A warrior OTTB attacks Calif. jumping circuit
On the California Jumper circuit, Thoroughbred Guerrero Negro roars up to every fence as though it is something to be attacked, at speed, with barely a glance. With 11-year-old rider James Tota in the irons, the up-and-coming OTTB, whose name translates in Spanish as Black Warrior, is proving to be every bit the fighter his name suggests, chasing down fences and knocking in victories. “This horse has had a spectacular first year,” says owner and trainer Diane Grant-Schott of California. “He does not want to lose or touch a rail, and if he does, he thinks it’s his rider’s fault!” […]
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Love from an OTTB helps shy girl blossom
As a child, little Megan Hansford was shy to the point of being a bit of a loner. She tended to hang back from family gatherings, and well out of the limelight. “She never had much self-confidence,” says her mother Tracey Hansford. “She was always a quiet one who’d come home from school, do her homework and pretty much kept to herself.” But all that began to change last July, shortly after the sweet-natured 9-year-old accompanied her parents and older sister on a trip to look at a sale- horse, a retired racehorse named E Factor. When the group bustled […]
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Horses guide longtime inmate to software co. job
A former inmate who spent the final 16 months of a nearly 13-year prison sentence learning to care for Thoroughbreds, credits the beautiful animals as “godsends” for teaching him the confidence he needed to land a professional job with a pharmaceutical software company shortly after returning to society outside the razor wire. Scott Keefauver, an inmate at the Wateree River House of Corrections from March 2009 until September 2015 says that working with retired racehorses at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Second Chances program for inmates and racehorses helped better prepare him for a future career than the online college degree […]
