A TRF warhorse to help combat vets with PTSD
A warhorse who ran 96 times before retiring to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF) in 2005 will lead the charge this week in a pilot program to help combat veterans drive back their post-war demons. Viva Pentelicus, a 15-hand gelding who earned $347,000 in a nine-year racing career, is set to play an integral role in a California therapy program launched this week to help veterans grappling with post traumatic stress disorder. The petite bay Thoroughbred, who exudes class and confidence, was introduced to California lawmakers yesterday during a ceremony to mark the launch of pilot program, Stable Survivors, at the […]
Share this:
Roadside-rescue colt is children’s show pony
Nobody was looking for Barkinspider the day the shockingly thin colt was collected from a Louisiana roadside like a heap of discarded trash. Just another unwanted ex-racehorse of no particular value, the petite gray T’bred’s coat had fallen out in patches where the rain rot had gotten to it, and his eyes had dulled with a look of defeat. When horse-rescue personnel from the Lafayette Parish Animal Control led him onto a trailer to drive him to safety, he offered neither protest nor fight. It was as if the energy to hope for a better life had been drained away by that […]
Share this:
A-circuit horse once told he’d never walk again
An OTTB who was never supposed to walk again has returned to the Canadian showing circuit at age 19, a miracle on four legs with the drive to win. Balmy Beach, who suffered an acute and mysterious spinal cord virus early in his post-racing career and spent weeks suspended in a sling, recently navigated surefootedly, if not amazingly, around tight corners in the pouring rain at a Canadian horse show. And soon, he and 12-year-old rider Ellah Dubeau-Kielty will tackle the A circuit as though nothing had happened to the gelding; once so sick his case was considered hopeless. It […]
