In Their Care | Horse Racing Free Tips

Kirkpatrick & Co. Presents In Their Care: Groom Paulina Cano ‘Just Has A Way Of Making Them Happy’

Say the Word arrived at Phil D'Amato's barn in the autumn of 2020 as an accomplished 5-year-old, but the trainer sensed the gelded son of More Than Ready had more to offer. He appeared to be a timid horse that lacked confidence, and was not deriving as much as possible from his training each morning.

What to do? D'Amato assigned Say the Word to Paulina Cano, a groom with almost three decades of experience.

Burgoo Alley had gone winless through three starts in Ireland and D'Amato was downcast when he first laid eyes on her early last year. The unsettling overseas journey to the United States had taken a toll on the 3-year-old. She had dropped so much weight her ribs were visible.

What to do? He again turned to his go-to caretaker, the 59-year-old Cano.

“In terms of being a groom, Paulina is like the horse whisperer,” D'Amato said. “You can give her any kind of horse, ones with more cantankerous attitudes or quiet ones. She just has a way of making them happy. She finds a way to their heart.”

The once-antsy Say the Word responded last season with two wins and a pair of second-place finishes in seven starts. He set career highs for earnings with $353,500 and for earnings per start with 50,500 on behalf of Mark Martinez's Agave Racing Stable and breeder-owner Sam-Son Farm. Say The Word was plenty good in the spring, winning the Elkhorn Stakes (G2) at Keeneland last April and placing second in the Shoemaker Mile (G1) at his Santa Anita home base in his next start. He retained his form until the end of the season, rallying from last to bring home the Hollywood Turf Cup (G2) and help D'Amato to his first training title at Del Mar's fall meet.

Burgoo Alley also quickly thrived under Cano's care.

“Within a week or two flat, you'd be amazed at how much weight she put on and how good her coat was,” D'Amato said. “It was all that hard work that she put into the filly to feed her and take care of her and make sure she was happy.”

Owned by CYBT, Michael Nentwig and Ray Pagano, Burgoo Alley emerged as a turf standout. She broke her maiden going six furlongs on June 20 at Santa Anita in her second U.S. start. She easily handled the move to a mile on grass, prevailing in an allowance optional claiming race during Del Mar's salty summer meet in mid-August. She emerged as a graded-stakes winner on turf when a late rush allowed her to edge Spanish Loveaffair by half a length in the one-mile Autumn Miss Stakes on Oct. 30 at Santa Anita.

Cano points to Echo Eddie as her greatest success. He debuted by running for a $12,500 claiming tag at Bay Meadows on Oct. 3, 1999. By the time his career was over at the end of the 2003 season, the former claimer turned multiple stakes winner had banked more than $1 million in purses for trainer Darrell Vienna.

Not surprisingly, Vienna did everything possible to retain Cano. They were together for 24 years before Vienna retired in the spring of 2016.

D'Amato was ecstatic when he was able to hire her.

“Good grooms are extremely hard to come by. It's starting to become a lost art,” the trainer said. “It's a very skilled profession and it takes someone who can extend TLC to them and try to find all of the little things without them talking to you. It's just all about body language and taking care of their needs.”

Cano grew up with horses and cows at her family's farm in Santa Rosa, Guatemala. Her husband, Jose Dolares, ventured to the U.S. in 1993 to begin a career as a groom that is ongoing. He works at a nearby barn at Santa Anita for trainer Richard Baltas. At Dolares' urging, Cano followed a year later.

“It was a better life. I could make more money. I loved the United States since the first day I got here,” Cano said during a phone interview, with assistant trainer Rudy Cruz acting as interpreter.

Cano's work ethic and attitude have everything to do with her success. She is one of the first to arrive at the barn from her home in Duarte, Calif. She always comes bearing treats of all kinds.

“I try to never bring problems here,” she said. “I try to always be nice to horses. I love them and am kind to them and they are nice to me.”

According to Cano, in a career that has also taken her to Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana and even Singapore, she has never encountered a Thoroughbred she could not manage.

“Maybe the first day it's kind of difficult to get along with one, but I find a way,” she said. “By being nice and being patient, it gets better and better.”

She and her husband have one son, Luis Alfonso Salazar Cano, 44. He built a career as a surgeon's assistant at a California hospital.

