• AC4H
• Akindale Horse Rescue
• CANTER New England
• CANTER Michigan
• CANTER MidAtlantic
• CANTER Ohio
• LOPE Texas
• MidAtlantic Horse Rescue
• New Life Thoroughbred Rescue
• New Vocations
• Pure Thoughts
• The Second Race
• Second Start
• TB Friends
• West Point Thoroughbreds

A few people got their horses from track workers (it tends to be female exercise riders who place horses, which is a little disappointing since the overwhelming majority of exercise riders are male. Men, if you are placing horses, please step up, defend your sex, and tell me about it!) and good trainers. One or two went the classified ad route.

Adoption agencies lead the pack by a wide margin, though, and the reason is simple. I’ll let Sarah from Miles on Miles make the point:

What I love love love about them is that they showcase those horses like nobody’s business. I could watch 2 videos of him being ridden and see multiple conformation photos before taking the 4 hour drive to see him. At any given time I can go on their website and want to take home at least 75% of the horses that are available. When I went to see him, I was able to see him being ridden, and then able to do ground work and bathe him and graze him, turn him out, on my own. They really “stand in the gap”, which is so important for people like me. I’m a competent rider, but I really didn’t want to take a horse that ONLY knew the track. I wanted someone else to take care of all the “firsts” that a transitioning horse goes through. Also, by the time the horses are put up on the website, they really know the horses, the good and the bad, and they were very upfront.

There you go. If you’re not a trainer looking for an OTTB to train and sell on, you can’t beat the adoption agency route. The information is all there in front of you.

New Vocations tell you everything-even her pecking order so you know if she'll get along with your boss mare.

New Vocations sells me a horse twice a day, but I think they outdid themselves with Such Fortune. I want her soooooo badly. That’s beside the point.

In contrast to a New Vocations listing, here’s what you get from a classified ad. Here’s a small part of today’s page from Ocala4sale.com, which is where I got Final Call.

Here we have a free horse who is a little strong and not for beginners, but gives riding lessons to toddlers. We have a free horse who is too much for someone’s wife and step-dad, so he has to go. We have a free filly who… well, we don’t know anything about her, do we. And there is an OTTB of indeterminate height and  at an unspecified stage of retraining who is $1800.

Unless you really love cold-calling random strangers who can’t spell their own horse’s names correctly, I think New Vocations wins this face-off.

And then there’s Craigslist. But do we really even want to get into a Craigslist discussion? The first thing I pulled up on Ocala Craigslist was this:

$200. Really.

I had to stop there.

So there you have it. Three ways to buy a Thoroughbred. The adoption agency (don’t forget they have trainer-listings, so you can buy direct instead of adopt), the contact at the racetrack (Men! If you’re out there, comment!), and the classified/Craigslist ad.

Who wins? And which do we need more of?

What you may not have known is that the racing world and the sporthorse/pleasure horse world exist in two separate sections of the solar system, and are divided by an nearly impenetrable asteroid belt. Only those with years of ninja-astronaut-horse training experience can navigate this belt and shuttle horses between their two alien worlds.

Oh wait, I made that up.

Me and my Craigslist OTTB after an 8 mile hunter pace. He isn't done yet.

It turns out that we all live on the same planet, in some cases in the same county, and either we’re all scared of one another or we just don’t like one another or something else is going on here, because the people that want horses and the people that want rid of horses are just not talking. 

Instead, the nice kids who want a cool show prospect but don’t quite make enough in their baby-sitting money to afford to import an Icheinberlinerbred (they’re like donuts, but horsier) are looking at $200 bubba-breds on Craigslist with a look of dejection on their faces, and the Thoroughbreds are going to the weirdos that do have access to the racetrack. People like Kelsey Lefever.

