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Kalu's Heart was euthanized March 17 after suffering four serious impactions this past year. The sweet mare has inspired her owner to help other Thoroughbreds.

A mare slips away, her owner battles onward

Gently sliding the downed animal’s head onto her lap, she looked into the sick mare’s eyes. Where she once saw a spark, she now saw surrender. And what she had feared for so long had finally come. And it was over. After a year battling back from three bouts of impactions so severe they time and again threatened the 6-year-old mare’s life, Lisa Bernard’s horse seemed to plead for mercy. “I felt like she said to me, ‘Let me go.’ ” And just like that, Kalu’s Heart was humanely euthanized on March 17, leaving in her wake an indelible mark […]

Prodigioso, abandoned two years ago near the Florida Everglades—blind, burned, emaciated—ribboned at HITS Ocala last month.

Blinded Everglades horse ribbons at HITS Ocala

Prodigioso, the burned and battered racehorse who was left to die on a desolate stretch of Florida Everglades, returned to the sunshine state this month to compete at the highly rated HITS Ocala series. Glossy and confident, Prodigioso carried owner and rider Robin Hannah into the ribbons in every under-saddle class, and also won ribbons in all but two over-fences classes, she reports. “He did extremely well, especially considering he was the greenest horse in the competition,” Hannah says. “People were amazed when I told them he’d just recently learned to do jumps, and here he was, at his first […]

Apositively, on left, is leaving Texas to take up residence at Wild Aire Farm in Kentucky, among family.

A Texas homebred lands with family in Ky

Finding family connections can bring the sweetest surprise. As Ann Banks learned one day while absently researching the pedigree of a nondescript T’bred, and suddenly coming face to face with her own storied past. There in the historic annals of the Dam’s side of Texas racehorse Absotively was Bank’s extended family of old-time horsemen, who helped establish great Thoroughbred bloodlines. “The whole female side of this horse’s family are horses bred by my extended family,” Banks says. “It’s just unbelievably cool!” Home-breds brought into this world by the family of Hal Price Headley, founder of Keeneland, and by his daughter […]