RETIRE & REHOME

Retire & Rehome

Whichever way we ride or however we are associated with horses, we can all agree that horse welfare and rescue is extremely important. Learn about these caring places in our Rehome section, where money and time can be donated to help horses find, or remain, in their forever home.

Many charity events help fund the good work of equine rescue organizations. Parties and auctions to benefit rescue are included in the Calendar of Events for Retire & Rehome.

Have an old friend to retire? Find a place where your horse can live the life of leisure in our Retirement section.

Do we need to add an event or rescue? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!

Ex-jockey Rosie Napravnik had a very successful 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover riding former racehorses Sanimo (right, with Napravnik aboard) and Bethel Wildcat. (Melissa Bauer-Herzog/America's Best Racing)

by Melissa Bauer-Herzog

When retired Grade 1-winning jockey Rosie Napravnik pulled into the Kentucky Horse Park on Tuesday with her three Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover Presented by Thoroughbred Charities of America horses, she had a feeling she’d be going to Saturday’s Finale.

She was right – she just picked the wrong horse when naming Bethel Wildcat as the horse most likely to get her there.

Napravnik had entered Sanimo and Bethel Wildcat in the Eventing division at the “Makeover” while she was also competing on Team Rosie Napravnik Off-Track Sporthorses in Show Hunters with My Man Sam. Soon after arriving at the Park on Tuesday, she schooled all three horses in the rings they would be competing in before having a chance to walk her courses on Wednesday after showing “Bethel.”

“I brought the horses in on Tuesday so they were all able to school in the rings that they were going to compete in, which is really great. It’s great to get them acclimated to the atmosphere and the horse that ended up winning – Sanimo – he was quite reactive to the atmosphere on Tuesday and then we went back and schooled again in the warm-up on Wednesday. Then on Thursday he just came out and from the first upward transition he was just fabulous,” Napravnik said.

“On Wednesday I just had Bethel Wildcat going so I was actually able to have time to walk the cross country course after my dressage test before I had to go back to show jumping, and then I was able to walk the show jumping course right before I went into the ring. There’s just so much to do, and fitting everything in becomes a real job, but the Retired Racehorse Project has done a great job of making rings available and having everything prepared.”

My Man Sam was the first horse on Napravnik’s schedule on Thursday with the Kentucky Derby runner competing in the Show Hunters division. An unlucky rail falling unfortunately dropped his score but overall Team Rosie Napravnik Off-Track Sporthorses was proud of their horse, with “Sam” placing 19^th out of 136.

“It was really unfortunate I had a rail in his first over fences course – it wasn’t even a bad fence, but we just had very little room which lowered our score but his overall round was really a great rhythm and he just did phenomenally well,” she said. “He was well behaved, he had great manners and his second over fences round was with my sister Jazz, who is one of my teammates, and he just went equally as well. In the hack class, he was very well behaved and performed really well. He is definitely the greenest of the three of the horses I brought. I was super happy with him and I’ve had a little bit of interest in him, I’ve just been trying to find him the perfect match. He’s a really, really special horse.”

A bit of confusion for Napravnik about the scoring of bonus fences during cross country on Wednesday had cost Bethel the extra points he needed to get into the Finale. But Napravnik had more information about the scoring when she tackled cross country on Thursday, and that helped Sanimo take the lead in the class after performing well in both the dressage and stadium jumping phases of the event.

“My event horses actually scored identical scores in dressage, then [Sanimo] scored second highest in show jumping and cross country,” she said. “Bethel Wildcat was the horse that was definitely going to be the most competitive of the three I had going to the Makeover, and he was. If he had those extra 10 points he would have been in the Finale with a chance to move up to second or [get] the win. But Sanimo’s been a horse that’s really just come into his own at the right time. He’s the youngest, he’s four, so with ‘Mo’ being the baby he was started later and slower and just has taken a little bit longer to mature, and he just blossomed in the last three or four weeks, he did really well in his last horse trial, which was about three weeks before the Makeover. He just peaked at the Makeover and I’ve just been so, so, so pleased with him.”

Performing flawlessly in the Finale, Sanimo showed that Napravnik’s patience with him paid off when keeping his lead in the Eventing class. While Napravnik has owned him since February of 2018, he’d spent most of 2018 turned out to grow up and received 45 days’ worth of riding, starting on Dec. 1 He then spent another 90 days turned out last spring before beginning serious Makeover training.

