Off Track Thoroughbreds

Elisabeth Sawelsky rides OTTB Private Relations, a lazy 5-year-old adopted from the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. Safe enough for beginners, Private Relations may be displayed at Equine Affaire in Springfield, Mass., this November.

A diehard Thoroughbred fan with a barn full of horses and a heart full of hope has launched a campaign to glorify the off-track Thoroughbred.

Christina Sawelsky of Sharon, Mass. has organized a 12-mile trail ride through a lush Massachusetts estate in order to bootstrap the attendance of two or more OTTBs at a major equestrian event this November. And additionally, she plans to raise funds for the nation’s oldest and largest Thoroughbred charity, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

With the goal of bringing Thoroughbreds back to the Breed Demonstration at the popular equestrian tradeshow Equine Affaire this November, riders will mount up on Aug. 21 for the Ride to Equine Affaire.

All breeds are welcome on the course that wends across the 1,700-acre property once belonging to Harvard botanist Oakes Ames. (Please visit this site for registration details: www.benefitridetrfequineaffaire.com).

Christina Sawelsky of Sharon, Mass., has launched a fundraising trail ride to benefit bringing OTTBs to Equine Affaire. Here she poses with Quantity, a Thoroughbred she adopted from the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

“I’m doing this with my great friends Cassie Holm and Monica Southwick and my daughter Elisabeth to promote the off-track Thoroughbred at Equine Affaire,” says Sawelsky, a registered nurse who has adopted five OTTBs from the TRF through the years. “I wanted to bring back the OTTB’s place in the Breed Demo at Equine Affaire. And in order to do this, we needed to be sponsored by an accredited organization like the TRF.”

Rather than ask the TRF to write a check to sponsor OTTBs at Equine Affaire, Sawelsky decided to raise the funds through the Ride to Equine Affaire trail ride. The accredited ride, which makes points available to competitive trail riders, will also feature a raffle sale and barbecue style dining.

“Borderline State Park is a beautiful venue, and I’m already getting a lot of interest,” she says. “I just got a huge donation of blankets and saddle pads, and people are donating gift cards, wine baskets, decorative horse shoes—we’re getting a lot of great raffle items.” Proceeds will also be donated directly to the TRF in support of its herd of 900 Thoroughbreds.

And if all goes to plan, the funds raised this month will ensure a couple of ex-racehorse Thoroughbreds find their rightful place at the Breed Demo during Equine Affaire, Nov. 10-13.

A few years back Sawelsky and her daughter Elisabeth, left, took OTTBs Charlie Business and Sing Me Back Home to Equine Affaire. Both were adopted from the TRF. And Sing died of sinus cancer recently.

Sawelsky is still deciding whom among her TRF adoptees to take, because each has so much to demonstrate. Charlie Business, for example, was an injured racehorse who retired to the TRF with a bowed tendon before she adopted him six years ago. Now Charlie’s biggest goal in life is to become a “pasture puff,” she says, noting that he’s a great, though lazy, riding horse. Her newest horses, Quantity and Private Relations demonstrate the Ying/Yang of the repurposed Thoroughbred, she says. “Quantity is like a Ferrari. He’s very quick and alert to everything. Private Relations is like a comfortable, old, big truck. He just plods along, which is surprising because he’s only 5,” she says.

Regardless of who shows up in the ring at Equine Affaire, Sawelsky insists that it’s important to keep driving home the point that Thoroughbreds make wonderful riding horses.

“I wanted to get the OTTBs back into the Breed Demo because it’s important for equestrians to see how versatile they are, and to showcase their talents,” Sawelsky says. “There are people from all walks of life who come to Equine Affaire. And it’s important for them to see that there’s a Thoroughbred for all of them. These horses can do anything, from barrel racing to cutting cows, polo, hunters and jumpers. My goal is to showcase them in a positive light so people can see that they’re great horses. And with the right people behind them, there’s no limitations on what they can do.”

Blitzburgh approaches a bizarre-looking horse/rider statue at the PA trail challenge. Photo by Rough Coat Photography

A mere 16 days before the Pennsylvania Horse Expo, Beverly Strauss pulled a previously lame Thoroughbred out of her field, and decided to attempt something absurd.

In an outdoor arena made ugly by winter, she tacked up ex-racehorse Blitzburgh with one thing in mind—to try to spook him!

They walked over a tarp; they dragged a wooden board; they moved around the ring while a horse in an adjacent barn whinnied noisily. And then the well-esteemed Thoroughbred advocate nearly fell off her horse—laughing.

Blitzburgh
Sire: Afleet Alex
Dam: Capitol View
Foal date: April 7, 2008
Earnings: $43,465 in 4 startsShe laughed because Blitzburgh proved on that day, and throughout the super-fast preparation for an expo event that would try the nerves of many a well-trained mount that he was about the coolest horse she had ever trained.

“I had signed up for the expo and then kind of forgot about it” until it was nearly too late to prepare for it. “With the winter we’ve been having, we had no time to train—we only have an outdoor ring— so I literally pulled Blitzburgh out of a field on Feb. 12, hopped on, and he was super.”

So impressed was she with Blitzburgh’s blithe acceptance of the obstacles and tasks thrown at him, a horse who hadn’t felt the weight of a rider for six months prior to all this, that Strauss took to the keyboard and blogged about her experience. In chronicles of Blitz and the Trainer Challenge, Strauss writes about, and displays videos of that first day with a tarp, a wooden plank, and peels of laughter.

Blitzburgh drags a bagful of rattling cans. He also navigated hula hoops, squiggly lines, and all manner of objects. By Rough Coat Photography

She notes that the hardest part of that maiden ride was getting her stiff titanium hip loose enough to allow her to mount him from a hay bale.

All totaled, Blitzburgh had seven days of training, which included ring work, and walks on the driveway, before appearing at the expo Jan. 27 through March 2. “I’d never done anything like” the trail challenge “so in a way, it was sort of like the blind leading the blind,” she notes.

And when they entered the demonstration ring at the expo shortly after “cramming” for the event, Strauss says it felt a little bit like being back at school and studying for the wrong test.

There were things in the arena that would even spook humans!

A creepy statue of a man wearing a Santa hat and riding a fake horse did not unsettle Blitzburgh though. “When we got to that pony I had no idea what would happen, so I decided to approach it from behind,” she says. “Well, Blitzburgh was so cute. He stepped right up next to this big, fake pony and put his chin over its withers— he’s used to being ponied on the track, so apparently this was his happy place.”

Horses were asked to cope with an arena chock full of everything from water boxes with singing fish to rattling bags of cans, which they had to drag, and serpentine poles forcing them to step unnaturally.

Blitzburgh did not ace every test. Few did. But for a racehorse grabbed from a field just a few weeks before, he didn’t do too badly, she says.

“It really shows just how cool these horses are. He was so smart and trusting. We saw many horses rear and spin that day,” she says, but not Blitz.

And now the payoff— he has had several inquires from prospective adopters, and Strauss predicts he will go to a good home soon. — Originally published on March 13, 2014.