Clubhouse Q&A: Paddy Head writes page-turner
Paddy Head was a jockey back in an era when women were transitioning out of traditional jobs and into male-dominated fields. But Canadian racetracks in the 1970s were still not a welcome place for a wide-eyed girl who only wanted to ride racehorses. In fact, her racetrack of choice in Vancouver British Columbia refused to license female jocks, but the Canadian would not be denied. After college and a failed attempt to make a go of job in a hunter/jumper barn, Head did get her jockey’s license, and landed at Suffolk Downs in Boston to work at her dream job. […]
Share this:
Three-time Secretariat Center reject finds home
Fly Lite was adopted three times, and rejected three times. Her personality, it would turn out, was not for the faint of heart. Yet, the same hot spirit and hard-to-ride ways that sent her back to the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center time after time, tugged at Melissa DeCarlo Recknor. And so it was that the fourth time was the charm for the former racing mare. “I don’t know exactly why I liked her so much, but I decided to take a chance,” Recknor says. She was working as an adoptions coordinator at the time, when she struck a win-win deal […]
Share this:
Help, good homes arrive for doomed mares
A respiratory therapist from Texas stepped forward last week to offer a permanent home to three of nine broodmares rescued earlier this month from a Texas auction that sells horses to kill buyers. Carrie Barthen, a nurse and owner of Twin Oaks Ranch in Weatherford, felt compelled to help when she learned earlier this month that broodmares, reportedly belonging to the prominent Asmussen racing family, had been saved from the possibility of death in a slaughterhouse. Their fates changed on a dime. A quickly executed plan to get the horses to safety was carried out by Thoroughbred advocates Deborah Jones […]
