Owner Placed On No-Entry List At Fair Grounds After Horse Turns Up In Bail Pen

Churchill Downs Inc. officials say they have placed an owner on the no-entry list at Fair Grounds after her horse appeared in a Texas bail lot while still in the entries at the New Orleans track.

Little Red Kid was advertised on social media Jan. 30 by a kill pen, but at that time was still supposed to be headed to the ninth race on Feb. 3.

After receiving an inquiry from the Paulick Report about the horse, Fair Grounds management consulted with the stewards, who interviewed both trainer Jacoby Landry and owner Kim Jackson, in addition to Jackson's veterinarian. After some detective work, Louisiana state steward Charlie Ashy Jr., said he learned the horse, who was well off the board in claiming contests Jan. 10 and Jan. 23 at Fair Grounds, worked the week before Feb. 3. Ashy said Landry told the stewards the horse had come out of the work poorly, and a veterinary exam revealed that “the horse was full of mucus.”

Landry contacted the owner about retiring the horse, who had not hit the board since finishing second in a claiming race in July 2019 at Louisiana Downs. The owner took possession of the horse, which was not stabled at Fair Grounds. Somehow, Ashy said wires were crossed in Landry's barn and the horse was placed on the entry list anyway.

From there, Ashy said the stewards established the horse was taken to a livestock auction in Opelousas, La.

“She said she was going to sell the horse in the Thoroughbred sale at a stockyard,” Ashy said. “It's a cattle stockyard and they have a cattle auction every week or every two weeks, and then maybe once a month they'll sell Thoroughbreds as well that people want to get rid of. People might buy the horse and train it for other things.”

Ashy's investigation revealed that was where Thompson Horse Lot purchased the horse. On Jan. 28, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture announced sanctions against the operators of Thompson Horse Lot stemming from its owners buying and selling livestock without licenses. The lot subsequently moved its sale operation to Texas.

“The owner and trainer had nothing to do with the horse ending up there other than she put the horse in the sale, but she didn't do anything wrong doing that,” said Ashy. “Normally we wouldn't even look into this, but because Jason [Boulet, Fair Grounds racing director] asked us to, we did. Nobody did anything wrong from the racing side.”

Landry was issued a fine of $500 on Feb. 19 by the stewards for “entering a horse no longer under his care.”

The decision to place the owner on the no-entry list came from Fair Grounds/CDI management.

“As you know, CDI and all of our tracks take slaughter of race horses very seriously,” said Dr. William Farmer, equine medical director for Churchill Downs Inc. “Fair Grounds remains vigilant to making sure those horse that race at our facility have productive second careers. To follow through with Fair Grounds commitment to prevent race horses from going to slaughter, the owner of this horse was placed on a no-entry list to deny future entries in races at Fair Grounds.”

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A Graded Stakes Winner Walks Into A Bail Pen, But How Did He Get There?

A ripple went through social media in mid-March when graded stakes winner The Deputy showed up in a bail pen in Texas.

The post, from a Facebook page called North Texas Feedlot & Auction Horses, showed the 24-year-old stallion still sporting a spray paint hip number from an unknown auction, as well as his Jockey Club papers. Overnight, the post went viral alongside pleas for Thoroughbred rescues and private connections to “bail” the horse out, since North Texas Feedlot and others like it claim horses that are not bailed will be sent for slaughter in Mexico. Then, just as quickly as he'd appeared, the horse was listed as “not available,” and then the post vanished, leaving advocates wondering where he went.

Those who'd followed the saga were pleased to read the news last week that The Deputy had been purchased by his former connections and safely retired. Still, many of them also wanted to know – how did he get there in the first place?

(Read our previous reporting on the bail pen economy here.)

A horse's journey from a racing or breeding home to a bail pen operation is often murky. Horses can change hands frequently between local and regional horse auctions and livestock sales, and may also be sold or traded by horse dealers. By the time they show up in a bail pen or in need of rescue, it's often unclear how they got there. In the case of The Deputy, however, we know what his journey looked like – and it's a classic example of the bail pen economy.

On the racetrack, the Irish-bred son of Petarida (GB) raced in England during his juvenile season before being exported to the United States by Team Valor International and Gary Barber. Jenine Sahadi trained the colt to victories in the 2000 Grade 2 Santa Catalina and G1 Santa Anita Derby, making her the first female trainer to saddle a Santa Anita Derby winner. He was the second wagering choice in that year's Kentucky Derby but finished a disappointing fourteenth.

