35-year-old OTTB teaches inmates to listen
Sir Prize Birthday, the oldest of the 900+ horses within the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF) herd, approaches his 35th year of life next month as an accomplished racehorse and teacher who is best remembered as much for his ability to transform self-absorbed inmates as his grit to knock in 206 lifetime races. Now missing a few teeth at the hands of the loving dentist, and lacking the muscle he displayed as a mighty racing adversary, Birthday comes gently but firmly into the sphere of inmates working in the TRF Second Chances horsemanship program at Wallkill Correctional Facility. And with the […]
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Breeder takes starved T-bred home, in tears
When the broodmare Quiddich, whose name was derived from the Harry Potter books, delivered a delicate gray filly, her breeder Danzel Brendemuehl knew that life wouldn’t necessarily be a fairy tale for the little foal she named Silver and Smoke. Because the proprietor of Classic Bloodstock Farm knew that bad things could happen to racehorses, she stapled a card to Silver and Smoke’s Jockey Club papers promising to the horse back. As she had done with all her horses, she also promised in the note to pay double the meat price at a livestock auction, and to cover the shipping […]
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$220K yearling was slaughter-bound in older age
The Irish-bred grandson of a champion U.S. sprinter, a Thoroughbred so fine he sold as a yearling for $232,134, was plucked this month from the kill pen moments before horses were readied to make the long, frightening journey from Pennsylvania to a Mexican slaughterhouse. By the time Future Kings, 15, was discovered, he’d fallen far from the rarified world in which he once graced. The silken coat of his youth was now long and dry; his ribs showed just slightly, and it had been a long, long time since his black mane and tail felt the touch of a kind […]
