raised since puppyhood, was gifted with the natural ability to smell chemical changes in the human body which occur as insulin levels roller coaster through peaks and valleys.

To achieve legitimate certification, a Diabetes Alert Dog must undergo thousands of hours of specialized training, and even though each can cost from $12,000 to $25,000, there are waiting lists of people desperate to acquire one. Boyce did take Riley to school, but he needed only three months to earn his diploma.

Now 4-year-old Bailey, an AKC champion, is displaying some of the same ability. Fortuitously, these two Shelties have saved the life of their pet parent. Many times over.

“When your blood sugar drops, the first organ affected is your brain. You can't think clearly,” she said. “Once, I was driving home from the racetrack and Riley was all over me and acting very restless. So I finally said, 'Okay, okay. I'll find a place to pull over so you can go to the bathroom.' I did and took him out, but he wouldn't go. He just kept pawing me. I didn't know what was wrong with him and then it dawned on me to check my blood sugar. It was extremely low. I should never have been driving.”

The dogs have intervened when Boyce, who lives alone, experienced a complete crash and was at peril of going into a coma.

“They've saved my life, and more than once,” said Boyce, who is a longtime tireless and dedicated volunteer for Central Illinois Sheltie Rescue and often arranges for transport of dogs needing forever homes on horse vans traveling through multiple states. “These dogs are really a godsend. They are worth their weight in gold.”

“My passion is my Shelties and my work with CISR is my life away from the track,” says Boyce, who also volunteers on her one day off each week as the food pantry coordinator for Share the Harvest, which serves 20 churches in Cook County, Illinois. “Animals are my life. I just have a soft spot in my heart for them.”

Just ask Jan Ely, an Illinois-based trainer running Galloping Out, a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization which has earned accreditation from the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance and placed more than 200 Illinois-breds to date. It was founded by the prominent late owner Nate Ruffolo, and Boyce has been an ardent board member since inception.

“When we officially held out our shingle in spring of 2010, it took about a year to get going,” said Ely. “Nate was a total driving force and Michele worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him. In our board meetings about which horses to take in, she's the compassionate one and she always steps up for them. When a horse needs to be removed quickly from a crisis and stay at the track until moving on to a farm, Michele never hesitates to get a stall ready.”

These days, her stalls at Arlington and Tampa Bay Downs, where Boyce now races for half the year, are full and the barn is sizzling with success.

Through Aug. 21, the 2009-2010 Illinois Horsewoman of the Year and 1989 Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association Illinois Breeder of the Year has saddled 66 horses at the Arlington meet and has a record of 13-13-9 for an impressive 20% win rate and a 54% in-the-money percentage.

She's sent three horses to Indiana Grand, resulting in a first, second and third, and in her first foray to Canterbury Downs, the multiple stakes winning Puntsville crushed the competition in the Hoist the Flag S. Aug. 13. Boyce is also shipping to, and winning, at Ellis Park.

“This year, everything is just clicking for some reason it is,” said Boyce, who has a record so far this year of 19-20-12 from 107 starts and $514,802 in purses and has won 521 races in her career. “But you know how that goes. Sometimes, the big circle swings you up at the top and other times, not. I've got good horses right now, horses that fit the program, and I pride myself on keeping a horse sound, even though I've got some old ones. It's hard balancing a bunch of condition books and I don't do it to great extent, but the spots I've picked out have worked pretty well, and the Arlington meet has gone really well this year, for which I am grateful.”

Boyce, who has a piece of many of the horses she trains for their owner/breeder through partnerships, likes to develop young horses and normally does not play the claim game. But with the help of Thoroughbred advocate Maggi Moss, in 2009 she won a four-way shake to halter Saint Leon (Stravinsky) out of a $5,000 race at Mountaineer Park for the horse's previous owner, Margaret Burlingham.

“He pulled up bad that day,” said Boyce. “I had him on a van to Chicago as soon as possible and my vets discovered he had a fractured cannon bone that, apparently, he'd been running on for some time and was in pain. We did everything we could for him, thinking if he made it all the way back, fine, and if he didn't, he had a home for life. I gave him a year off, and when he came back to Arlington I said, 'I'll let him tell me', and he did.”

Did he ever. Saint Leon eventually captured the Arlington Turf Sprint in three successive years, 2012-2014, and beat two Breeders' Cup Sprint winners–Chamberlain Bridge (War Chant) and Regally Ready (More Than Ready)–in the process.

“Leon was the horse of a lifetime,” said Burlingham, who is partnered with Boyce on seven horses in training and six mares and babies. “He was the first horse I had with Michele. She saw something in him and she really moved him up. She's really good at seeing what's in a horse.”

Burlingham continued, “I look at Arlington and I could not pick another trainer I would use. From the day I met her, I thought her horses looked very slick, happy and confident. I could see she had rapport with each of them. She treats each as an individual. She worries about them and she really cares about each. She still can't sleep the night before a race. She's attached to them, and that's the kind of trainer I want.”

An Illinois Thoroughbred Breeders Association representative couldn't say for certain how many champions Boyce has trained, but she's got quite a trophy collection.

Josette (1988 3-year-old Filly) and Grade 3 winner Valid Vixen (1987 2-year-old Filly), both daughters of mares she claimed, come to mind, as do Kate the Great and her daughter Katie the Lady, and Princeville Condo. Lovely Loyree, the 2014 champion 3-year-old filly, is still posing for winner's circle photos and won the Mike Spellman H. at Arlington in June. There are others.

“I'm happy to say I've owned, bred, and trained many Illinois-bred champions. I have some good horses now and I am having an amazing year. I feel truly blessed. But I couldn't do it without my crew,” Boyce said in praise of foreman Carlos Chavez and his wife, Luisa, who have been with her for 25 years, and the rest of the team. “I just write the checks. They do all the hard work.”

That effort is paying off as Boyce is on course to surpass 2004, when her charges earned $985,684 and won 38 races. Even better, everyone is having fun.

“I like a happy barn,” she said. “I believe the horses do better with it. We have a really good working atmosphere. I love what I do. I hope I keep doing it. But I always have my little nursing cap to go back to if it gets really rough.”