The Deputy came out of the race with a bowed tendon and was retired to stud at Margaux Farm in Kentucky. The Central Kentucky market is a tough one for stallions, and it's not uncommon for a horse to make the switch to a state with less competition if his offspring aren't well-received at the sales.

The Deputy stood four seasons in Kentucky and never sired a North American graded black type earner. He was sold to stand at Hubel Farms in Michigan ahead of the 2006 breeding season, and he became a reliable stakes sire among state-bred competition, but the downward trajectory of the state's racing and breeding program led to his sale before the 2014 season.

The last facility that advertised the stallion for service to Thoroughbred mares was Rockin' River Ranch in Winterset, Iowa.

When called in the wake of the social media furor earlier this month, Rockin' River owner Wade Feuring told the Paulick Report the stallion hadn't been at his place in five or six years. There had been dwindling interest in the horse among Iowa breeders despite his having sired Tin Badge, the state's champion 2-year-old male of 2017 and The Deputy's highest-earning runner to date. When Feuring got an offer from a Quarter Horse breeder to buy him, he thought it was a perfect fit.

“I'm of the opinion that if they can have a career doing something else, that's the best route to go, which is why we were happy when this gal bought him, because she was going to stand him, breed mares, and give him a life comparable to what he had here; as she must have for the last five or so years,” said Feuring.

Feuring said he learned the horse was in a bail pen because the Facebook page for Rockin' River blew up.

“I woke up this morning, and our Rockin River Ranch has a Facebook page, and the first thing I saw was I had 18 messages, and that's how I first found out,” he said the day after the post was made. “I was shocked to hear all this, because that name hadn't even been mentioned around here in five or six years. I called our Iowa Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners director and secretary, and told them what had happened, and how long it had been since he'd been here, and I was just shocked to hear, just like everybody else. I just thought people should know he didn't go to the kill pen from here.”

Eventually, the social media mob shifted their attention from Feuring, though not after shaming him for (they'd assumed) having a hand in the horse's fate.

Feuring had sold the horse to Jean Davenport of Afton, Iowa, who had purchased The Deputy to cross with Quarter Horses to raise barrel horses. Davenport didn't advertise the stallion because she mostly bred him to her own mares.

“My husband died just about a year ago and I've just been kind of cutting back on my horses,” she said. “I don't have enough time to do chores. I fed him, and taken care of him. I hadn't used him as a stud for over two years. I don't have time to do that, either. I just asked myself the other day, I didn't breed any mares to him last year, I might as well sell him to somebody that'll use him. He's a heck of a producer, he's in really good shape, he doesn't need to go to a kill pen.”

Davenport tapped livestock dealer Mike Gilbert to consign the stallion at the Storm Horse Auction, a mixed-breed horse and tack sale on the grounds of the Humeston Livestock Exchange near the Iowa-Missouri border.

The Deputy hammered for $425.

After the transaction, Gilbert reached out to the winning bidder, Mike Gipson.

“I'd never seen him there before,” said Gilbert. “The sale's not very far from my place, and I'd never seen the gentleman before.

“I asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to a retirement deal. That's about it, really … When they told me he was in a kill pen, I didn't believe it. I don't know a lot about the slaughter market, but they tell me they can't ship stallions. You can't put them on the trucks. I thought they were buying him to do something with him.”

Not only was Gilbert surprised, he said he was furious.

“If [the buyer had] been in my face, I'd have punched him in the mouth, to be honest with you,” he said.

The Deputy's name recognition in the Thoroughbred world meant the post from the North Texas lot spread like wildfire. One of the people who saw it was Whitney Ransom of Conway, Ark., a former exercise rider who watches bail pen pages and occasionally purchases horses to live in retirement on her property.

“I've always had a passion for Thoroughbreds,” she said. “As I got older and saw the other side of the business, it changed my opinion on the racehorse world a lot. I started becoming aware of the fate of a lot of racehorses. You have responsible owners and you have not-responsible owners. I realized it was a cruel world.

“I'll bail one a year or two a year and bring them to my house, or I'll donate to different rescue organizations to try to get them out of these kill pens.”

Ransom was told The Deputy would cost her $1,500, so she said she paid up and made arrangements to have the horse transported and quarantined. The horse's status changed to “not available” on the Facebook page. The next morning, Ransom got a call – the deal was off.

“He said he couldn't sell me the horse and he was going to have to refund my money,” said Ransom. “He wouldn't tell me where the horse was. All he would say is he sent it back where he got it from. I don't know exactly what happened, and I've been pretty upset over the whole deal.

