With aftercare a leading priority in the Thoroughbred racing industry, ongoing reforms and initiatives are being implemented to safeguard the long-term well-being of all equine athletes.
A trio of some of the most highly respected aftercare leaders gathered June 29 at the two-day Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, held at Keeneland, to discuss why aftercare must be a core investment in the racing industry.
Lucinda Lovitt, executive director at California Retirement Management Account—a California-based nonprofit that raises funds to rehabilitate, retrain, and rehome retired racehorses—said that when prospective owners are looking to purchase a racehorse, they also need to consider how to responsibly and adequately retire the horse they are purchasing when its career on the track is over.
"For me, that means you need it to be written into your business plan," Lovitt said. "If you don't know where to start to begin that, I would say there are charities all across the country, (Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance)-accredited, track-based programs, funding charities, grant-making organizations, that will provide you with information and guidance on how to get that into your business plan.
"This should be the first thing you think about when you decide to get into racehorse ownership. I think that while there has been a lot of progress made in that direction, we still have a long way to go in this industry of educating breeders and owners about the importance of having a retirement plan."
Andy Belfiore, executive director of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, said her organization sponsors two aftercare programs—TAKE THE LEAD Thoroughbred Retirement Program and TAKE2 Second Career Thoroughbred Program.
TAKE THE LEAD connects retiring racehorses with rehabilitation and retraining opportunities through TAA-accredited aftercare organizations.
"Owners and trainers have gotten to know us pretty well over the 13 years we've been doing this, so they will usually give (president) Rick (Schosberg) or myself a call, and that's how the process starts."
She added, "Then there will be a vet report form that will provide the aftercare organization with the horse's physical condition, vaccination dates, and diagnostics available, health history, etc."
NYTHA acts as a liaison, coordinating the search for a TAA-accredited organization that has a stall available for the horse.
"We provide transportation to get the horse from the track to the aftercare organization, and then we will also make sure that there is a donation that goes with the horse to the aftercare organization to help offset the cost of rehab, retraining, and enrollment," she continued.
"We encourage the owners to make a donation to that organization as well, but it is not required. We want to do everything we can to make the owners and trainers feel comfortable, and we're going to make sure that horse gets taken care of."
Belfiore said the minimum stipend that accompanies the horse to the newly placed aftercare organization is $2,000. Even for a sound horse with no issues that will be easy to adopt out, the minimum stays the same and, depending on the rehabilitation needed, the stipend can go up to $5,000.
Lovitt explained that in California, without access to a large number of farms, the process of rehoming horses is more complicated. She said most of the horses in CARMA's program are at the very end of their racing career due to an injury, noting the time spent at CARMA is significant.
Contrary to TAKE THE LEAD, CARMA does not have partners that can take an injured horse and allow it time to heal before beginning its retraining and adoption process.
"I think that's a bit of a unique aspect of the CARMA placement program. We really do have horses in our program for an extended period of time, and often they do have a retiring injury, which is the reason they are there."
CARMA's intake process is similar to that of TAKE THE LEAD but requires a lesser donation of $500.
"Many of our horsemen, owners, and trainers, once the horse has been placed, will make a donation to the charity that takes the horse," Lovitt said. "We have a great group of horsemen in Florida that do want to follow their horses and do support their horses when they get to those charity partners."
Lovitt also expressed gratitude to The Stronach Group, with whom they partnered to support aftercare, and established a rule change allowing for a 0.03% deduction from purses to help fund equine retirement. Owners, trainers, and jockeys are not required to donate the 0.03%. The money raised from those donations funds CARMA's program, along with supplemental fundraising.
The Stronach Group matches each dollar the owners contribute during the months that Santa Anita Park has racing, which is about seven months a year.
Trainer Chris Block, who is president of Galloping Out, a non-profit organization the Illinois Horsemen's Association created in 2010, which provides funding for the care, rehabilitation, and retraining of Thoroughbred racehorses from Chicago-area tracks, said its biggest form of revenue comes from donations.
"We're highly supported by a lot of great people annually that come through for us and really cherish our program. We apply for grants whenever possible."
Funding is the biggest hurdle in aftercare, prompting all three speakers to stress one overarching desire when it comes to aftercare: retire horses while they can still walk off the track sound.
