After the Finish Line . . .

by Kit Ehrman

Today’s post will be short since I’m away from home, using a hotel Internet that’s extraordinarily slow.

In light of the recent topic here, regarding responsible horse ownership and the fate of horses that are no longer wanted, I’d like to draw your attention to After the Finish Line, a website dedicated to caring for racehorses once they’ve left the track. Please visit www.afterthefinishline.org/index.htm.

The tragic deaths of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro and this year’s second place finisher, filly Eight Belles, brought the plight of racehorses and, ultimately, the whole slaughter issue to the forefront. Thankfully, changes are being made.

At Suffolk Downs in Boston, sending racehorses to slaughter will no longer be tolerated. Track management will deny stalls to any trainer who sells a horse for slaughter. It’s great to see that the industry is taking action. Certainly, there’s much to be done, but it’s a start.

What’s needed even more, I believe, is for backyard horse owners to be educated, to stop mindless breeding of their stock, to make sure their horses are well-trained and socialized, and to take responsibility for their fates.

My Next Project

By Laura Crum


My next project? Writing book number eleven in my mystery series about equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy, of course. At least, that’s what I’m supposed to be working on. Don’t tell my editor (Merry, if you’re reading this, close your eyes), but lately work on the next book has been somewhat delayed by another project altogether. A project named Smoky.

Yes, that’s him, as he looked last month out in the pasture, four years old and full of himself. Those of you who have read my previous blogs and know that my current horseback adventures are mostly fairly sedate trail rides with my seven-year-old son, may be asking yourself (with some justification) what in the world did she want with this colt? That’s a good question. The short answer is: I didn’t exactly want him, but now that I’ve got him, he’s won me over, as so many horses in the past have done.

Smoky is a grandson of a mare I rode many years ago; he was given to us by his breeder in exchange for a debt. Though I wasn’t in the market for a young horse, I agreed to take him: what can I say? I’m a sucker for an appealing equine. Smoky was a three year old blue roan gelding with thirty rides on him when I got him. He seemed like a gentle, willing colt, with no buck and an easygoing nature. He also seemed very babyish, with a slightly awkward, almost tentative way of moving.

I knew that Smoky had been raised in boxstalls and small turn out pens; he had never been in a space any bigger than an arena; he’d never seen a wire fence, or grazed his dinner in his life. Nonetheless, virtually my first move upon acquiring him was to turn him out in my sixty acre pasture. This field has lots of “topography”—rolling hills, rock outcroppings, two small streams running through it…etc. Though I have replaced all the barbed wire with smooth wire, it does have wire fences. My twenty-eight year old gelding, Gunner, and Danny, a horse with an old injury that gives him a slight limp, are the two current equine residents of the pasture, so I knew that Smoky would have some steadying influences. And, of course, I kept a careful eye on him.
It was an interesting process to watch. Over the year that he spent turned out, Smoky went from a slightly awkward three-year-old to a robust, powerful four-year-old, and became a very strong mover. In the photo above, he has just galloped in to see me and is easing up, after running full speed across the pasture.

Now the point of this post (if I have one) is that the pasture was very rough this spring. The ground has a lot of clay, and this particular year it went from being very wet to very dry in a short period of time. This had the effect of “setting” the ground (somewhat like concrete) in little ridges; every hoofprint that dug deep into the mud in February was a rock-hard crater by April. Not to mention all the ground squirrel holes, rock outcroppings….etc. Rough, broken ground for sure, nothing like a groomed arena or racetrack. Nonetheless, I have many times seen Smoky (and many other horses over the twenty-five years I’ve owned the place) run flat out across the field, jumping the ten foot wide creek bed without missing a beat, never once stumbling. Its amazing and a little scary. One can’t help crossing one’s fingers.

And yes, he could break a leg. In the wake of this year’s Derby, such a thought comes readily to mind. Certainly Smoky is running as fast as he can; a knowledgable spectator can easily see that he is using every bit of speed he has. No one is making him do it. He feels like it. Its his nature.
Its this very thing that has turned him into a balanced, athletic, powerful mover, a horse who is ready to do something. I’ve let Smoky spend a year living like a natural horse, to “grow him up”, and this is what horses do, given the freedom to do it.

Watching these young horses out in my pasture has taught me a lot. Primarily that a horse will, out of his own desire, run faster, stop harder, jump further, and turn tighter than we would ever ask them to do. I have seen them do this when the mud was so deep and slick I would have been scared to walk a saddle horse across that hilly ground, as well as in the rough, hard, broken condition the ground is in right now. I could no more run across that ground on foot without twisting an ankle than I could fly. Yet the horses do it without a stumble. And I have seen them persist with this “play” until they were soaking wet and gasping for air; again, a great deal more exhausted than I would feel comfortable with were I riding them. Its their nature.

Yes, they could break a leg. So far, none have, knock on wood. But after what I’ve observed, despite the grief I would feel, there would also be the knowledge that this is part of what it means to be a horse. To run hard is in their genes. It is also what makes them healthy and strong. Its part of the inherent risk in life.

I try to keep this in mind when I feel sad about the filly that broke down in this year’s Derby. It could, after all, have been Smoky who broke down racing across my pasture. There’s no use pointing a blaming finger at a particular sport or event. Sometimes, even when everyone is doing the best they can and a horse is doing what it wants to do, accidents happen. Unpredictable and tragic, accidents are a part of life.

(I do, however, think that breaking horses as yearlings and working them hard as twos and threes is a recipe for lameness and breakdowns—its one of the main reasons I gave up training cutting and reining horses.)

So here’s to horses and their gallant hearts, their beautiful, athletic bodies and playful spirits, and here’s to those who love them. Lets all try to hold a space where the least possible accidents will happen, and yet know that when they do, it isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault.

Cheers,
Laura Crum

HTTP://www.lauracrum.com