Once destined for slaughter, Grace flourishes
What saved the delicate mare from the slaughterhouse 14 years ago was a combination of little things, really. First there was Kim Gatto’s ability to see past the Thoroughbred’s nicked, dull coat to envision her at her best; she saw a beauty beneath the shabby exterior of a horse who stood quietly with 30 others at the Pennsylvania auction house. “I could see that she was really pretty underneath,” Gatto recalls. “She was really petite and delicate.” And the next small thing— the money that would determine who purchased the horse—came down to the price of an inexpensive lunch. Ten […]
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Where soldiers once walked come war horses
Soldiers once walked past the historic Rose Bower Farm in Appomattox, Va. where Barbara Luna has fittingly claimed the land for Thoroughbred war horses. For the older ones who have battled so long on the track, she offers respite and healing at her newly created nonprofit War Horses at Rose Bower, and begins again, at age 56, helping the horses of an industry that has been too kind to her. “In all these years, I’ve made my living in some area of racing,” says Luna, a long-serving member of Parx Racing’s retirement program Turning for Home. In this week’s Clubhouse […]
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Long quest for foxhunter ends with OTTB mare
Jennifer Webster, associate publisher of The Equiery magazine, spent two disastrous years trying to find a horse. A friend loaned her a handsome gelding in 2010, and Webster, four months pregnant at the time, was promptly bucked off. Next she tried a lease that didn’t work out, had another go lame, dealt with two who were plumb crazy, and all this to find a fox-hunting prospect to replace a horse she had trained to the hilt, and resold. By the time April 2012 rolled around, Webster was kicking herself for thinking it would be easy to find another fox hunter, […]