Cano became a U.S. citizen 15 years ago and said: “I am very happy and thankful to be an American citizen.”

She feels relatively secure financially.

“I don't need that much money,” she said. “I saved my money, so it's good.”

As physically demanding as her job can be, she has no plans to retire. When that time comes, she intends to maintain her emotional ties to the barn.

“If that happens one day, and I know it's going to happen, I'd ask Phil about coming back and feeding the horses when I can,” she said.

D'Amato, another participant in the call, assured her she would always be welcome.

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Kirkpatrick & Co. Presents In Their Care: Lindemann Will Never Forget Her First Horse

Lorita Lindemann was a teenager, an innocent, until one moment changed everything.

She finished her classes and hurried to Rockingham Park to say goodbye to Federal Sin. “Chestnut gelding. White blaze I will never forget,” said Lindemann, recalling her first horse.

She knew the veteran's racing days were over. The parting was made easier because she had been told that he would be adopted as a riding pony. And so she led trusting Federal Sin onto a van, content in knowing that a wonderful new home awaited a horse that meant everything to her.

She later learned the horrifying truth. That van ride ended at a slaughterhouse, where poor Federal Sin met a terrifying end. “You cried and you got over it,” Lindemann said. “But you never forget.”

Her anger, the anguish that accompanied such a betrayal, turned into a passion for keeping other former racehorses from such an awful end. Her dedication to that cause, combined with her skill as an assistant to Joe Sharp, led her to win the Dedication to Racing Award sponsored by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association. The Dedication to Racing Award is part of the annual Thoroughbred Industry Employee Awards created in 2016 by Godolphin USA.

Lindemann, 48, greatly appreciated joining honorees in other categories during mid-October ceremonies at Keeneland. She was selected from among more than 200 nominees. But she said, “That's not what I look for. From the beginning, it was just done from the bottom of my heart, not to get any recognition.”

The same can be said for Michael Blowen, founder of Old Friends, a sanctuary for retired Thoroughbreds that he established in 2003. Lindemann and Blowen are kindred spirits – and then some.

They met when they shared a barn at Rockingham, the Salem, N.H., track that ran its final live race in 2009. An 18-year-old Lindemann taught Blowen, then a Boston Globe writer, everything she had learned from Joseph Gilbert. Although Gilbert was illiterate, the native of Cajun country in Louisiana knew so much about a Thoroughbred's legs that he was referred to far and wide as “Shin Buck.”

Lorita Lindemann with Michael Blowen, whom she met during her days at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire

Lindemann was raised by Annette Fantasia, a single mother. An uncle, Alfred Fantasia, worked in various capacities in the racing industry and provided a strong influence. She never knew her biological father.

For the last 30 years or so, Blowen has filled an aching need for Lindemann. “I was looking for a dad,” she said, “and he was looking for a daughter.”

The absence of adoption papers does not matter to either of them. “It doesn't have to be official,” Blowen said. “It just has to be sincere.”

Blowen also was duped while he was new to racing. “They used to say at Suffolk that some of these horses that were broken down were headed to retirement homes in Maine,” he recalled.

He eventually realized there were no retirement homes in Maine, at least not for Thoroughbreds. Blowen did what he could to help Lindemann cope with the loss of Federal Sin.

“I think that changed her whole life,” he said. “She's never gotten over it. I think that still motivates her.”

Lindemann used to feel as if she was a lone voice when it came to the need for aftercare. “You're a kid and you're a woman. You're 18. Nobody is listening,” she said.

She continues to be exasperated by those who do not concern themselves about the future of their horses once they have given their all and cannot race another step.

“These horses are why we have what we have today — houses, possessions. These horses have done this. Without these horses, we couldn't do this,” she said. “It saddens me that people lose that concept along the way.”

On the positive side, the cause has gained tremendous momentum and a level of financial backing that was once only a dream. When there is a horse in need, Lindemann has developed a reputation as one to call.

“I can't even put a number on the number of horses that she got off the track and put in proper places,” Blowen said.

Lindemann regularly places horses above her needs. She only recently scheduled knee surgery to treat an injury she neglected for the last three years.

“She's dogged. She knows who to call and how to ask for something,” Blowen said. “They all respect her on the backside because she knows what she's doing. She's got everybody's trust back there.”

