Famous farm hires ex-con ‘horse whisperer’
A few hours in the sun and a little fresh air was all a former Maryland inmate hoped for when he signed up for a program that would teach him how to take care of Thoroughbreds. Tim Brooks certainly had no lofty expectations, not of working among the horsey set, nor becoming the equivalent of the Central Maryland Correctional Facility’s horse whisperer. But that’s exactly what happened when Brooks started working with moody red ex-racehorse Prince Tutta as part of his horsemanship training offered by theThoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Second Chances program. Noticing Prince Tutta’s pinned ears and the way the chestnut gelding, […]
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Boy saves doomed T’bred with birthday cash
A freckle-faced boy with a shock of red hair pledged his birthday money last August to save a doomed chestnut Thoroughbred from the Canadian slaughter pipeline when nobody else would. Brandon, 9, of Ontario says he couldn’t bear the thought of the pretty ex-racehorse, whose looks reminded him of his own, going to slaughter. So after his mother MJ Allen explained to him that 17-year-old mare Karazan has been purchased by a meat buyer and would likely go to the slaughterhouse, he asked her to spend his birthday money to save her instead. “I did it because nobody else was going […]
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Trampled kill-pen mare readies for show
The mare’s bandaged feet oozed with abscesses, useless to deflect the blows that rained down upon her. One sharp kick, and then another, came without mercy from a band of frightened horses who tore at the tattered coat of the weakest among them. As she lay in the soft mud of the Hermiston Auction in Oregon last February, her life spiraled away. “There were a couple of mares who stood guard over her, but the alpha mares were pretty relentless with the attacks,” recalls Mary Lei, founder of local rescue Rescuing Equines in Need(REIN), who watched in horror as the […]
