Saving 600 horses, with bootstraps and gusto
For years, the racetrack gallop girl and talented horse trainer wished she could help them. The thought of it nagged at her. Whether she was sitting on the back of a frantic, green Thoroughbred prepping for a race career, or working at Delaware Park, where she and her husband owned racehorses, the thought would come rushing to her: I have to do something. “Everyone knew what happened to Thoroughbreds after racing,” says Beverly Strauss, cofounder of Mid Atlantic Horse Rescue. She spoke of those times before a groundswell of goodwill had given rise to myriad federal nonprofit re-homing and retraining […]
Share this:
Retired Racehorse Training Project rocks it!
Every seat was filled. And still, people streamed into the arena.
They congregated four- and five-people deep, at the fence surrounding the arena, or peered down from above, hoping to glimpse the action from a mezzanine.
Little children hung over the railing and stretched as far as they could to get closer to the horses who were the center of attraction.
Four ex-racehorse Thoroughbreds, fresh from the track and retrained for the public demonstration, did not disappoint as they showed off their new job skills at the Pennsylvania Horse World Expo last weekend.
Share this:
A quirky gelding eases grief, cracks her up
On the face of it, Ollie and Jaguar Hope had little in common.
Jag, as he was called for short, had the dark, sexy looks of a matinee idol. Ollie, on the other hand, was fair-haired and cute, but nothing like his glamorous predecessor.
And yet, both ex-racehorses, with looks and personalities on opposite ends of the spectrum, came rushing into Wendy Wooley’s life with equal panache and equally compelling back-stories.
As fans of Wooley’s blog From Racehorse to Showhorse know, Jag was immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s film War Horse. An image of him frolicking in a paddock was incorporated into War Horse promotional material, including hats and a coffee-table book. (Read more about Jag’s influence on War Horse here).