Lindemann with some of her equine friends

Blowen emphasized that each rescue entails a great deal of hard work and some difficult conversations. “It's easy to feel bad for these horses. It's easy to get emotional,” he said. “But it's really, really hard to dig down and find out where they are, find out how to get them out of a situation and find a place for them. That's the hard part.”

When the going gets tough, Lindemann needs only to think of Federal Sin – and that unforgettable white blaze.

Tom Pedulla wrote for USA Today from 1995-2012 and has been a contributor to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Blood-Horse, America's Best Racing and other publications.

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Kirkpatrick & Co Presents In Their Care: Viral Filly’s Trainer Went From Show Horses To Racing, Keeps Learning

Trainer Michael Ann Ewing found herself internet famous this summer for a strange series of events she never could have imagined. After a decade training Thoroughbreds, she had dreamed of one day being the trainer generating buzz ahead of a run in the Kentucky Derby or the Breeders' Cup. She still dreams of that. What she didn't figure on was that she would spend a few weeks fielding interview requests about an unstarted 2-year-old filly running down the highway.

“I even had a paper from Ireland call me,” she said. “A friend of mine who was up in Canada saw it on the news there. People were fascinated. It was a quirky story and people were concerned.”

Video of Ewing runner Bold and Bossy went viral after the filly dropped jockey Miguel Mena in the paddock ahead of her first race at Ellis Park in August and ran back to the backstretch before leaving the track property and getting onto the road nearby. Ewing had stayed in Lexington that day and sent Bold and Bossy with her assistant, with plans to watch the race on television. She saw the filly's outburst in the paddock and knew they weren't going to make the gate.

“Kelsey [Wallace], assistant trainer was calling me five minutes later, saying 'We can't find her, she's gone,'” recalled Ewing. “I said, 'What do you mean, you can't find her?' and she said, 'She has left the property.'”

Bold And Bossy ran down US-41, then to I-69 and onto Veterans Memorial Parkway, with cars whizzing by and trainers following her in their vehicles. Eventually, the bewildered filly tired enough she could be safely caught and immediately treated by the state veterinarian, who had followed her in the horse ambulance.

Ewing bases at The Thoroughbred Center just outside of Lexington, Ky., and normally brings all her horses home immediately after their races. Wallace and Ewing agreed that putting the filly on a trailer on a hot afternoon for a three-hour haul was not the best thing for her, as the highway jaunt had left her dehydrated, exhausted, and sore. Wallace checked on her throughout the night, running fluids to her and expecting a quiet drive home in the cool of the morning. Then, she got a call at 4 a.m. just before she was to head back to Ellis to load up. There had been a fire in the receiving barn, the person on the other end told her, and they couldn't find her filly.

As most people know by now, all the horses in the receiving barn that night made it out alive, thanks to employees of nearby trainers who spotted the flames. 'Bossy' was the only one who came out with burns, and at first Ewing thought they weren't too bad. She had a few places where her hair and skin were rippled but not bald and pink, so Ewing had expected her recovery would be fairly simple. As she quickly learned though, burns sometimes take a while to fully manifest, and the hair and skin gradually sloughed off from her withers over her topline to her hindquarters.

Bossy spent most of the summer hand walking in the barn at The Thoroughbred Center because she was recovering from some residual hoof bruising and other damage from her highway run and also couldn't risk the burns being exposed to heat or flies. Last week though, she received clearance to return to turnout and is now enjoying a vacation at a nearby farm, where she spends her days grazing alongside two mini donkeys.

Incredibly, Ewing said the filly has seemed back to her usual self mentally since a few days after the mishaps.

“Once she was home here, she didn't appear particularly traumatized,” said Ewing. “For days when she got back here, she was kind of wiped out because she had been so dehydrated but she was pretty much herself and perky … we won't know till we start training if she has any [mental trauma].

“What could have had a tragedy had a very, very good outcome … whatever she does, she'll have a good life.”

Bold and Bossy runs down US-41 after dumping her rider and escaping the Ellis Park property.

Ewing, who maintains a string of between 20 and 30, was hands-on in Bossy's recovery, the same way she has been hands on with every other horse in her barn. Like many racetrack trainers, she said she can't imagine any other way. But Ewing came to the track in a different route than many of her competitors.

