Rescuing Horses as Industry Bides Its Time
By JOE DRAPE
Ann Johansson for The New York Times
Deborah Jones, a thoroughbred advocate, said, “They run for big purses, but then you see how easily they are discarded.”
Published: November 1, 2012
Some have been horrified to learn of their horses’ fate and have helped immediately. But many more, Jones said, have declined to help at all.
Just two weeks ago, eight horses were discovered in a kill pen in Ohio. One of them had raced 12 days earlier at nearby Thistledown, and another had earned more than $217,000 in his career. Jones mobilized a rescue through her Facebook page.
Within hours, $6,200 was raised, and the horses — all in poor shape — were removed, quarantined and under veterinarian care. Over the past four years, Jones and her informal network have raised tens of thousands of dollars to save hundreds of horses.
“It is frustrating to know that these thoroughbreds are bred to make money for people,” Jones said.
“There are values assigned to their pedigrees, they run for big purses, but then you see how easily they are discarded.”
In the past three years, nearly 86,000 thoroughbreds have been registered as foals, but only about half of them will actually make it to the races, according to Jockey Club statistics.
Slow or injured horses do not stay on an owner’s balance sheet for long, and only a handful of horses possess the rare combination of regal bloodlines and proven talent to assure a career after racing. In 2011, for example, 1,861 stallions covered 35,391 mares in North America.
So where do the other former racehorses go?
Hard numbers are elusive, but 138,000 horses were sent to Canada or Mexico in 2010 to be turned into meat for Europe and other parts of the world, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
Advocacy groups say up to 10 percent may be thoroughbreds.
“We know the problem is massive: half the foal crop doesn’t make it to the races year after year, and it becomes exponential,” said Mike Ziegler, executive director of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, an organization of breeders, owners, sales companies and racetracks recently formed to accredit and raise money for facilities for retired thoroughbreds.
Some owners treat their horses as members of the family and retire them to their farms or find them a home at retraining centers. Other owners treat them as commodities. Their horses are the ones that Jones and dozens of rescue groups come across.
Mindy Lovell has stopped hundreds of horses from reaching a slaughterhouse in Quebec, and she cares for more than 40 of them herself on her farm in Ottawa. They include expensive sons and daughters of stars like the Kentucky Derby winner Silver Charm and the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Skip Away. It costs her $7,000 a month to keep them fed and cared for, money that comes out of her own pocket.
“In all the years I’ve done this, only one breeder has ever taken back his horse and cared for it the rest of its life,” Lovell said.“So many involved in the racing industry just sit there silently while we pull them out of the kill pens.”
John Murrell is a longtime horse owner and a friend of Jones’s. Like many who save horses, he has a hard time squaring his passion for what he believes is a beautiful sport and the greed that encourages cruelty and abuse off the track.
He provided half the money to rescue Grunwald, a 5-year-old gelding who had won 11 times, and the seven other horses that went from the racetrack to the kill pen in Ohio in October. He knows he cannot save every horse, but he has spent countless hours and thousands of dollars saving scores of them.
“I’m part of the industry, and I know many, many fine people who take care of their horses,” said Murrell, a Dallas-based oilman. “But we’re breeding too many, and we’re dumping them like yesterday’s trash when they become economically useless. It has to stop.”
Over the years, there have been substantial donations by individual owners and groups to umbrella organizations and aftercare programs.
In the past three years, for example, the Jockey Club has given $750,000 to Thoroughbred Charities of America and the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. For the fourth straight year, trainers and owners of Breeders’ Cup contenders have pledged a percentage of their earnings to New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program. So far, more than $150,000 has gone to the organization, which finds homes for horses coming off 40 tracks.
Broader efforts have not fared as well. Since 2009, the Jockey Club has given owners an opportunity to donate $25 to $100 toward thoroughbred retirement when they register their foals. Participation has been poor, and although 86,000 foals have been registered, only a little more than $156,000 has been raised.
Next year, the Jockey Club will add a $25 transaction fee for registering a foal and give the money to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.
Auction companies like Keeneland have pledged a percentage of their gross sales receipts, and horseman groups have agreed to set aside a portion of purse money to take care of retired racehorses.
Ziegler said the alliance had promises for $4 million for 2013, an admittedly modest start.
“There are a lot of transactions surrounding a horse, and if we take a small percentage of them, it’s a lot of money,” Ziegler said.
Less eager to participate, however, have been the commercial breeders who are responsible for the glut of racehorses. While 13 farms have pledged a portion of their stallion fees to the initiative, hundreds more, including some mainstays of the industry, have chosen a wait-and-see approach.
For Jones, the constant ringing of her phone, the often heartbreaking photos of missing horses that appear on her Facebook page and the 17 hours a day she says she spends identifying racehorses in distress and setting the wheels of rescue in motion are evidence enough that there is no time left to wait and see. Too often, her efforts are too late, and the horses are sent to their death.
As much as she would like to spend a day at the Breeders’ Cup, Jones knows her time is better spent standing up for those thoroughbreds that have long been forgotten, she said.
“I’m not antiracing,” she said. “I work with, and need to work with, people in the industry. I’m just looking for more responsibility and accountability.”
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