Yard care

A race lasts a few minutes; the rest of the time is spent in the yard. In Padooko the yard lives on while you're away: horses recover hour by hour, the feed bill is paid every game day, and morale drifts back toward its balance overnight. A well-kept horse trains better, races better and has a longer career. This guide covers every part of care.

Three gauges: condition, fatigue, morale

Condition and fatigue keep recovering even while you're away. Better feed speeds that up, and Noble and Legend horses recover faster on their own.

Morale

A horse's mood is described in five words: Sulky, Listless, Calm, Keen and Buzzing. You feel morale directly in a race: a horse in low spirits struggles to hold the rhythm and loses courage in a crowd, while a buzzing horse catches the rhythm window more easily. Every night morale drifts a little toward its balance, so one bad day isn't permanent.

Ways to lift morale:

• Trail walk: light work that clearly lifts morale. The cure for a sulky horse.
• Rest: restores both condition and morale.
• Winning: nothing lifts a horse's spirits like a win; a good finish helps too.
• Padded saddle: morale recovers a little better every night.

Hard training and bad finishes lower morale. A horse's nature plays a part too; nervy horses, for example, lose heart more easily overnight.

Feed

Every horse eats every game day, and the bill comes out of your wallet automatically every game day. There are three feeds:

• Standard: fills the belly, does the job.
• Quality: better recovery, more from every workout.
• Premium: the fastest recovery, the most from every workout.

Better feed costs more, and the bill grows with the number of horses. If your wallet runs out of feed money, the horses go hungry: their condition and morale drop. When Doko is tight, going back to Standard feed is always better than letting them go hungry.

Feed and the trainer's fee are a yard's only regular costs. An empty yard pays nothing.

Resting

The REST button on a horse's page raises condition and lowers fatigue, then starts its own wait. There are three ways to give a full rest: a rest ticket earned from quests, an optional short rewarded ad, and a paid rest with Doko. All three top condition up completely and clear fatigue, and on a horse between races they end that wait too. Each has a daily limit per horse. See Training.

Injuries

Horses get hurt, and it usually comes down to the same few causes:

• Racing a tired horse: entering a horse with very high fatigue risks injury, and the risk grows with the fatigue.
• Working a tired horse: as fatigue climbs, so does the risk in training.
• Hard work on heavy going: on heavy-going days, hard training is riskier, except for horses that love the mud.
• The horse's build: some horses are born more fragile, others sturdier. Some of these traits are hidden and only come out over time.

An injured horse can neither race nor train until it heals, and its value drops in the meantime. An injury lasts game months; one game month is roughly one real week.

Ways to lower the risk:

• Watch fatigue; don't race a tired horse without resting it.
• A trainer lowers the injury risk in training.
• Leg wraps reduce the risk in training. See Gear.
• If a tired horse must work, choose a trail walk over heavy work.

Age and career

In Padooko, horses age on the game calendar. A foal from the counter is already of racing age; horses can race from two and leave racing at ten. Their peak years are between four and six: a young horse develops fast, and after its peak its performance slowly falls away. Noble and Legend horses stay at their peak longer.

The end of a career isn't the end: horses over four can be retired to stud. See Breeding.

Trainer

You can hire a trainer for your yard: a professional trainer raises training gains and lowers the injury risk, and an elite trainer does both even more. Trainers have a regular fee. You can also work without one and run things yourself.

Stalls

Your yard starts with a set number of stalls; for more horses, you can open new stalls with Doko. Padooko Plus members get a few extra stalls. Retired horses don't take a stall; they live in the stud book. Growing your yard to ten horses earns the "Full house" badge.

Yard events

Now and then something happens in the yard: a horse won't touch its evening feed, a shoe comes loose, a scout visits, a storm blows in at night, a sponsor arrives with an offer. Every event has two answers; some cost Doko, some depend on luck. Some events can reveal one of a horse's hidden traits early. Answering events also moves some quests along.

A daily care routine

• Check each horse's condition and fatigue; rest the tired ones.
• Take a horse with low morale on a trail walk.
• Give fresh horses their main workouts.
• Glance at your wallet and the feed bill.
• When picking a horse to race, check how fresh it is and what the going is. See Tracks.

This routine takes a few minutes a day and adds years to your horse's career.