Ewing grew up in California as the only horse-crazy person in her family.

“I begged my mother to learn to ride, so she signed me up at a pony club and they had school horses,” she said. “Before I could drive, I'd ride my bike an hour and a half to go to the barn and I'd be there all day. Before I had my lesson, I'd ask people if they wanted me to bathe their horse or braid their horse or whatever they needed.”

She started out riding hunter/jumpers in Pony Club, then transitioned to fox hunters and eventually got into Quarter Horses. She did a little bit of everything with Quarter Horses and Paints – reining, trail, halter classes, hunter under saddle – and loved every minute. Ewing's husband works in real estate in Los Angeles, and they attended races and other events at Santa Anita Park from time to time. They grew interested in dipping a toe into racing ownership, even though it seemed like a completely different world from the one Ewing knew. It was at Santa Anita they met Bob Hess, who agreed to train the couple's first horse.

“I thought, 'I can't, as a horseman, own a horse and just show up when it races. I've got to learn all about racing,'” she said.

While some particularly involved owners may have requested a phone call each morning or might pop by for a workout here and there, Ewing rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a pitchfork.

“I told Bob, I'm going to be one of those annoying owners who wants to figure it out,” she said. “I told him, I just want to be here all morning. I'll work for free.”

Gradually, she began selling her show horses as she spent more and more time in Hess' barn. By this time, it was the early 2000s and Ewing was in her forties – not usually the time that horse people make a major shift in horse sports. But Ewing has always considered herself a lifelong student of horses.

“In the horse business, I don't care what you're doing, you never know it all because every horse is different,” she said. “You don't train every horse the same. You can go 20 years and one will have some kind of injury or something you've never dealt with. Whatever discipline it is, you have to learn what makes your horse tick and what's going to work for your horse.

“I think it keeps you young and growing, even as you age. I always think I'm so lucky to have horses as a passion, and having showing as part of my background.”

She started off walking hots for Hess, then became a groom, and then a forewoman – all as she owned a couple of horses in the barn. She eventually became a full-blown assistant for Hess, taking a string to Kentucky for part of the year while he stayed in California. When it was time to go out on her own, Ewing wanted to relocate to the Bluegrass.

Ewing said she likes her set-up at the training center. The smaller number of horses allows her to still do a lot of work herself, and gives her the chance to turn horses out when they need rest and to send them out for hack days in the fields if they get sour or too strong. She has carried over knowledge from the show horse world, mixing ideas and practices to find what works. The horses you'll see from her barn in January have the same coats they did in mid-summer because Ewing puts them under lights and has multiple blankets for each, negating the skin disease that can accompany longer, sweaty coats as well as the stripping of a coat from a full body clip.

Ewing still dreams of saddling a runner in a classic race, and she came close when Barrister Tom was named as an also-eligible to last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf – but she knows that having graded stakes runners is a numbers game, and she's not interested in big numbers. In lieu of that, she hopes instead people know her as the trainer who's not afraid to develop a young horse slowly and problem-solve to find out exactly what they need to succeed.

“I think of myself as patient,” she said. “You wouldn't send a horse to me to rush. I'm very careful; I'm not going to run a sore horse. If it comes along all on its own, that's fine, but we're pretty patient.”

As for Bold and Bossy, Ewing is embracing her trademark patience. She has made no decision yet on whether she will try to get the filly back to a race, preferring to see how she's doing physically and mentally in late winter. Whether the paddock Bossy ends up in is the saddling area at a racecourse or a field at a riding stable or breeding farm, Ewing said she considers her story a success.

“Life throws you curves, as does this business,” she said. “You have to be optimistic and deal with setbacks and disappointments, because you have a lot of those in racing. I think it's a great game of hope. You deal with what you have and you move forward.”

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Kirkpatrick & Co Presents In Their Care: TRF Program Gives Bonds Back Her Mental Health, Purpose

Caroline Bonds planned every detail of her suicide, including payment for her funeral.

She was facing a five-year sentence for money laundering. She accepted responsibility for what occurred while insisting she was an unwitting victim of a man she once loved, a man she thought would someday be her husband. She felt the shame associated with the crime was more than she could bear.

