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Will Wilson is  an award-winning blacksmith who got his start with his new career in a prison program taught by the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

He went from prison to blacksmith championship

A once somewhat shy inmate at the James River Work Center in Virginia, who parlayed skills acquired through the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s prisoner/racehorse Second Chances program, recently took top honors for his farrier skills at the World Championship Blacksmiths competition in Doswell, Va. Will Wilson, a former inmate whose hard shell softened after he bonded with ex-racehorse Thoroughbred Haps Online, an injured chestnut mare he nursed back to health, has done himself and the entire Second Chances program mighty proud, says Dr. Reid McLellan, curriculum developer of the program that teaches real-world horsemanship and life skills to prisoners, while providing […]