Off Track Thoroughbreds

Mintsonthepillow is ridden in a Pennsylvania feedlot. This picture was circulated on social media, triggering an outreach to save her from slaughter.

Her face held tightly in check with a bridle cinched over a drab halter, the aging broodmare carried the burly stranger on her bare back in the last indignity of her life.

Curling her lip against the pressure of his strong hands, which pulled a little too tightly on the reins, Mintsonthepillow kept her composure as she walked and trotted for the man at the feedlot who would help ship her to slaughter as thoughtlessly as he rode her on the blacktop of a Pennsylvania feedlot.

And in that darkest hour, when it seemed nobody cared what happened to a racehorse who ran 44 times before being vanned off her final race at Philadelphia Park, somebody raised their hand and said, “We can take one more.”

Mintsonthepillow
Barn name: Blessed
Sire: Bates Motel
Dam: Maribot
Foal date: March 6, 1997
Earnings: $81,940, 44 starts“I happened to see a post by (Thoroughbred advocate) Mindy Lovell about Mintsonthepillow … it was on the 28th of March, and on March 30 I found out who to send the money to, we found someone to transport her, and we got her to a quarantine farm,” says Bev Dee, executive director of Bright Futures Farm in Pennsylvania.

As the mare was waiting in quarantine at Stone Hollow Farms under the watchful care of Brittany St. Clair, word got around about the mare’s backstory, and pretty soon nobody called her by her race name. She was nicknamed Blessed for all she had been through, for her breakdown at the track, for the five foals she had given birth to, and eventually, the funny way life worked out for her.

“It took two days for me to secure her safety and I was beginning to think I’d never talk to the right person to get this mare out of that mess. But we did it. And I named her Blessed right after that. And the name really suited her, because before she even got to my farm (from quarantine) she was adopted by a lady who fell in love with her.”

Blessed did so well with her new owner Eli Hess that she carried this other young rider over cross rails for blue ribbons.

A lady and a professional pastor!

Elizabeth “Eli” Hess, a woman of the cloth and a riding student where Mintsonthepillow was laying up, says she saw the beautiful bay grazing out in the field one day and asked, “Who’s that?” She adds, “They told me she was a Bright Futures Farm rescue horse and that her name was Blessed. I thought that was perfect because I’m a pastor.”

In no time the two became friends and then one fortuitous day, Hess was offered an opportunity to take the rescue mare out for a trail ride. “I fell in love with her from the moment I started tacking her up. She nickered to me, and she was just so happy to be loved.”

The self-described timid rider clicked so perfectly with the rescue mare that on April 29, as a birthday present to herself, she offered to adopt her. And on June 6 passed papers to complete to process. A few weeks later the pair had wings as they took 2nd and 3rd place in walk/trot classes at the Thoroughbred Alliance Horse Show Series (TASS) shows, offered by the Washington Horse Council.

“She was incredible!” Hess says. “In our very first show, we got a 2nd for the model mare class and a 3rd in the walk/trot/ground poles. Here she is, an 18-year-old broodmare, and she acts like she’s been doing this her whole life. It’s like she’s rewarding us.”

“The thing that amazes me in the time she’s been in our life is that she has no lameness, no health issues, nothing,” Hess says. “People are skeptical when they hear about an older horse who was raced 44 times, and was also a broodmare, and then dumped in a kill pen. They want to know what’s wrong with her. I can tell you, this mare has never taken a bad step … this mare has a beautiful soul, and she’s the love of my life.”

Moon’s Treasure was rescued three years ago from a field of dead horses in the East Everglades. Today, he is entering beginner dressage competition.

As seven dead horses lay strewn like garbage among the tall cane choking the desolate East Everglades property, Moon’s Treasure was lifted from hand to caring hand, as if on a magic carpet.

And from the bowels of horse hell he was transported on a new path to becoming: a show horse.

The Florida-bred chestnut stallion who was vanned off the Calder Race Track after a July 8, 2011 race was found wasting away on a putrid property where a paralyzed dog lay barking in the field, and a dead horse lay sprawled near the front door of a desolate farmhouse, says Laurie Waggoner of the South Florida SPCA.

Standing among the dead and the dying on a badly infected leg, the stallion, just six years old at the time, was emaciated and unremarkable in the overall picture of want and decay.

Moon’s Treasure
Sire: Skip to the Stone
Dam: Moon’s Appeal, by Migrating Moon
Foal date: April 23, 2006“He was in an area of the East Everglades referred to as the eight-point-five. There were seven other dead horses that we could find and the house on the property was boarded up. My daughter who came with me kept hearing a dog barking and we finally found him, lying paralyzed. We figured out how to construct a makeshift muzzle so we could get near him,” she says. “And at the same time, we removed 11 horses. Moon’s Treasure was one of them.”

With the South Florida charity too swamped to accommodate the stallion, Waggoner shipped the starving animal, crossing her fingers he’d weather the ride, to Celia Scarlett, a horse rescue advocate who at the time worked for Florida TRAC.

Moon’s Treasure was underweight and had an infected leg when he was rescued by the South Florida SPCA in 2012. He was one of the lucky ones.

Under Scarlett’s care, Moon’s Treasure filled out on a healthy diet, and his deep puncture wound healed with weeks of flushing and attention, she says. “He was in really bad shape, but he rebounded pretty quickly,” she says. “It’s a nice story. I knew him as a racehorse on the track; he was absolutely stunning. For him to show up like that a year later, it’s just sad,” Scarlett says. “Down here in South Florida it’s easy for a horse to wind up in a bad situation if you’re not careful. He definitely wound up in the wrong hands.”

But just as suddenly as his life fell in tatters, he was found and lifted by right hands.

Joyce King was all set to purchase a horse—she was already paying board on a waiting stall—when the equine she had her eye on failed the vet test, she says. Eager to find another candidate, a friend put her in touch with Florida TRAC, and soon she was sitting on Moon’s Treasure, taking him for a test ride.

“At the time, I had only been riding for two years and I wasn’t terribly confident,” she says. “But I got on and rode him in an open arena near a road with potholes and three Jack Russell terriers who were chasing each other and barking. Moon never batted an eye.”

Joyce King felt safe and secure the moment she sat on Moon’s Treasure.

On a second ride, King brought a check with her and told the re-homing charity that if Moon “didn’t throw her in a ditch” she wanted to adopt him on the spot. The agreeable animal went one better than that. “While I was riding, a mare and her foal charged us at the fence line and he just went on with our ride as if to say, ‘so what.’ He’s been my buddy ever since.”

And now he’s turning heads in the show ring!

Though they’re just beginning in intro level dressage training, Moon’s Treasure recently cleaned up at the Parkland Horse Association show, earning six blue ribbons!

“He’s really such a lovely horse,” she says. “He’s so sweet that I can throw my 4-year-old granddaughter on him.”

In the world of horse rescue, both Waggoner and Scarlett have seen too many horses wind up in peril. But the Moon’s Treasure odyssey helps blunt the pain of seeing the stream of discarded, abused horses who pass through their barns.

Says Scarlett, “So many move through and are now doing great things. He got lucky to be moved to a dressage barn where they could see his true potential.”