Retired Racers Find a New Track

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Horses Off The Race Track

A look at CANTER, a Maryland group that "de-trains" thoroughbred racetrack horses in hopes of helping them avoid their usual destiny: the slaughterhouse.

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Thoroughbreds are quick learners, and most of the basics are taught through gentle repetition. But years of running hard in one direction distorts a horse's musculature, and it takes careful workouts, and sometimes chiropractic and acupuncture sessions, to even them out.

During a recent training, some of Rosey's lopsidedness was unwound by dozens of rightward circuits she was led through by Liza Horan, a professional trainer who splits her time between Damascus and Ocala, Fla. She works pro bono for CANTER, training some animals as saddle horses, others as dressage horses, three-day eventers or show jumpers.

"It's very, very rewarding to work with a horse that otherwise might not even be alive," Horan said while fitting Rosey with a complex body harness that encourages her to run less like a forward-leaning racehorse and more like a riding horse. "And they can be excellent animals. Some of my best high-performance event horses came off the racecourse."

Moving to an outside pen, Horan tried to unteach a few jockey techniques in favor of civilian ones. When a jockey pulls back on the reins, for example, that means go faster, just the opposite of what most pleasure riders expect.

" 'Whoa' is the big one," Horan said of the voice commands she has to teach Rosey before she will be ready for adoption. " 'Whoa' matters."

The adoption fee for most CANTER horses is $1,000 to $1,500, Conrad said, which is used to cover boarding, veterinary and transportation bills. About half of the horses enter the program with injuries that require additional care. But some need relatively short retraining regimens and are available for lower fees.

Jennifer Martin, 27, a C-SPAN technician from Gaithersburg, became a first-time horse owner last year when she paid CANTER $500 for a 6-year-old chestnut mare named Cally. The horse, which had a short and unillustrious racing career as Cavalleria, proved so gentle that Martin put her mother in the saddle.

"My mother is absolutely not a horse person, but Cally was as good as can be," Martin said. "You'd never know she was on a racetrack a year earlier."