Shamrock Kid, a five year old gelding, was claimed for our club at Monmouth in October 2020. Trained by Jesse Cruz, he moved to Charles Town and earned two wins for us last fall and winter. Unfortunately, during morning training on March 17th, 2021, Shamrock suffered a life-ending injury. His co-owners were deeply saddened by the news and suggested we do something in memory of this special horse.
Following our normal procedures, I reviewed Shamrock’s financials and shared with his co-owners that he had a positive return. Whenever there is a positive return on a horse, I ask for a voluntary five dollar donation to be given to aftercare. With Shamrock, not only was there an overwhelming “Yes” to my request, but the donations also were more generous.
As Shamrock had been training and racing at Charles Town, I reached out to Aftercare Charles Town (ACT). Raising $1,450, instead of our regular $200, I asked Georgiana at ACT if there were a special project we could direct the money to. She responded that another horse, Spooky Moon, from Charles Town had suffered a career-ending injury and would need extra rehabilitation time before she could be given a second home. It would cost at least $2,500 to cover her extra time. I thought this would be a perfect fit for our club.
Georgiana then introduced me to Nina from TRRAC, where Spooky Moon would go through rehab. Much like Georgiana, Nina was excited to hear about our club’s generosity and was glad to keep our club informed on the status of this filly.
I returned to our club and shared the good news about our potential sponsorship. I gave them information about Spooky Moon: a four year old filly, who suffered a hairline fracture in her left front cannon bone. In addition to sharing this information with Shamrock Kid’s owners, I let the club as a whole know about this partnership.
Much to my delight, I then began to receive messages from club members, who weren’t co-owners of Shamrock but who wanted to donate to Spooky Moon. We quickly raised another $450 for her care. When I shared this with the club, another question was asked, “How much more do we need to raise to cover her initial rehab fee?”
When I replied that we needed to raise another $600, more money continued to arrive from our club. Within a day or two, we had raised that amount and sent $2,500 for the care of Spooky Moon.
Spooky Moon has now been at TRRAC for a couple weeks and last week had a recheck with veterinarians from New Bolton Center. She is showing good progress and healing and was cleared to go in the round pen for thirty days. At the end of this timeframe another recheck will be done.
According to Nina, Spooky Moon is absolutely wonderful to work and a joy to have. For our club, supporting Spooky Moon has brought a glimmer of happiness during a time that was filled with grief.
We look forward to sharing more updates on Spooky Moon in the coming months.
*To learn more about ACT or TRRAC, please click the links in the article.