A few weeks ago, John and I had a conversation about starting a column solely dedicated to recognizing good, positive things happening in the horse world. In all fairness it was really just his idea, but then again I’m the one typing right now– we’ll call it a team effort. We wanted a column that recognized the many people and organizations currently dedicating their time, energy, and resources, all with the hopes of aiding horses and bettering the equine community. This week’s recipient is the CANTER organization.

CANTER, which stands for the Communication Alliance to Network Thoroughbred Ex-Racehorses, is a unique organization. Nancy Koch, the national director, was kind enough to speak with me over the phone and give her insight to its inner workings. Basically, the purpose of CANTER is to serve as a go-between for individuals looking to purchase an off-the-track Thoroughbred, and owners of the horses on the track. It does this by providing Internet classifieds that give pictures, descriptions, and prices (usually under 5K) of horses on the backside that need to find homes quickly. As Ms. Koch stated, “The organization was founded in 1997 by an HBPA (Horseman’s Benevolent and Protective Association) member, but it really evolved as the Internet evolved. Since it’s founding, CANTER has aided in moving 13,000 horses onto new careers.”

13,000 horses is a lot of horses. Because they CANTER volunteers do not get involved in the actual sales, accurate tabs of each horse after a sale aren’t recorded, but I think it’s safe to say that with an output number that large, a fair amount of CANTER horses have made their way into Eventing careers. The horses coming off the track are attractors to a wide variety of personalities, from high-profile event riders like Will Faudree, who has two CANTER horses at the moment, to weekend amateur types simply looking for a fun project. That’s a tribute to not only the organization itself, but to the Thoroughbred breed as a whole for serving such a variety of purposes.

Just a couple years after the original CANTER was launched, a second-phase branch was forming. The branch was really the idea of the many volunteers, as through their time around the backside while taking pictures and pulling together ads of saleable horses, they saw many horses with potential for a second career, but not before rehabilitation from a variety of unsoundnesses. It’s a well-known fact that racetracks aren’t the kindest on horses physically; they start training them at a young age, before they have time to completely mature and developed, so breakdowns are very common. “Phase Two” of CANTER, as it was dubbed, is used in cases when horses must be moved immediately off the track, in which case CANTER takes ownership and assumes full responsibility for the horse’s care. It is this phase where footing the bill becomes tricky, as although CANTER receives public grants from places like ASPCA, The Blue Horse Charity and Thoroughbred Charities of America, that funding totals at only 10% of all donations received. The rest of funding is completely dependent on privately owned organizations and individuals.  To rehabilitate these horses in terms of surgeries needed, CANTER partners with local vet teaching hospitals, places like Michigan State. The second factor in Phase Two is the rehabilitation required once a horse is out of surgery.  Although CANTER does have a foster-care program so qualifying individuals can rehab certain horses until they become marketable, the most effective way of rehabilitating Phase Two horses is by CANTER renting out a block of stalls at a boarding facility (usually at a reduced rate) and keeping many in one place. It’s a costly option but works well as the horses are developed under one eye, and when a potential buyer comes to try a horse, they can try several during the same visit.

As with everything in life, if you want to be considered remarkable, you must first do what hasn’t previously been done, then you must do it before anyone else does, and to be truly remarkable you need to have solidified your vision before anyone else has even had the thought. Doing so requires creativity, imagination, and the utilization of resources, and is really what the CANTER organization is all about. Instead of tackling an old problem in a conventional way, they set out from the beginning to change the game in a completely untested way. The pay-off is that CANTER has grown into a nationally recognizable organization, with several thousand volunteers and donors nationwide.

A few days ago, I found myself standing beside one of the fields on the farm, lost in my thoughts, as so often happens to me! This particular field contained four mares, all of them under the age of five; two of them being typical young horses while the other two were rescues from an adoption auction last spring.  It wouldn’t take long before even a non-equestrian could decipher which mares led the field and which ones followed. The two mares that grew up at the farm living a purposeful, structured life had attentive and confident personalities; the two that grew up without structure, without attention, had personalities that mirrored those deficiencies. Anytime a dominance situation arose, like at feeding time or when a visitor came to the gate, the two confident mares won out over the rescues every time. I wondered if the situation I was observing would’ve been any different had the rescue mares never been rescues at all, but instead raised in an environment like the first two mares. Would they still have been followers, or would a positive, caring environment have been enough to make them leaders?

I glanced over at the fields around the mares’ field, each containing groups of horses that had, more-or-less, been raised in the same way. The personality differences between those horses were less obvious, but each field still had all of the components of a typical herd, a dominant leader, a couple horses with less power than the leader but more than the rest of the herd, and then the followers, who didn’t exert much dominance over anyone. It wasn’t a new realization as I had been noticing herd order since my first days around horses, but it wasn’t until that particular day that I started wondering about the components that created the order. Did those horses behave in the way they did because they were innately confident or innately timid, or did their personalities stem from their environment?

Then I thought about the question in its application to human personality. It seemed to me that the basis of the question remained the same, but with added complexities; for the equation of human personality extends past primitive survival instincts, which is really the sole basis of equine dominance. We have varying levels of competitiveness, drive, passion, intelligence, physical ability, and mental acuity, all factors that can be used to differeniate between and exert dominance over another. But probably the biggest factor that makes human personality unique is our mental capacity to study others and mold ourselves to fit a particular environment. So how much of our personality actually comes from within us, and how much do we adopt because of what we observe in people we admire and the environment around us? For example, are we really competitive, or do we just exhibit competitive tendencies because we try to mirror a coach or friend? Are we really passionate about a sport or activity or is it simply a response to wanting to “fit in” or feel a part of something?

In many respects, I think we may never know the answer. I’ve heard it repeated many times that we are simply the result of our experiences. In a lot of ways that statement is probably very true. To make it at the top of this sport, I think that you need a personality that’s innately competitive, passionate, and highly dedicated, but you’ll also need inspiration that can only come from an environment embodying all of those qualities.

Thoughts?