Off Track Thoroughbreds

Forbidden Apple and John Evans enjoy their golden years at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Ocala, Fla. facility. Photo courtesy John Evans

Looking down upon the Hong Kong paddock from high up in the tiered architectural wonder of the Sha Tin racetrack, John Evans was thunderstruck.

“It was just so beautiful,” recalls the longtime race trainer. “There must have been 300 gardeners and everywhere you looked there were flowers. It was dazzling!”

And the dark bay, nearly black racehorse, Forbidden Apple, equally dazzling, and on whose coattails he had ridden halfway around the world for a shot at glory on the international stage and a $4 million purse, still gives the trainer-turned Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation barn manager something to smile about.

To this day, Evans is convinced that Apple could have won the big race on Dec. 17, 2000, and added to his $1.6 million lifetime earnings, and string of accolades, including three-time Champion Turf Horse and one-time Horse of the Year.

Forbidden Apple
Sire: Pleasant Colony
Dam: North of Eden (IRE), by Northfields
Foal date: May 31, 1995
Earnings: $1.6 million, 31 starts
Class: Multiple graded stakes winner“He was 10 lengths ahead when he went around the backside,” Evans recalls. “But I think his instructions were to be taken back … and it took a lot out of him to be wrestled back to fourth or fifth to save him for a powerful finish.” He finished 4th that day, but in Evans’ heart, Apple was the true winner.

Evans worked with Forbidden Apple for six years, breaking him as a 2-year-old while in the employ of Bridlewood Farm, and overseeing his life at the farm. At age 3, Apple was sent to work with racing trainer Christopher Clement, and in 1998 he began his 31-start career filled with big wins and glory.

“His peak year was 2001. He went out and won the Manhattan Handicap and in the same year he won the Kelso Handicap,” Evans says. “He was champion Turf Horse three years running and Horse of the Year one Year. He had a beautiful stride, and he was really all class. He never gave us a bit of trouble, he never even bucked, and after a month of training he galloped like a pro.”

Forbidden Apple in his heyday wins the Kelso Handicap. Photo by and courtesy of Adam Coglianese

Evans left Bridlewood Farm to work as a racing steward in Kentucky and Texas before accepting a position as the barn manager of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Ocala, Fla. facility, and a horsemanship instructor for the Lowell Correctional Institution.

In the years that passed, Evans thought less and less about the dark bay racehorse until two years ago, when the memories of the handsome racehorse came flooding back. “I got a call from the (new owners) of Bridlewood. They weren’t breeding Forbidden Apple anymore, and they asked if I’d take him.”

His answer was in the affirmative and was as quick as the great old racehorse had been on the track.

At age 20, Forbidden Apple now has permanent sanctuary with the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, under the care of the man who first trained him. “I spend time with him everyday,” Evans says. “I go and pet him on the head and tell him how pretty he is, and that I’m glad he’s here.”

Prodigioso the Everglades Horse has been fighting for his life these past 10 days in two Ontario veterinary facilities. Here he takes a short walk with owner Robin Hannah-Carlton.

Prodigioso the “Everglades Horse,” who courageously battled back from starvation and abuse three years ago to become an A-rated show horse and star of the OTTB world, was stricken 10 days ago by a mysterious illness.

After first exhibiting mild signs of discomfort, Prodigioso spiraled downhill on Aug. 1 and was rushed to the Milton Equine Hospital, where he was treated “round-the-clock” for renal failure, says owner Marilyn Lee of Sherwood Farm in Ontario.

The adorable chestnut OTTB who was rescued in 2012 from the Florida everglades, injured, starved and freshly blinded in one eye, was in the bloom of good health when seemingly out of nowhere, he was stricken, says Lee, who notes that her daughter and expert horseman Robin Hannah-Carlton first noticed something was off.

Out of an abundance of caution, the horse was administered a medication meant to protect the spleen, and shortly thereafter, he was rushed to the hospital.

Prodigioso
New name: Pipe Dream
Sire: Southern Leader
Dam: Spirited Affair
Foal date: March 14, 2007“Right after he received the medication he broke out in hives all over his face, and it wasn’t much longer after that that he went to pee and he had bloody urine,” Lee says. “We wasted no time and rushed him to the hospital, where tests showed that his kidneys were failing, his liver was enlarged, and his blood work was severely out of whack. Suddenly it was a life or death situation.”

Placed on IV fluids and given 24/7 care, Prodigioso was touch-and-go for days, says Lee, who adds that he was bleeding so extensively that it was “just hideous.”

The mother-daughter team slept in their truck three feet from the emergency room door, hopping up throughout the night to rush to his side. And they waited out a frightening weekend as their beloved horse finally regained his equilibrium.

Medical staff built Prodigioso his own small paddock for supervised grazing, post op.

By Aug. 3, his heart rate had stabilized, and by that evening his urine was normal again, she says. And by Tuesday, the attending veterinarian offered encouraging words, says Lee, noting that the vet had grown very fond of Prodigioso after hearing his story of survival in the woods of the Everglades just three years before.

“He was able to keep himself safe in the Everglades, and so we felt it was our turn to keep him going,” Lee says. “We decided we would do everything we could for him.”

After coming through the worst of the crisis, Prodigioso was shipped to nearby Ontario Veterinary College for further diagnostics and colic surgery. “Our vet had been in constant communication with the Ontario Veterinary College, and they took him Tuesday,” Lee says. “And again our little miracle horse began to do it again. His sodium levels, which were low, began to level off again. And he began retaining his salt again as soon as he got there.”

The attending vets, as well as Prodigioso’s family were so “stymied” by the near-death experience and apparent recovery that they checked the equipment used in Prodigioso’s original diagnostics and found it was working perfectly, Lee adds.

Prodigioso was released last night and sent home to recover.

“We don’t really know what happened. We only know he had a life-threatening illness, and they’re calling it a ‘very complex’ and a ‘very unusual’ case,” Lee says. “And now he seems to have come out the other side, after 10 days.”

Though tests are still being run, Prodigioso was released last night.

His story however, told by Hannah-Carlton to a total stranger, who was herself waiting in a medical waiting room, was so moving that the stranger, a better-than-good Samaritan, left an anonymous $1,000 payment toward his medical bill, Lee says.

“Robin was in a waiting room with another woman who had a horse in surgery, and she listened to the story of Prodigioso, (Please read that story here: http://offtrackthoroughbreds.com/2013/08/16/left-on-fla-roadside-a-horses-life-takes-u-turn/) and all that he went through being tied to a cement block in the Everglades, and we found out later from the office that she’d made this tremendous donation toward his bill,” Lee says. “We don’t know who she is; we don’t know her name.”

But the meaningful gesture will never be forgotten by the friends and family of Prodigioso. “This horse continues to amaze us. He’s faced another crisis in his life, and hopefully he has come through it,” Lee says.