"Don't take it too far. Give them a chance for a second career," Block said. "I've seen too many of them that have been pushed to the point where it sets back the opportunity to get them going in the right direction."
Belfiore echoed Block's sentiments, saying time is a good business decision for the owner because keeping that horse in training when there might be an issue brewing will end up costing the owner and the horse more in the long run.
"It really turns out that quite often the best decision for the horse is also the best decision for the owner," Belfiore said.
Surgeries In the Developing Horse
Another panel that included Dr. Larry Bramlage, bloodstock agent David Ingordo, Taylor Made Farm president Mark Taylor, and Juddmonte general manager Garrett O'Rourke discussed the challenges equine surgeries present in each of their areas of the industry.
Ingordo acts as an end-user bloodstock agent seeking racing talent for his clients, whereas Taylor focuses on prepping and presenting polished, commercial individuals for the public auction market.
Bramlage stated there are two big elective surgeries. One to address specific issues in a joint, and then corrections for linear movement, such as being knock-kneed, bow-legged, or toed in.
Bramlage said performing surgery such as putting a screw across the growth plate in the lower leg at the right time is of the utmost importance, because if a correction is done too early, the genetics of the horse will tell him to grow back the other way.
"What you want to do is make the correction near the end of the growth, so that once you make the correction and take the screw back out, the horse doesn't have enough time to grow back the other way," he said.
"That's why the growth plates in the lower limb disappear faster than the upper limb. That's why you do weanlings and foals early in their career, under 4 months of age, and why you do yearlings to correct their knees around the year mark."
Taylor stated how modern advancements have transformed the Thoroughbred breeding industry.
"If you're somebody watching this and you're trying to make sense of all this stuff, I think from our perspective what we're really trying to do is raise the most correct horse possible, so if you're raising the most correct horse possible, they should also perform better, and they're also going to sell better," he said. "We're always trying to balance developing a really correct horse that's good for the market while minimizing the time they're locked up in the stall."
O'Rourke has a different business plan than Taylor, as they keep most of their homebreds to race.
"Our motivation is to always produce a horse who can maximize his greatest potential," he said, "and the visual correctness is not as paramount to us.
"We absolutely want a perfect racehorse, and some of the horses that are born incorrectly are not going to be effective racehorses if they stay very incorrect, and with those horses, we do try to jump in and get them to a point where they can be racehorses, and we're not so much worried about turning up to the sales.
"Not going to the sales and needing a perfect horse, we do less surgeries than them, but we absolutely do surgeries on horses that, in my opinion, would not be racehorses if we didn't intervene."
Consignors all over the world have felt increasing pressure over the years to present a perfect horse to the public eye.
Buyers like Ingordo can be forgiving of some of the "less-appealing" qualities in a horse.
"There's no perfect horse. Period," Ingordo said. "And a lot of the perfect ones are slow, so we're looking for things we can live with."
Taylor agreed. "We sell a lot of really expensive, perfectly conformed horses that can't run, and we sell a lot of horses that have imperfections, that end up being grade 1 winners. It's a great learning process for us.
"But, for us to get to the sale ring, we've got to get the most correct horse," he said. "There are two ways to do it. You can either not address the fetlocks early and work hard on those feet the entire horse's life. We think by doing the corrective measures on the fetlocks early, we're able to keep the integrity of the feet, which ultimately, is what I think is more important than anything."
Something the entire panel agreed on was limiting stall time as much as possible for a growing horse.
"Horses are grazing animals; they're meant to be in the field," Bramlage said. "Their bones develop best the more time they've been running around in the field."
Taylor recalled something his father Joe Taylor always said, "The stall is the enemy of a young horse."
While yearlings prepping for summer sales must be kept inside to minimize their coats getting bleached by the sun, Taylor said they put their weanlings who are prepping for winter sales out for a majority of the day, except during inclement weather, and to be groomed and checked over. He noted that bloodstock agents with a good eye can see the strong bone of a horse and overlook the winter coat most of the foals have.
Due to the nature of the sales process, the panel also agreed they are wary of a horse that has been entered in multiple sales during its early years, as the horse has most likely spent a lot of time in a stall, rather than outside in a paddock.
"I think being outside is better for their cardiovascular systems, better for their respiratory systems, their bone development, soft tissue development, feet, etc.," Ingordo said.
