Pimlico hosts T’bred sport horses, cow ponies
Twenty-six trainers from 15 states and Canada converged on Pimlico racetrack last weekend to demonstrate the versatility of ex-racehorse Thoroughbreds trained for new disciplines. Former racehorses cut cattle, worked with hounds, barrel raced and show jumped on the dirt course near the track’s finish line in a powerful demonstration that helped prove Thoroughbreds are more than deserving of new careers. Steuart Pittman, founder of the Retired Racehorse Training Project, which organized and hosted the Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium at Pimlico, declared the event an unqualified success. It drew 750 people over two days. “There were lots of highlights of […]
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SPCA raid spurs quest to find, get gray gelding
A bolt of dread shot up her spine. Racing through the news story, fear clutched her heart as Elisabeth Leahy’s thoughts turned to the dappled gray horse who belonged to Ernie Paragallo; a man who would eventually be imprisoned on 33 counts of animal cruelty. With growing horror, she read how Paragallo had been arrested during an SPCA sweep of his New York farm. That approximately100 sickly horses were removed by the truckloads in the raid, none of course mentioned by name, as she was left only to wonder, and with a sinking feeling in her heart; was he okay? […]
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‘I’ll get you out’ she whispered, saving 9 horses
Everywhere she looked was sick horses. Noses running, they coughed as they stood shivering in the slop left behind by a Canadian winter rainstorm. The gray, who raced under the name E.Z. Irish, stood gingerly on a broken pelvis, and Somarvelous, who’d previously earned more than $200,000 on the track, was huddled among them; a total of nine forgotten Thoroughbreds, some still wearing their racing plates, deposited on an Ontario feed lot last December, awaiting their final ride to slaughter. Not knowing how she could rescue as many as that, Mindy Lovell whispered to the horses, “I’ll get you out […]