Mentally immature, Sanimo had proven to be a challenging horse to train, so understandably, Napravnik was emotional when she won the Eventing class on the 4-year-old. Even better was that she had both horses finish in the top 10 in Eventing, as Bethel Wildcat finished eighth of 67 horses.

“I had some mental setbacks myself with Sanimo, so overcoming that and ending up in the Finale on that horse was really a huge surprise,” she said. “Then to pull through with the win and this being the horse I had always hoped to keep since I got him almost two years ago, it was just all crazy the way that worked out. That’s just what made it so emotional is that this is the horse that I hope to go up the levels on in Eventing and sort of go for that second career myself. This horse is just as big a part of my second career as I am in his.”

As for the plans for all three of her entries, they depend on how much longer the horses are in her barn. All three geldings were advertised for sale in the ASPCA Makeover Marketplace at the Makeover, and she’ll be picking up their advertising in coming weeks.

My Man Sam has already had interest from some buyers while Bethel Wildcat and Sanimo will both be competing in the Hagyard MidSouth Team Challenge at the Horse Park later this month. Bethel’s racing owner and breeder Dr. Stuart Brown has supported the horse through his retraining process with the goal of selling him after the Makeover. But Napravnik is looking to go down another avenue when it comes to “selling” Sanimo.

“Sanimo is for sale sort of at an inflated price of his potential and what it would be worth for me to sell him versus keeping him,” she said. “I would definitely also be open to looking for partnerships for someone or multiple people who would like to become partners and make our way up the levels with a really quality young horse.”

Sanimo will receive nearly all of November off after his next competition before entering back into work in December, as Napravnik is staying in Kentucky this winter. His main goal in 2020 is to qualify for the American Eventing Championships at the Horse Park next Fall, while another goal Napravnik has for herself is to take her next generation of off-track Thoroughbreds to the Makeover.

With a full barn and most of the horses eligible for the Makeover, she already has a few in mind for the restarting process when training commences on Dec. 1 if they don’t sell to other riders before then.

In that group? A regally bred half-brother to Horse of the Year Havre De Grace named Verhalen, who looks to return Napravnik to the winner’s circle yet again at the 2020 Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover.

This article originally appeared on America's Best Racing and is published here with permission.

Find other inspiring stories in our section on Retire & Rehome.

The Australian Firefighters are very excited to bring you their first ever Australian Firefighters Rescue Horse Calendar! They were kindly allowed to spend time with and take photos with all the horses and ponies featured in this calendar.

Healing Hooves Inc rescues horses bound for slaughter and that come from traumatic backgrounds. They lovingly rehabilitate them for use in Therapeutic programs that assist those suffering Mental Health disorders, addiction, Autism, ADHD, emotional and physical disabilities.

Reason to Thrive provide Equine assisted activities that promote physical, mental and social health. These programs have been developed to assist a variety of groups such as at-risk or disengaged children and youth, children with special needs and women and children who are survivors of domestic violence.

Champion barrel racer Fallon Taylor and Cowboy Swagger (photo courtesy CanterClix)

Champion barrel racer Fallon Taylor takes on a new challenge every year: in 2018, she took up show jumping. This year, she took on the Thoroughbred Makeover. Already a champion — she was the 2014 Women’s Professional Rodeo Association World Champion and 2018 AQHA World Champion — Taylor can add one more line to her deep resume: trainer of the 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover Champion, Cowboy Swagger.

Much like winning the average in a rodeo, Taylor and Cowboy Swagger’s consistent, steady performances earned them victory in the Barrel Racing discipline at the 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium, presented by Thoroughbred Charities of America. Taylor didn’t lead after the horsemanship component, nor did she set the fastest times in the two daily barrel runs, but through those consistent performances she maintained the best overall scores in the division. After clinching the championship in Barrel Racing, Taylor’s fan base rallied behind her to vote her to the overall title.

A Quarter Horse named "Rusty" ended up in a Texas kill pen, to the shock and surprise of his former owners. He has since returned home, where his health has improved considerably.

by Natalie Voss

Everyone, step away from your keyboards for a moment.

If you spend any time on social media pages geared toward horse rescue, specifically rescue from the slaughter pipeline, chances are you've seen a comment pop up urging others to “name and shame” the person responsible for the horse's predicament. What often happens next is the horse's most recent competition record or foal registration papers are accessed, screenshots are taken, and horsemen's names appear in the comments attached to the photo of the listless-looking horse.

