LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society's farm in Hillsburgh, Ontario is the kind of place that, if you were reincarnated as a racehorse, you'd want to come to.
Retired Thoroughbreds graze in their verdant, rolling fields or in stalls with ample relief from electric fans, lazily mugging visitors for carrots. No matter how long they've been here, they've figured out that visitors equal carrots, but that manners never go amiss.
Founded in 1999, the organization operates as part sanctuary, part rehoming organization with the aid of .5% of purse money from Ontario horse racing. It started humbly, with a few dozen horses scattered at various foster homes around the province, until a bequest from Lana Hershelle Sniderman gave them the funds to buy their 100-acre property. The facility used to be a small breeding and training operation, so was already set up with two barns, a walker, and plenty of paddocks. It also includes indoor and outdoor arenas.
Co-founder and board chairperson Vicki Pappas estimates the organization has about a 60/40 split between sanctuary and adoptable horses. In the time Pappas has been doing her work, she has seen a significant shift in demand for sound horses leaving the track to go straight into riding homes. While the increasing popularity of the breed among amateur riders is a net gain for aftercare non-profits, it also means that many of them are getting fewer quick-turnaround types, who are ready to embark on their new career right away. That has been the case at LongRun, Pappas said.
When that type of horse does come in, it goes back out quickly. Pappas said one horse recently was in and out within three weeks because it retired with no limitations or known issues.
Many of the horses LongRun takes in are coming with some kind of issue that predicated their retirement. Since most (though not all) are leaving the track in Ontario, where the racing surfaces are turf and synthetic, Pappas said she doesn't often see fractures on new retirees. She does see soft tissue injuries, which unfortunately, take longer to heal and are less predictable.
It's also not uncommon to have a horse retire apparently sound, only for lingering issues to become more prominent once they're living outside and in a different type of work.
“That's one point that's tough to get across to people,” she said. “They go, 'oh, they're sound,' but they don't understand [the horses] build up all this fitness at the track. When they get here, they realize 'oh, maybe this does hurt.'”
LongRun's approach is slow and methodical in the face of these challenges, however. Pappas says the staff usually give horses a little more than the time their veterinary team suggests for healing, and put on basic walk/trot/canter work before listing the horse for adoption. For horses who will continue to have limitations on their activity levels due to old injury, Pappas has had good luck finding trail riding homes, often with older riders who just want a relaxing, slow ride.
The facility has also begun opening itself to groups of children and adults for equine-assisted therapy, which is the perfect vocation for horses with lingering soundness challenges because most of it is non-mounted or just requires an ambling walk.
Horses who aren't able to be adopted out stay at LongRun as sanctuary horses, many of them with the sponsorship of their former racing connections. Pink Lloyd and Riker are two of the most accomplished, but Kentucky Derby also-ran State of Honor and multiple graded stakes winner Something Extra also fall in this category. The organization hosts fans to visit their lifetime residents, much like Old Friends Equine Retirement in Central Kentucky.
But besides serving the horses, the adopters, and the racing fans, Pappas says a part of LongRun's mission is trainer education. Like many non-profit aftercare groups, LongRun's population demonstrates that in lieu of significant financial commitment from connections, it's far less burdensome for the organization (and the horse) to place a horse who has retired sound.
The organization puts out newsletters and other written material for horsemen, but at the end of the day, it's face time that Pappas believes makes a difference here – along with bragging about the loyal owners and trainers who consistently send retired horses to LongRun, rather than selling them cheap off the backstretch.
“I hotwalked the whole time during COVID … I'd go in six days a week and hotwalk. So you're there and you can go around the shedrow and talk to people,” she said. “You have to be there with them so you can display some sort of understanding about what their life is like.”
Aftercare as a charitable endeavor is a comparatively new concept in the racing world; the word didn't really exist two decades ago. Many in the sport became more aware of the need for it as the public focus on equine welfare has become sharper. Kevin Attard said he thinks many of his colleagues at Woodbine have caught on to the problem of One Last Race Syndrome and actively try to avoid it.
“I'm fortunate enough to have people own these horses who really care for them and want to see them thrive in their off-the-racetrack career, so we try our best to pull the plug at the right time,” said Attard. “Everybody's been really obliging and I've never had anyone say no.”
Attard trainee Melmich, a multiple graded stakes winner, went through LongRun's program and was adopted.
“He could have come back to run again, but we decided enough was enough. He'd had an illustrious career and he was sound, so we decided he'd make someone a great pet or companion,” said Attard, who reported Melmich became a trail horse for someone else on the Woodbine backstretch.
Attard and Pappas agree that the seasonality of racing in Ontario also makes the decision easier for horsemen, since many of them have to take the winter off anyway.
“I think it helps prolong their racing career a little bit,” Attard said. “They're rested for 60 to 90 days I think that's a big benefit to those horses. The key with these horses having careers, which I pride myself on as a trainer – Starship Jubilee, Calgary Cat, Melmich – those horses all went into their seven- or eight-year-old careers. I think that's good management. We stopped on them when we needed to, we rested them when we needed to. We treated them well and they rewarded us.”
Pappas points out that horses in the Ontario-sired program don't have purse incentives to run anywhere during the winter, and it can be a good time to decide whether it's financially worthwhile to keep that horse on the books.
“We've donated horses people offered us money for,” said Pappas, who also owns and breeds racehorses. “But what, are you going to keep a horse in training over the winter and run him back for $5,000 in the spring instead of $10,000? Or sell a horse for $5,000 who might end up in a chuck wagon race?”
There's a great emotional award for owners and trainers who make the responsible call. Pappas said that two of her homebreds recently ended up facing each other in an eventing competition earlier this summer. They came second and fourth. Although she'd hoped one would be her farm's next superstar, she's thrilled to see their athleticism at work – even if it's in different tack.
The post In Ontario, Racing Is Thinking About The ‘LongRun’ For OTTBs appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