“If I was around, I was a huge embarrassment to my family,” Bonds said. “I just couldn't take it.”

She saved three months' worth of her blood pressure medication, bought a bottle of Tylenol PM, and ingested it all. She narrowly avoided the outcome she wanted badly when someone checked on her. She spent a week on a ventilator before she gradually recovered.

When she began a sentence that was accompanied by 25 years of probation and an order to make financial restitution, thoughts of suicide returned.

“Being in prison was really starting to play with my head,” Bonds said. “I thought, 'There is no way I'm going to be able to do this. You're not going to be able to do this. Just end it.'“

Her grim outlook changed forever in 2014. That is when she became involved with the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation's Second Chances Program, overseen by John Evans at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, Fla.

“When we drove over that hill there in Ocala and I saw that farm, something changed,” Bonds said. “But the main change in me was when I got assigned Frosty Grin.”

Bonds had never been around horses. She did not know what to expect the first time she called out to Frosty Grin.

“He come running up to the gate and something inside of me started crying like a baby,” she said. “Somebody does want to see me. It changed me. It truly changed me.”

Bonds finally had someone to talk to – without fear of judgment.

“He would look right at you and he would know if I was having a blue day. I felt that horse looked right into my soul,” she said. “I talked to that horse like he was a human being and he would come back at me like 'I know. I know.' I had some heart-to-heart talks with that horse.”

The blue days became fewer. Then they were gone.

“I went from 'Damn, I woke up again' to 'Thank you, God!' “ Bonds said.

Her transformation provides one of the most inspiring stories as the Second Chances program at Lowell marks its 20^th anniversary with a horse show that will be livestreamed on Oct. 21 from 8-9 p.m. ET. The show takes viewers inside the gates of the correctional facility for women to demonstrate how the program saves horses from potential slaughter and changes lives.

Bonds with Frosty Grin

Gigi Brown provides another example of someone profoundly impacted by Second Chances. She began working with retired Thoroughbreds at Lowell in 2018 while serving a four-year sentence for selling drugs.

“That was the only way I thought I could make money and succeed in life,” Brown said. “But come to find out that is so far from the truth. I would never in my life go back to anything like that again.”

She credits Evans – and the horses – with helping her see a path to a better life.

“He is one of a kind,” Brown said of Evans. “He will do everything in his power to help you succeed, if that is what you really want out of life. I've never met a man like him. He is amazing.”

The skills he taught her proved invaluable because she gained employment at Tickety-boo Farm in Melrose, Fla., a long way from peddling drugs and far more rewarding emotionally. “I like working. At the end of the day, I feel I accomplished something,” Brown said.

Evans, 73, arrived at Lowell in 2005 and works as the equine educational instructor and farm manager.

“That man, he has such a heart for the ladies out there and the program,” Bonds said. “He doesn't look at you like 'Oh, you're a convict' or 'Oh, you're a criminal.' He never once, never once, made you feel like that. He made you feel you were somebody.”

Evans initially planned to stay at Lowell for one year. Despite the blistering summer sun in Ocala, he found the work too fulfilling to leave.

“I couldn't believe how much better you felt when you influenced someone who had not had very good life experiences,” he said. “The most amazing thing was seeing the transformation of these people when they got around a horse, even if they never touched a horse before.”

Many women endure the pain of knowing they cannot be there for their children. They turn their strong maternal instincts to horses that welcome their care and affection.

“You start seeing them nurture,” Evans said. “You start seeing them wanting to be better in their lives, not to have the addictions that they've had.”

There are failures, too. Evans noted that one of his first students was a heroin addict who initially feared horses. She overcame that fear and did so well in the program that she landed a job in the industry upon her release. He and others did everything possible to see that she was successfully rehabilitated, assisting with living arrangements and the purchase of a car. Tragically, there was no escaping her heroin addiction and she eventually returned to prison.

Bonds fully embraced her second chance at life. After filling out more than 1,000 job applications in vain, she found gratifying employment with Lighthouse Ministries in Lakeland, Fla. She fills some of her spare time by volunteering at Hope Equine Rescue.

Tom Pedulla wrote for USA Today from 1995-2012 and has been a contributor to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Blood-Horse, America's Best Racing and other publications.

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