In some cases, users will even “dox” the last known trainer or owner of the horse, posting their phone number or home address, urging others to flood them with angry calls or letters demanding an explanation for the horse's appearance in a kill pen.

“Naming and shaming” is not a new phenomenon, although its adaptation on social media is relatively new. Human rights groups have engaged in it for decades, drawing attention to genocides or other abuses and flagging those events for national or international media exposure. Some environmentalists have also tried it, calling attention to deforestation or poaching, though in those cases the culprit is less commonly named as an individual. Academic research into the technique has had mixed results; some studies find that particularly in situations of human rights violations, public attention on the behavior encourages governments or regimes to stop the abuses, while others have found that depending upon the type of government involved, that attention is either ineffective or may even make violence worse.

Willie Nelson Rescued 70 Horses From a Slaughterhouse and Let Them Roam Free on His Ranch

by Mandy Froelich

As if you need another reason to love Willie Nelson, news has recently surfaced that the musician and marijuana activist is also a horse lover. He’s so fond of them that he rescued 70 horses from being slaughtered. They now roam on his 700-acre ranch in Texas.

The country musician spends most of his time at Luck Ranch when he’s not on the road. The ranch is home to him and the name “Luck” suits in more ways than one. Nelson told Paul Venema from KSAT 12 News, “When you’re here, you’re in Luck, and when you’re not, you’re out of Luck.”

The horses are undoubtedly lucky, too and Nelson agrees. He told Venema: "“My horses are probably the luckiest horses in the world. They get hand-fed twice a day, and they were just ready to go to slaughter is probably the last thing they remembered, so they’re happy horses.”

As The Epoch Times reports, Nelson has long held a love for horses. His song Ride Me Back Home, for instance, attests to his love for the animal. Nelson also won an award in 2015 for the video to his song The Love of Horses. The video shows Nelson meeting members of Habitats for Horses who were trying to end the slaughter of horses by working to get new legislation passed.

The Truth About Kill Pens - Are You REALLY Saving a Life?

EIE has the largest Rehoming directory in the world where people can find a horse.

by Liberty Vallance

My name is Liberty Valance, and I own a kill pen horse. And it is because of my kill pen horse that I decided to pursue this area of the equine industry further. I, myself, was was ready to jump headlong into this cesspool and use my extensive equine experience to start pulling horse regularly to make a difference in their world. I started doing kill pen horse transports here and there, and I have been to the feed lots in person. But I have a college degree in business and law, and I have been heavily involved in the horse industry for 36 years.

The more I delved into this particular activity, the more it didn’t make sense. I dug until it did. I don’t feel bad for buying Valen because he was my teacher, as horses often are the best, and I wouldn’t know now what I didn’t know then without him. This is what I learned. I didn’t write this to tell you stop caring. In my travels, I have learned that so many people just do not have the first idea of what’s really going on in this business. Horse traders have always had a reputation for dishonesty, but for some strange reason people see “kill pen” and think these savvy businessmen are suddenly running a charity. It’s not a message to promote or discourage slaughter. It’s just.....the truth.

Acacia Courtney with her OTTB, Diva. (Photo by Clair Buffie)

by Acacia Courtney

First of all – what exactly is an OTTB? An “off-the-track Thoroughbred” is a Jockey Club-registered Thoroughbred horse that was previously racing or in training to race, and has since been retired. Injury, lack of talent, and old age are examples of reasons that can result in a horse being retired from the track.

What does an OTTB do once he/she is retired? Well, that’s where you all come in. OTTBs have been known to transition into successful show horses in hunter/jumper, dressage, and other styles. They can also be trained as lesson horses, companion animals, or even for therapeutic riding programs. Like people, horses have their own individual personalities, and some are better suited to a certain job than others are.

Thoroughbred aftercare is becoming a bit more “fashionable” than it was before, and this is great news for the horses. This does not mean that you should reconsider adopting an OTTB because “everyone is doing it” and you don’t want to be looked at as basic. Sometimes it’s totally OK to jump on the bandwagon. It does mean, however, that you will have to be a little more careful and will have to do your research before looking for your newest equine project or BFF.

At the tender, naïve age of 18 I thought it would be a good idea to start a nonprofit dedicated to retraining OTTBs once their racing days were over. It certainly was a good idea, but it did end up being a much greater undertaking than I had initially expected. Racing for Home Inc. has been one of my most rewarding endeavors, but working with OTTBs is not without challenges.