For 673 accepted trainers, the journey to the Retired Racehorse Project‘s 2019 RPP Thoroughbred Makeover has begun! Over the next eight months, four of those trainers will blog their journeys, including their triumphs and their heartbreaks, successes and failures, for Eventing Nation readers. Read more from EN’s 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover Bloggers: Lindsey Burns, Hillary McMichael, Clare Mansmann, Jennifer Reisenbichler.
You might have guessed from my last post, I was having trouble getting excited about Here’s the Thing. She is sweet, she is beautiful, she is calm, she is not motivated. She will snuggle with you into eternity, she will walk on the buckle and never even offer one jigging step. She isn’t spooky, she’s an easy keeper, and she gets along with other horses.
That missing motivation though, it was like trying to put together a puzzle without the edge pieces, or driving a diesel with worn out glow plugs. These aren’t impossible challenges, but they also aren’t something that really get me excited. My first instinct is to blame myself for the frustration — I need to be more patient, more creative, have lower expectations, blah blah blah.
OK, so I enjoyed playing with her. Photo by Marcie Dales.
Thank goodness for a husband who points out the obvious. He says to me one day, “Do you really want to ride her until October?” Oh dear God, no I don’t. If I was an avid trail rider, then maybe. If I wasn’t riding her specifically to prepare her for a huge show in six months time, then maybe. I love kissing her squishy nose, I love riding her bareback, I don’t love worrying about what division we could possibly enter at the Makeover.
So I started to write her sales ad — she needs a home that is filled with kisses and trail rides and less pressure. I started to look around for a different horse to aim at the Makeover. Before the ad ever went live though, her race owner called and said he was looking to get a new horse to take on trails and give pony rides to his grandson. He’d been watching my pictures of his filly and realized he already owned the perfect horse. Talk about kismet. She is off to New Mexico to live her best life.
The best 3-year-old brain in all the land! Photo by Marcie Dales.
In the meantime, a horse that we had in our race stable back in 2016 came walking back into my life. Alpine Gathering is a chestnut gelding that I fell in love with during the few short months that we had him. When my husband bought him he had won two races, we worked to get him feeling his best and won another three. Then he was claimed and we had to say goodbye to the horse we called Albert.
January 2016: isn’t he a beast!? Photo by
Lindsey Burns.
He went on to win so many races that year that he was one of the winningest horses in 2016, as in, he was ranked 51st out of the over 53,000 horses that raced in 2016! I promised him that I would keep track of him and I did. He had several different trainers and varying amounts of success. Finally he ended up back at Turf Paradise with a friend of ours, and when she and the owners decided it was time for Albert to retire they contacted me.
He kinda loves the camera; I have approximately 1,000 photos of him like this while we were racing him. Photo by Lindsey Burns.
The moment my husband and I finished with our own barn chores we hoofed it over to the barn Albert was in to look him over. There are a lot of miles on those legs, but we decided there were a lot of miles left. When I walked up to his stall and hugged him he hugged me back pulling me into his chest with his head. The happiness leaked right out of my eyes and I whispered, “You’re coming home buddy.”
This is his face almost every time I try to capture a selfie. Photo by Lindsey Burns.
Maybe I should have warned y’all to grab a tissue.
