Finding a Second Life for Aging Race Horses

COOKSTOWN, N.J., June 8, 2008— -- Eastover Faith was a champion on the Maryland circuit, winning nine races, until an arthritic hock ended his career.

Infinite Crescendo once soared through New Jersey's claiming ranks, earning more than $350,000 until he fractured an ankle.

Now, they spend their days grazing and lolling about on a pasture at Lumberjack Farm. They are the lucky ones: Former pro athletes enjoying their retirements.

But that is not always the case. Some race horse owners view their winning colts as nothing more than commodities that lose all value when they're no longer winners. Many owners have no interest in feeding a 1,200-pound pet for 20 years or more after their competitive careers are over.

"I don't think people -- when they think about the glory of owning a race horse -- they don't realize that the horse lives long after the career is over in racing," said Laurie Lane, the New Jersey chapter president of ReRun, a Lexington, Ky.-based organization that pays farms to rehabilitate race horses.

"Those type of people should own race cars, because when you're done with a race car you can throw it in the junk yard," Lane said. "These are living, breathing beings, and the solution is not to just end their lives in a horrible way."

To learn more about ReRun and how you can help, click here.

Of the 80,000 horses shipped out of the United States to slaughter each year, horse advocates estimate 10 percent are former race horses.

The most famous example may be Ferdinand, who won the 1986 Kentucky Derby, and was later slaughtered in Japan for food.

"I think it's a terrible injustice," Lane said. "Because I don't think you'd do it to a football player that won a Super Bowl one year and hurt his shoulder the next year."

ReRun prepares discarded race horses for their second careers as show horses, police horses or pets. First, they have to help some of the horses recover from the damage caused by their first career.

The hard training takes its toll: Most of the horses have suffered trauma or injury, and some have lost a large amount of weight and hair.

Diana Koebel owns LumberJack Farm in New Jersey and takes care of some of ReRun's horses.

"I mean, there's times that I say, 'should I just give up?'" Koebel said. "But when you see that animal drive away and know he's going off to a new home with a new life, then it makes it all worth it."

Since ReRun was started 10 years ago, it has found adoptive homes for approximately 500 horses. Many of them are donated by their owners, who get a tax write-off.

There are far more horses that need homes, however, than there are ranches willing to take them. And the problem is not limited to thoroughbreds.

Owners increasingly abandon horses across the country, leaving the animals to starve in the wilderness. Some horse rescue projects say they've never been more overwhelmed.

Julie DeMuesy, founder of Dreamcatchers Equine Rescue in Colorado, said her sanctuary is taking in 10 times more horses than it it used to.

"It's escalating on an exponential basis," DeMuesy said. "It's a combination of U.S. slaughterhouses closing and economic factors, like the gas prices and feed prices going up."

To learn more about DreamCatchers and how you can help, click here.

Either way, DeMuesy said horses deserve better.

"They have born our burdens for hundreds of years and they've asked very little in return from us," she said. "We've taken them out of a situation where they could care for themselves, put them in a situation where they rely on us, and now we're letting them down, and that's wrong."