“My first concern is that the horse is safe, but my second concern is that if they'll do this to me for more money, they'll do it to someone else.”

Meanwhile, Team Valor International's Barry Irwin had also been in touch with Gipson as his inbox filled up with messages about the graded stakes winner. Initially, Irwin was told the horse had already sold and was headed to a good home. After another day or so went by, Irwin kept getting calls telling him the horse wasn't actually bailed after all.

“I called the guy back and said, 'Look, can you just tell me the truth about what the hell's going on here? Is the horse gone?'” said Irwin. “He said, 'Nah I got the horse.' I said, 'Did you sell him?' and he said, 'I can get $1,500.' And I said, 'If I give you $3,000, can I have him?'”

Gipson did not respond to a call requesting comment for this story.

Knowing that horses often come out of the livestock auction or bail pen pipeline with profound medical problems, Irwin waited to make any public announcement that he had bailed The Deputy until he knew what he was dealing with. After a thorough veterinary exam at Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance-accredited Remember Me Rescue, Team Valor, Sahadi, and former co-owner Gary Barber felt comfortable releasing information about the horse's status.

Irwin says he's frequently contacted about horses in a bad position. It's not unusual for racing connections to be roped into a rescue effort on a horse that hasn't legally been theirs for many years. Irwin said he usually handles the situation quietly, but the increasing fervor on social media around ex-racehorses in kill pens isn't making that task easier.

“I'm sure most of these people who I refer to as the 'rescue matrons' are good people. Their hearts are in the right place, but what they do when they start jumping up and down and that creates pressure, which makes it harder for the people like me who want to go in and do the right thing,” said Irwin. “Nobody wants to get ripped off. I've paid as much as $12,500 to rescue a horse. I paid $8,000 once. That's ridiculous, and it's only because people go nuts.”

The incident has left nearly everyone involved frustrated about the lure of the bail pen economy. Increasingly, Thoroughbreds with well-known names or large groups of Thoroughbreds shed in a private dispersal have garnered enormous attention on social media – and enormous profits for bail pen owners. Gipson made $2,575 from The Deputy alone. Gilbert and others who attend livestock auctions say horse prices are at an all-time high right now, perhaps through a combination of greater online access in the wake of COVID-19 and increased interest from people who want to divert a horse out of the slaughter pipeline – or from rescue groups or bail pens who need horses to generate cash.

“Any more, the joke is at a lot of horse sales, there's no more kill pens anymore, everything's a 'rescue,'” said Gilbert. “There was some lady there bragging that she'd gathered $15,000 to rescue horses. I watched people with riding horses put them in the loose, and they brought more than they would have brought riding.”

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At 24, The Deputy Pulled From Bail Pen By Racetrack Connections

Irish-bred The Deputy, trained by Jenine Sahadi for Team Valor and Gary Barber to win the $1-million Santa Anita Derby in 2000 and second choice in the Kentucky Derby, is now safely ensconced in Texas after some maneuvering to rescue him from a “kill pen” on a feedlot about an hour north of Dallas week before last.

When intrepid horse lovers used their Internet monitoring skills to learn that the now 24-year-old stallion had been bought cheaply at a sale in Iowa and transported to the feedlot in Texas, word spread fast and Team Valor CEO Barry Irwin quickly managed to buy him on behalf of his longtime partner Barber and ex-trainer Sahadi.

Utilizing networking through the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, the old connections contacted TAA activist Donna Keen, who was able to rapidly pick up and move The Deputy to her TAA-approved Remember Me Rescue.

“We decided to have Donna quarantine The Deputy for a while, do some diagnostic work including bloods and a fecal and not reveal anything about the rescue until we were certain that he was healthy, as Donna warned us that horses from feedlots can contract diseases quite readily,” Irwin said.

“When the tests all came back negative today and the vet- check proved unremarkable, we decided it was time to tell the story, not to portray ourselves as heroes, but to put an end to the salacious, untrue and unfounded tales that had been circulating online. We want to thank those horse lovers who helped us in our endeavors.”

Donna Keen (left) said “We are thrilled to have been able to help the original connections and to be able to take care of the horse and share him with visitors to our rescue. He is, as could be expected, a bit underweight at this time, but when he fills back up and once again looks the part we look forward to showing him off here in Texas. We are very honored and proud to have been selected as his forever home.”