Michelle Michelson, who was initially investigated in the Kelsey Lefever case but who has been found to be unconnected to the fraudulent racehorse-to-showhorse scheme Lefever was running, has a statement on her website that really displays the trouble with the racetrack/show barn schism. The bold-face is mine:

I was briefly associated with Kelsey Lefever and met her when she brought a very nice horse for me to sell on sale board with commission, which is a big part of my business.  She seemed to have access to many OTTB’s through trainers at Penn National and other race tracks, that I did not have.  At the time Kelsey seemed to care about the horses and finding them good homes.  As a way of making it easier for trainers with horses for sale to contact us I had some pens and mugs made for Kelsey to give out at the track with the slogan, “Make your slow racehorse count, finding new homes for OTTB’s”.

Casting herself as an agent and go-between, Lefever was able to acquire horses from trainers and ship them to New Holland for the kill-buyer, armed with testimonials from the few horses that she did give a second chance. It was a very good business strategy.

Meanwhile kids keep scrolling through Craigslist, hoping someone will have accidentally bought a Thoroughbred they don’t know what to do with, hoping they’ll stumble on that jackpot, the free-to-inexpensive OTTB that needs a home, unable to access the literal thousands of Thoroughbreds pacing bored circles around the straw of their backside homes, in limbo between racehorse and an uncertain future.

Meanwhile, sporthorse trainers aren’t getting the OTTBs into their barns that they can train and resell, horses that used to be the cornerstone of the horse show business because there were so many trainers who could acquire sound horses, retrain them, and sell them on for a good profit.

The good news is, we have a few tools now to bridge that gap, which are especially useful to buyers who live near a racetrack. If adoptions aren’t feasible (you might be a trainer like Michelle Michelson, and wouldn’t Flip That Thoroughbred! be an amazing reality show?) then there are the trainer-listings, which many organizations such as CANTER use to list racehorses for sale.

I think we need more, though.

I think it needs to be easier to communicate between race trainers and sport trainers. I think racing trainers should have an idea of what sports their horses can go into after they’re done racing. I think sport trainers should have easy access to trainers so that they can develop a working relationship. So that they can network with one another. So that they can do the best by each and every horse. And all those poor damn kids.

I’ve gotten Thoroughbreds in a variety of ways. From a cowboy who took in a starving OTTB from a rescuer. From the RNA list at Ocala Breeders’ Sales. From Craigslist. Never directly from the racetrack, though.

How about you? How’d you get your racehorse?

Hank and a fan, courtesy Square Peg Foundation

The rescued horses who make  up  the  Square  Peg Foundation’s team  of therapy horses, especially a certain “cheap claimer” once named “My Cheatin’ Heart” (an apt name for a horse, since we all know every single horse will, at some point or another, make us weep) have been making headlines for a recent demonstration of The Horse Boy Method, which takes therapeutic riding, dispenses with the sidewalkers and leaders, and lets a child ride double with a skilled equestrian.

It wasn’t so much that Hank (My Cheatin’ Heart, of course) was able to quietly  and expertly carry people with disabilities and developmental struggles. It was where he did it. 

So when Rupert Isaacson, creator of The HorseBoy Method asked if we could bring horses into the San Jose Convention Center to demonstrate HorseBoy Method for kids with autism at the Abilities Conference (I need  to explain that this meant riding horses on the concrete floor of the San Jose Convention Center in and amongst vendors demonstrating things like wheelchairs and hydraulic lifts for people with physical mobility issues. There would be hundreds of spectators, microphones, flash cameras and all sorts of service animals)  I couldn’t believe it when I heard myself say “sure, we can help you out.”

Oh Joell. What are you thinking? You can’t take your horse into a convention center amongst the press and tourists and screaming toddlers and cell phone cameras!

“Fantastic!” replied Rupert, “I’ll send you an email with some tips and I’d like for the horses to be able to do some tricks like smile on cue, bow and if you can get them to stand on a pedestal, that would be great.”

“Did I mention that we will have to bring them into the convention center via the loading docks, will that be okay with your horses? You’re a champion – thanks so much. ”

!!!!!!

