Susan Salk
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 […]
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OTTB gets ‘rare opportunity’ to exit Puerto Rico
A racehorse showcasing impressive bloodlines and a nose-to-the-grindstone work history was plucked last month from an uncertain fate in Puerto Rico and returned to his original breeder, who offered him a lifetime home. After a 5th-place finish at Camareo racetrack on July 31, New York-bred Swinging At Siro’s concluded his career spanning 87 races and earning over $170,000 with a big question mark dangling over his future. Until that is, his connections there and in the states pulled together to deliver him home. According to Lucinda Finely of nonprofit charity Finger Lakes Finest Thoroughbreds, and Shelley Blodgett, a Thoroughbred advocate, […]
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Partly blind ‘Everglades horse’ wins big honor
A chestnut Thoroughbred known as the “Everglades Horse” following his harrowing rescue from the swamps of Florida, and who twice fought back from the brink of death, has taken top honors in a major Canadian hunter series. Partly blind ex-racehorse Prodigioso, who learned to jump in perfect form after a Canadian mother-daughter equestrian team adopted him in 2013 and brought him to their Ontario farm, was the highest scoring Thoroughbred in the Long Run Hunter Classic Series at the Caledon Equestrian Park. “We just found out that though Prodigioso received the highest number of points in the Long Run Hunter […]
