Читать книгу Beyond the Track - Anna Morgan Ford - Страница 10

1.1 A Thoroughbred’s breeding and training is planned and carried out with one goal in mind: winning races.

So you want to bring home a racehorse? You may have seen Thoroughbreds at the track—a blur of color—and felt your heart skip as the horse you picked to win led the field across the finish line. Perhaps you have also seen “transitioned” off-track Thoroughbreds (I’ll refer to them as “OTTBs” throughout this book) assume their new careers with grace and athleticism, and you would like to achieve the same success with one yourself. Or, maybe you have heard heartrending stories about the less fortunate “unwanted” racehorses and you feel the need to give one of these a chance at “life.”

Every year, literally thousands of racehorses reach the end of their racing career and are available for a new purpose. At New Vocations, we get horses from tracks all over the country. Some Thoroughbred owners donate their horses to our organization when they no longer have a use for them (due to injury, behavior, lack of running ability, or any number of other reasons) and are unable to find an individual buyer. New horses arrive on a weekly basis, and it isn’t unusual to have multiple horses arriving or leaving every week.

Upon arrival at New Vocations, each horse is evaluated by experienced staff. Both mental and physical condition is assessed, and a plan to suit the horse’s particular needs is devised. The idea is to strategically begin the OTTBs’ retraining and enable them to start new careers by evaluating their potential, getting them healthy, handling them safely and patiently, and ultimately placing them in new homes. There are many steps, and each horse moves through them at a different rate. Some immediately relax and grow accustomed to their new life rather quickly, while others take months to fit in.

It isn’t until an OTTB is favorably responding to his transitional training that we start looking to place him with a new owner. While we carefully interview prospective adopters and do our best to find suitable matches, people with an interest in adopting a horse often have limited experience with OTTBs specifically. This leads to numerous questions as they work through the transitioning process with their new horse. I will try to provide the answers to these questions, and others, in the pages that follow.