Guess what Joell did. Can you guess? If you guessed, “Joell politely declined, realizing that the alien settings of the convention center, combined with less than ideal shipping circumstances and the looming impossibility of teaching them any tricks in the next week would simply be too much to ask,” well then, my friends, you don’t know Joell!

Joell and her team learned Hank and another Thoroughbred named Cometa some new tricks. (Cometa’s 19, so you can learn an old horse new tricks.) Then they loaded up the horses, took them to the convention center, put boots on their hooves to prevent any accidents on the convention center floors, and let them put on the show of a lifetime.

Joell, in her blog, sums up what I love most about therapeutic riding:

The crowd loved them and they basked in the adoration even when the clapping of hands scared them.  They were ambassadors of freedom and strength and power to people to whom life has dealt a different hand.

Three cheers for Joell, Hank, and everyone at Square Peg Thoroughbreds, where they turn rescued horses, including OTTBs, into life-changing champions for people who need them.

Read very much more about Hank and Square Peg Thoroughbreds here:

The Square Peg Foundation Blog: Thoroughbred Champions

Off-Track Thoroughbreds: Thoroughbreds Lift Up Autistic Kids

The Blood-Horse: OTTB Riding Center Spotlight: Square Peg

Anyway, the trainers came together to choose their horses for the 30-day training challenge, and ultimately get on their horses for the first time. They had to answer OTTB trivia questions (which are next to impossible, and yes that is a challenge) in order to decide the order of choosing.

Trainers, you have your horses! Click through for more photos from the Chronicle of the Horse gallery. Photo: Lisa Slade/via Chronicle of the Horse

I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I would have chosen Four X The Trouble, the four-year-old who is fresh off the track and looks like a big powerful panther of a horse. Therefore I’m rather delighted that he was chosen by Kerry Blackmer, who worked at the first eventing barn I rode at in Maryland. If she ever reads this she will remember a smudge-faced smart-ass of a sixteen-year-old, but to be fair, I was one of about a dozen and we were all the same.

Kerry rode a hot-tempered little horse who was nicknamed “Dr. Pain,” (I’m not sure what his show name was!) and I’m sure she’s more than capable of taking on the dark horse’s wiggle-worm episodes.

After they selected the horses, they were told:

…Riders were allowed to spend time with the horses on the ground, but they weren’t allowed to sit on them.

“I told them they could sleep in the stalls with the horses if they wanted to, to bond with them, but they couldn’t get on them. Tiffany asked, ‘Can we just get on them once out there just to make sure it’s OK?’ And I said, ‘No, I want this to be as real as possible,’ ” said Pittman.

The next day they fitted out the horses in their own tack for their first ride. I approve of the following statement from Pittman:

“Tiffany has a yoke on her horse, which is what they use at the track. It’s like a martingale, but it’s really an ‘Oh my God’ strap.”

I love yokes. How many of you use them? They’re so magical.

Here is another fun observation from Pittman:

 “Notice how they all went on their right lead the first time. It’s partly because these riders know what they’re doing and are really well balanced, but you hear all the time how racehorses don’t know how to go on their right leads, and they all just proved that wrong.”

Saying a racehorse doesn’t know how to go on its right lead puts a person in the same camp as people who drive up your farm lane, bang on your door frantically, and tell you in a panicky scream “Your horses are lying down! They must be sick! They must be dead!”

A racehorse might not know how to bend to the right on its right lead, but neither does Pik Werther Anhalt Z when he’s just started under saddle, no matter where his FEI passport says he was born.

Show me a win photo and I’ll show you a racehorse on its right lead. Unless he’s a clever, crafty racehorse and he swapped back to his left lead in the stretch because he knew his right lead was getting tired.

All in all, everyone was quite happy with their horses and they now have thirty days until everyone convenes again at the Pennsylvania Horse Expo on February 25th.

It wasn’t detailed, mind you, but that’s okay, because if dystopian fiction can agree on one thing about the future, it’s that we don’t know what the apocalypse will look like, just there will definitely be one.

