Off Track Thoroughbreds

Franziska Pütz took her OTTB Not From Texas to Germany after pulling up stakes in America. She sold her car and used every cent to pay to transport her grumpy mare.

When Franziska Pütz abandoned her new life in America a year ago and returned to her native Germany, she took with her a little souvenir named Texas.

Texas was just a grumpy Thoroughbred mare who, for reasons Pütz can’t readily explain, touched her so deeply that she threw caution to the wind in January 2012 and purchased the Pennsylvania-bred animal.

Even now, pondering a decision that to some would seem absurd, Pütz laughs as she recalls how she, a liberal arts student at a tiny college on Boston’s North Shore, would think to buy a horse.

After all, she was short on funds and Texas was short on personality.

“The day I went to look at horses, I think I must have looked at 30. I didn’t like any of them but then I saw this one in the back, and they said, ‘That’s Texas, she’s grumpy!’ ”

Not from Texas
New name: Mardie’s Falling Star
Sire: Broad and Locust
Dam: Jans Time to Dance, by Judge Smells
Foal date: Feb. 26, 2006But the unfriendly little mare had a beauty about her, and when Pütz saw her move around the round pen, she was quickly smitten.

Against all wisdom and good advice, she purchased the mare and stretched her budget thin paying board to keep the mare in Hamilton, Mass., near her college.

“After classes, I worked with her everyday. I didn’t have the money for a saddle at first, and it was a very risky thing for me to do financially,” she admits.

But she vowed that she would not put her horse at risk no matter what the future may have in store.

True to her word, last year when she was making plans to return home to Germany after divorcing her husband, Pütz didn’t buy one plane ticket. She bought two.

Texas is recovering from an infected leg cut, enjoying small turnout in his new German home.

Selling her car, she used every cent to fund a four-week stay in a quarantine barn in New Jersey, an international flight to Amsterdam, and a long van ride to Munich.

“I remember when I told my family I was bringing the horse, they thought I was crazy. I said I don’t care. I’m going to take her. Because I think that if you buy a horse, you take on a responsibility, and you just don’t give it up,” Pütz says. “Sometimes it’s financially hard, but it’s our responsibility.”

And while Texas has had some challenges settling into her new German home—even sustaining a deep cut on her leg, which later became infected—she bounced back nicely with the faithful attention of her adopted mom. Pütz has created a Facebook page to chronicle her mare’s adventures: Texas aka Mardie’s Falling Star starts a new life.

Pütz now teaches riding lessons and works in a coffee shop to support her mare. An American Thoroughbred living among European Warmbloods thanks to the dedication of a true horseman, a designation that knows no borders.

Dione Carroll and Monarch Maker blaze a new path together.

Taking the reins of the retired racehorse in her hands, literally and figuratively, Dione Carroll guided the tall dark bay further from the once star-studded path he’d been on; one of fabled barns and photo finishes and winner’s circles.

Now the cool-headed attorney from South Carolina and the impeccably bred Thoroughbred from Dogwood Stables, would throw their lot in together setting off on a journey of second chances and unexpected partnerships.

“When I first went looking for a horse to replace my fox hunter, who’s headed for retirement, I looked for a successor who had a little more experience, was a little older, and well trained,” Carroll says. “I told everyone I knew that I was looking for a horse.”

Monarch Maker
Sire: Empire Maker
Dam: Ship’s Cat
Foal date: Feb. 3, 2010And three weeks ago, her good friend Jim Rhodes presented her with the antithesis of what she sought. “I ran into Jim, the director of the Aiken Equine Rescue, and he said, ‘I know this isn’t exactly what you’re thinking about, but I just got a horse and I need you to come take a look.’ He knows me well, and he knows a young horse is not beyond my skill, but not my preference either.”

So on a brisk spring afternoon, brought together by word-of-mouth and friendship,
the trio assembled at Aiken Equine Rescue. And the well-seasoned equestrian, an avid fox hunter for 20 years, was charmed beyond reason. “He was just a dream!” she says. “He was a stallion at the time, but he was quiet and well behaved.”

Monarch Maker had seven races before his owner, Dogwood Stables, decided to retire him sound at Aiken Equine Rescue.

After an inaugural ride, and his quick surgery to geld him, Carroll took Monarch Maker home and put him straight to work. “Everybody recommended it was important to get to work, so I started to lunge him. Then I lunged him with a saddle. Then I rode him, took him to a dressage lesson, and he was a rock star!”

Not one wrong foot has he placed on the handful of rides she has enjoyed with him. Over the weekend, while out riding with a friend, she introduced him to an 18-inch log jump. “He’s tall so I walked him over it, and then we trotted over it,” she says. “So he’s on his way to learning to jump.”

Though it’s early, Carroll has seen some wonderful indicators. When he first arrived at her farm, he had the “500 yard stare,” seeming preoccupied, a tad indifferent. But almost overnight, he got into the groove of his new environment, learned to love cookies —“He’d never eaten a cookie, so we had to push them into his mouth. Now he’s a convert!”

As for his physical attributes, her veterinarian gave Monarch Maker a rare 100-percent grade during his flexion test, and it shows in his beautiful walk, trot and canter. “He has flat knees, perfect pasterns, and a beautiful shoulder and neck,” she says. “He’s so nicely put together that a friend of mine, who has ridden at the international dressage level, declared him to be ‘dressage worthy.’ ”

Dione Carroll decided that Monarch Maker was the horse for her after their maiden ride together.

But more important, the kind of horse Carroll was least looking for, turned out to be her perfect match. “I wasn’t headed for a 4-year-old off-track Thoroughbred when I started looking,” she says, noting that her best-laid plans simply presented her with the better option.

And a horse whose prospects were most certainly for racing, and who was originally purchased in the upper echelons of the sport for $170,000, comes to a new life unplanned, but with so much promise; a life of fox hunting and dressage, and of being the perfect horse for an equestrian who was looking for anything but a retired racehorse.

And Dione Carroll got the wish she never knew she had.