Tag: thoroughbred

Kind Of A Big Dill is officially back in action! After some much deserved rest and recovery time he is back in the saddle. KOABD may be a little behind, but he is well on his way to becoming a master barrel racer. He is trotting the horsemanship pattern and beginning to tackle the barrels at a small trot. Despite his funny aversion to left turns, he is a smart horse who will soon enough be a champion barrel racer. KOABD even mastered bowing during his stall time and is eager to do it for anyone who asks him to.…

What attracted you to the horse racing industry? My first memory of my love for Horse Racing was watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown in 1973. I didn’t get hooked on racing until 1978 when Affirmed and jockey, Steve Cauthen won the Triple Crown. I was a teenager who fell in love with Affirmed and I had a mad crush on Steve Cauthen too. While other teenage girls were reading Teen and Tiger Beat magazines, I was reading my subscription to TURF magazine cover to cover. I wanted to know everything about the sport. What aspect of horse racing do…

In early June, our Community Evangelist, Michele Pesula Kuegler, was invited to visit the TRF Second Chances program at Central Maryland Correctional Facility in Maryland. Earlier that morning the program had held a graduation ceremony for one of the inmates. Held on a farm near the correctional facilities, this program rehabilitates off the track thoroughbreds, while also providing a new skill set to the offenders who are chosen for this program. Currently, Second Chances houses six retired Thoroughbreds. These horses will spend the rest of their lives at this farm. Second Chances is run by Program Manager, Sarah Stein. Working…

Wasabi Ventures Stables recently did an interview with Anna Ford at the New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program. Learn more about them at http://newvocations.org/. Where is New Vocations based? We have two locations in Ohio and also are in Kentucky, New York, and Pennsylvania. We also just opened a location in Louisiana in March. How long has your group been active? We were formed in 1992. Over 6,000 horses have been rehomed via our program. We retire both Standardbreds and Thoroughbreds. The majority of our retirees, over 75%, are Thoroughbreds. What happens when a horse is accepted into your program? We…

Kind Of A Big Dill (formerly known as Vineyard Harbour) has been working hard with his trainer Samyi! He has been working on the barrel pattern and getting him to bend and relax his neck. This upcoming week they will work on slowing his cute trot down to a jog. Check out his previous update here.

What attracted you to the horse racing industry? Jim bought a horse in 2014 for barrel racing. Friends who went with him to check out the horse noticed it had raced a few times, never doing better than 5th, but had good breeding with Mr. Jess Perry being the sire’s sire. Our friend, who had his training license, talked us into letting him train her for 30 days then enter her. She won! The first race we ever entered and we went to the winner’s circle. We were hooked! What aspect of horse racing do you enjoy the most? We…

Kind of A Big Dill (formerly known as Vineyard Harbour) is still on stall rest with hopes to have him start training by the end of March with groundwork beginning in just a few weeks. Stall desensitization has begun with bag tarps and hula hoops and is going well. Check out his previous update here.

Kind of a Big Dill (formerly known as Vineyard Harbour) has had a rough start to his career in barrel racing. On his first turn out, Big Dill got a bit over excited and ended up getting tangled up in the fencing. Luckily, the cut was superficial but he did end up needing a handful of stitches in his back fetlock. He has had half of the stitches removed already and is now doing stretches in his stall to prevent him from getting stiff before his big debut back to training. Despite the minor injury, he is still as goofy…

1.What does the Retired Racehorse Project do? At its core, the mission of the Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) is to increase the value and demand for Thoroughbreds after racing as riding and show horses. We do this through a number of ways, including putting on the annual Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium (the largest and most lucrative retraining competition for recently retired racehorses in the world), publishing Off-Track Thoroughbred Magazine (a quarterly magazine on-par with MidAtlantic Thoroughbred or Blood-Horse, but focused on all topics related to Thoroughbreds outside of (and often including) racing); putting on demonstrations, clinics and seminars around…

Meet Alyssa, Lyss for short. She is 28 years old and either had or has been around horses since she was about four years old. She was born in Arizona and growing up split her time between Arizona and Illinois. She now lives, works, and goes to school on the Space Coast of Florida and lives across the Indian River from Kennedy Space Center. She loves to read, watch movies and is an amateur photographer. What attracted you to the horse racing industry? I did not have a real interest in horse racing outside of the three races of the…