The Deputy, bought by Team Valor and Barber after he won a maiden race in England at two, enjoyed a brief but meteoric rise to stardom in the winter of his 3-year-old season at Santa Anita, where the dark-coated colt rattled off victories in the listed Hill Rise Stakes, Grade 2 Santa Catalina Stakes (defeating subsequent Breeders' Cup Turf Mile hero War Chant) and the G1 Santa Anita Derby, while running second in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes to the Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus.

As the first starter for a female trainer in the 2000 Kentucky Derby, he was second choice, but bowed a tendon in the race and never ran again.

Barber, who won the Preakness with War of Will, said “I have always had a soft spot in my heart for The Deputy. He was my first Grade 1 winner.”

“He was the easiest horse to be around. All class. He meant a lot to me and my barn,” said Sahadi.

The son of Petardia was originally syndicated to stand at Margaux Farm in Midway, Ky., after which he did stints at farms in Michigan and Iowa.

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Louisiana Department Of Agriculture Sanctions Bail Pen Operators; Lot Sets Up Shop In Texas

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture announced sanctions against operators of a high-profile social media bail pen on Thursday. At a regular meeting of the Department's Board of Animal Health, officials announced impending permanent injunctions against Gary and Jacob Thompson, as well as fines for Jacob Thompson and Tara Sanders. According to charging documents, the actions stemmed from the trio operating without livestock dealer permits, which are required in the state of Louisiana.

Jacob Thompson was fined $23,000 for 23 violations of state code after the Department of Agriculture determined he bought and sold horses in the state within 30 days. Thompson's longtime partner Sanders was fined $13,000 for 13 violations of state code, including buying and selling horses without a license. The rate of $1,000 per violation is the maximum permitted by state law.

Sanders had an application for a livestock dealer's permit pending before the Board but has since withdrawn it.

The permanent injunction sought by the Department of Agriculture is intended to stop Gary and Jacob Thompson from buying and selling livestock in the state of Louisiana. Counsel for the department said they have received signed stipulations from both Thompsons and are awaiting a judge's signature to finalize the permanent injunction.

The process from beginning to end of the state's quest for such an injunction was about two years and cites incidents going back to 2018.

Jacob Thompson's livestock dealer permit renewal was denied by the Board in 2018, and a petition from the department alleged that Gary Thompson never held a dealer permit.

All three have at various times been affiliated with Thompson's Horse Lot in Pitkin, La., where Sanders has maintained the couple bought and horses with the intent to export them to Mexico for slaughter. None of them had a contract with a meat processor in Mexico, but Sanders claimed they worked through dealers to send horses into the slaughter pipeline after buying them at livestock sales. Sanders, together with Jacob Thompson, has offered horses from the lot to be “bailed” by members of the public at high prices with the threat that they will be slaughtered if they are not purchased.

Critics of bail pens say they prey on the emotions of horse lovers to make wider profit margins which are then parlayed into purchasing more horses to either go to slaughter or to fuel the bail business. Sanders has frequently told social media followers that although she makes a profit from the horses, she is offering them for sale as a kindness to horses that would otherwise die.

Read more about the slaughter pipeline in Louisiana in this 2017 Paulick Report feature.

Sanders told the Paulick Report in August 2020 that the requirement to have a livestock dealer's permit did not apply to her because she maintained residency in Oklahoma. She later announced on the lot's social media that she had purchased the business from the Thompsons. Ahead of Thursday's meeting, she told followers that she has relocated the business to Texas.

“The reason I moved to Texas is that I'm not dealing with the government in Louisiana, period. I'm not dealing with their rules, their regulations,” said Sanders in a video posted to Facebook on Jan. 27. “Lots of people can say, 'You just don't want to follow the law.' Actually, it's not that I don't want to follow the law, it's just that I grew up in Oklahoma, I lived in Texas for a long time; I don't want more government in my life. I don't want a dealer's permit. I'm not going to pay you every year to get it. I don't want to do all the things that Louisiana requires to sell livestock there.

“Louisiana is a swamp, and now they want me to obtain a dealer's permit where I have to go and let them vote on me every year to decide if I can or can't have it, which means that at all points in time, my livelihood is in the hands of strangers who don't know me … I dealt with a lot of mean girls in high school and forgive me, but I don't [expletive] want to be voted on. [Expletive] you and [expletive] that.”

At Thursday's meeting, Department of Agriculture officials acknowledged that Jacob Thompson and Sanders neither confirmed nor denied the accusations in the charge letter against her. Sanders and the Thompsons were not present at the hearing.

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