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They save horses

It all started with a beat-up filly named Gracie. Her ears broken, her tail amputated, the horse came limping into Jennifer Carnahan’s life nine years ago. Although she didn’t live very long after her rescue from abusive owners, her memory inspires Jennifer Carnahan and husband Richard to work two jobs a piece to save and rehabilitate other horses who have run out of luck. “We started rescuing horses by accident,” Carnahan says. “When Gracie came to us, she had been severely abused. We provided medical care, and got her on her way into a new home, but the neurological damage […]

Bingo Helen and Lisa make the most of their test

Bingo Helen was her perfect dressage prospect

When Lisa Croxton first saw a picture of Bingo Helen she just knew. True, the mare looked a little worse for having been put out to pasture with no foot maintenance. But she also possessed the tall, leggy conformation so desirous in a dressage mount. Eager to find a suitable horse to pursue her dressage goals, Croxton eschewed the traditional warmblood route after a friend suggested she try adopting a Thoroughbred from adoption agency New Vocations instead. “I checked the website everyday until I found her. I had to move fast because they go quickly,” Croxton says. “If you find […]

Cheers to Glory

Cheerful victor

Cheersto Glory got lucky. Several times. After ending up at a Hoosier Park paddock sale in 2005, the ex-racehorse was bound for slaughter when he caught the eye of volunteers with Friends of Ferdinand, a rescue organization formed earlier that year. Members loaded the gelding and three other unwanted ex-racehorses into trailers and drove them to safety. Before too long it became clear that something wasn’t right with Cheers. “He had a recurrent hoof abscess and he’d get very lame,” says Sara Busbice, a pharmaceutical company biologist and president of Friends of Ferdinand. “After the third time he went lame, […]