I don’t think much about apocalypses anymore, and so I have been puzzling over why the current trend in literature for young adults is to write about horrible, post-apocalyptic landscapes and totalitarian city-states. But I suppose, in thinking about my own childhood apocalypse plan, that children (or tweens, or teens, as we should now refer to them) are naturally interested in the end of the world. They’re learning at younger and younger ages about the influence of consumerism, politics, warfare, environmental disturbances, while they’re still coming to terms with the concept of mortality. It’s natural that they would want to explore these topics.

Or something like that.

At any rate, my apocalypse plan was simply to do what I liked to do: train horses. In the event of emergency, proceed directly to the stable. I figured that any sort of worst-case-scenario would involve a disruption to fuel and electricity, and bingo, we’d revert straight back to an agrarian society. I always pictured it looking something like the eighteenth century, or Amish country. And all the pencil-pushers would be desperate for that skill they’d lost and now needed: horsekeeping and training.

My apocalypse plan was practically a business opportunity.

Well, then I read my first novel to fall under the “Young Adult dystopian” genre heading, and I saw my business opportunity fading. I hadn’t counted on there not being any horses.

In her evocative novel The Girl Who Remembered Horses, Linda Benson proves that she thought things through a little bit more than my twelve-year-old self, embracing the possibility that in a world ravaged by mysterious calamity, we might lose those majestic animals that walk a fine line between the wild and the domesticated.

The Girl Who Remembered Horses centers around a twelve-year-old girl, raised by her older sister and grandfather, who belongs to a clan of traders. Wandering an arid region and served by dogs, not horses, the members of the trading clan seek out the buried treasure of the industrialized past. Herds of wild horses sometimes go wheeling  by on the plains, but they’d no more try to tame a horse than a gazelle.

But the girl, Sahara, has the horse bug. She dreams of horses, feels their coat beneath her fingers, feels their bodies as she sits astride them, feels the wind in her face as she gallops across the plain. Madness, her clan proclaims, all madness, just as so many confused parents, generations removed from the farms, look at their whinnying, cantering daughters skipping around the backyard and wonder where that horse-obsession could have come from. But it was even worse for Sahara: no one even knew horses could be tamed.

“Horses!” someone called out.

Sahara had heard the word. Horses—rare creatures hardly ever seen since the Dark Days. A chill went through her body. Something stirred deep within her that she could not comprehend. Although this was the first time in her entire twelve years that she had seen real horses, they felt achingly familiar.

…

“There goes enough meat for the entire clan.”

Sahara shook her head. As the tangle of wild legs disappeared quickly into the horizon, she felt a thrill, a sense of recognition. Not a hunter’s thrill, not a meat-in-the-stewpot thrill, but a closeness, a feeling of kinship and protection.

Not the sort of thing a twelve-year-old girl can tell her older sister about.

Photo: CBSnews.com

And then someone gives her a book. A tattered, precious thing, with symbols useless to illiterate Sahara, but illustrated with pictures of horse and rider, proving that her crazy dreams mean something real. Obsessed with antique books myself, I like to imagine it as a tall, slim hard-cover from the 1950s, with the drawings as pencil lines, perhaps by Sam Savitt. Whatever it looks like, Sahara determines to use the book to capture and tame a wild horse. A job easier said than done.

But like all girls with the horse bug, Sahara will not be stopped.

Reading this book, I was struck by how delicate our relationship with horses truly is. We are close partners, we are respected leaders, we are members of the herd… but horses all have that streak of wildness lying below the surface. In some it is closer to the top than in others. It was interesting to me that in Sahara’s world, when the bond with horses was lost, the bond with dogs remained strong. Dogs are worshipful creatures; they adore working for humans. Horses choose to do it.  After you have proven yourself worthy of them.

 The Girl Who Remembered Horses is available as an ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all other major ebook retailers. Linda Benson’s site, with info on upcoming and previously published books, is http://www.lindabenson.net/

Barnes & Noble