AS A RULE, I am an ardent advocate of closer ties between horses and the pet food industry. But every rule has its exception, and mine in this case is named Quixall Crossett.

Quixall Crossett is a racehorse, but he is as useful at the Sport of Kings as Mike Tyson at a knitting bee, a buggy whip in a Formula One motor race or mammary glands on a boar hog.

Truth be told, Quixall is a loser. In fact, he is the losingest horse on earth and any three other planets of your choice - and that's what makes him downright adorable. The world admires a winner, but it will love a loser who does the business with style and panache.

Quixall Crossett has taken the art of losing to Olympian heights. One hundred times he has gone to the starting post at British racetracks, 100 times in a row he has ended up staring other horses in the derriere, sometimes at telescope distance.

With the British record for never winning a horse race already safely in his saddlebags, Quixall - who really has zero quicks at all - has his sleepy eyes set on the world record of 124 straight losses, set between 1976 and 1983 by an Australian no-hoper named Oureone.

Jockey Jonny Beardsall helped get Quixall off to his losing ways back in 1990, on the racetrack at Catterick. "He may be as slow as a hearse," is Beardsall's fond memory, "but he is a very safe ride."

Quixall Crossett is what horse people call a bright bay gelding. Now I know not just what a gelding is, except that it's something about an animal with nullified naughty bits, thus rendering him in no danger of committing date rape.

Whether this has played any part in running up his unique record, I have no idea. Probably not, since the Aussie Oureone managed to compile the record as a mare, so maybe sex is out of the question.

Whatever, Quixall has already cost his owners, Ted and Joy Caine, about $150,000 in oats, hay, blankets and gasoline for trips down the track to rescue him 50 lengths or so short of various finishing lines.

For that, he has returned two second-place finishes and five shows, worth a total of $12,157.86. It just about covers the gasoline bills, plus a handful of sugar cubes.

But in the case of Quixall Crossett (named after a soccer player called Quixall and the farm, Crossett, where he's stabled), we're not talking about success of the Kentucky Derby or Belmont Stakes sort. We're talking about the love of a couple of farmers for a gentle pet.

The turning point for Ted and Joy Caine came just after Quixall had lost his 13th straight race. Their son, Malcolm, was killed in 1994 at age 26 in a combine harvester accident, leaving his parents heartbroken and, at first, bewildered as to where to turn next.

After Malcolm's death, the father says, "our life was completely changed. We needed something to keep us together, and Quixall did the trick for us. He just kept going at these races, and he got us out and talking to people again."

The pressure to win is not there, never has been. "We don't push him too hard," Caine concedes of his steed. "I suppose we just love him as something of a family pet. He's a pleasure, and he's given us a lot of pleasure over the years."

And never mind that Quixall was as hopeless as he was handsome. "Once you've lost a son," Caine says today, "you don't care what people think of your horse."

Just as well. Some racing critics with little sense of joie de vivre and zero sense of fun have accused him of making a laughingstock of racing. From what little I've seen at races, where horses are forced over hurdles and destroyed when they break legs or necks in doing so, the sport could use something to smile about.

Quixall Crossett may just do the business. Certainly the respected Racing Post newspaper sensed the spirit of things when it said of one of the Caines's steed's pair of near-misses: "Ran a cracker by his standards when he was second of two finishers."

Quixall normally attracts odds of 500-to-1, which seems rather liberal, considering his book. But on the occasion of his 100th race, the 3:50 Ropewalk Chambers Maiden Chase at Southwell, some fruit loop in the bookmakers' camp put his chances at a very short 66-to-1.

The growing army of Quixall Crossett fans who champion him to keep on losing need not have worried. By the time the winner crossed the finish, Quixall was back at the absolute rear, an ambling blot on the horizon. Seems his jockey judged that his mount was no longer interested in the chase.

That could be a key to Quixall's racing career, such as it is. His heart just doesn't seem to be in it. "He hasn't got an engine as such," Caine conceded, "but he enjoys jumping around. He looks after himself, that's all."

"He doesn't like big races, and he's also not very keen on being hemmed in or knocked about," his wistful owner adds. "In some situations, he seems to be thinking, 'I might get hurt here.' He likes to run at his own pace."

Which, it would seem, should make Quixall Crossett an odds-on favorite shortly to nab the world record as the worst racehorse in history.

But then, how many horses have their own Website? If you're interested, you can visit the Quixall Crossett Fan Club at homepage.ntlworld.com/geoffrey.sanderson/quixallcrossett.htm.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as he keeps on losing, and he brings joy to the hearts of Ted and Joy Caine, Quixall Crossett is a winner. And I can't say that about many horses.

Thought for the Week: Wherever you go, there you are.

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