The Retired Racehorse Project and OTTB United jointly announce today the release of OTTB United, a mobile app that unites sellers, buyers, and shippers of Thoroughbred ex-racehorses and gives back to the Thoroughbred placement community. The app is designed to make the entire process, from listing a horse, to communicating between buyer and seller, to organizing shipping to a horse's new home, as easy as a few taps of a button.
The app is also designed to give back to the Thoroughbred placement community: a portion of the premium subscription fee is donated to the Retired Racehorse Project, which takes a market-based approach to Thoroughbred aftercare to drive demand for ex-racehorses; subscribers can select from a list of aftercare organizations and for-profit resellers to receive an additional contribution.
“We are so fortunate to partner with the Retired Racehorse Project,” says OTTB United founder Amy Rubin. “The organization's mission is at the center of everything we want to achieve, and helping off-the-track Thoroughbreds is our number-one goal. The Retired Racehorse Project has strengthened the Thoroughbred community, and it's our hope that the OTTB United app produced in partnership will unite that community on one platform.”
OTTB United was designed to meet the specific needs of the Thoroughbred industry and creates a network to help more ex-racehorses find good homes. Uniting sellers, buyers, and shippers on a mobile platform greatly simplifies the entire process from start to finish, and helps both buyers and sellers navigate changing rules on social media that prohibit animal sales.
“The RRP works to increase the market for Thoroughbreds after racing in the equestrian world and we are always seeking out new ways to make that process easier and more successful,” says RRP executive director Jen Roytz. “We understand and respect the reasons for social media sites to place animal sales posts under increased scrutiny and it has surely gone a long way to prevent unwanted animals to end up in the wrong hands. It has also, however, compromised the efforts of many upstanding and responsible Thoroughbred placement organizations who depend on the platforms to market their available horses to reputable homes. Through our partnership with OTTB United, we are able to offer a potential solution.”
OTTB United is free to download from Google Play and the App Store. A premium subscription is $4.99 monthly. The app is available in the US and Canada.
Penelope Miller is the winner of the 2020 Real Rider Cup.
Unanimously voted by the board for this year's title, Penelope has raised just under $14,000 since 2018 when she first competed on Team Racing Analysts. This year was a year like no other. Going virtual was definitely plan B, with COVID becoming a national pandemic early in the Spring.
Organizers quickly realized that having a live show was going to be impractical. Penelope was the first one to say “Yay! I'm in!” when we first announced the virtual plan. Her fundraising tactics are always unique – this year she announced she would dye her hair the racing colors of the first stable to donate $2,000. That was Little Red Feather, so an extra thank you to them.
Designed specifically to showcase Off The Track Thoroughbreds (OTTBs), the Real Rider Cup was first held in conjunction with Plantation Field International Horse Trials in 2017 and 2018. This crowd-pleasing celebrity charity event changed venues in 2019 and served as the kick-off for the Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show which followed on Sept. 21-22.
The 2019 Real Rider Cup participants included a number of racing industry personalities – jockeys, members of the media, “Racing Kids” who grew up in the sport, sidesaddle riders and representatives from world-class breeding farms. Teams competed against each other over a course of show jumping fences to determine the “real riders.” Each competitor pledged to raise at least $1,000, which directly supported our beneficiaries – the Retired Racehorse Project, New Vocations, and The Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show.
Penelope Miller grew up as a horse-crazy kid on her parents' farm in Ocala, Fla., and not much has changed since then. She is now the Senior Manager of Digital Media at America's Best Racing, and spends her weekends traveling to racetracks across the nation to photograph and write about some of the sports biggest events. Before that, she worked on farms from Kentucky to Australia, and worked for six years at Tampa Bay Downs as the Horsemen's Liaison. When she's not in an airplane or the office, Penelope can be found riding at Riverdale Stables in the Bronx or flying through the air at Trapeze School New York.
Penelope tied for second place in the 2018 Real Rider Cup aboard the outstanding retired racehorse and all-around very good boy Disco Elvis, owned and trained by Meghan Wicks Doran. In 2019 she was aboard the wonderful Fort, owned by Abi Skillman, riding for Team Racing Media.
“Horses have given me absolutely everything, and I am so grateful for the chance to give back through the Real Rider Cup,” Miller said. “If you've ever fallen in love with a pony, if you've cheered on your favorite Thoroughbred at the track, or if you just want to help out, please consider a donation here to benefit the incredibly worthy charities supported by the Real Rider Cup: New Vocations, the Retired Racehorse Project, and the Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show.”
Penelope's 2020 mount was Grade 1-winning steeplechaser All The Way Jose, very kindly provided by his owner, Dr. Erica Gaertner. You can watch their flawless show jumping round here:
The beautiful silver cup will be mailed to Penelope today. CONGRATULATIONS PENELOPE!!!
This year's Peoples Choice Award goes to Laura Moquett riding Ultraslan who had the most votes on the online poll. Well done Laura for rallying so much support!! Her prize will be an assortment of goods and swag from our benefactors The Retired Racehorse Project, New Vocations and The Fair Hill Thoroughbred Show.
The total votes for all the riders exceeded 48,000, and as of this writing, we have also raised over $48,000!!
Again, we can't say thank you enough to all of our Real Rider Cup 2020 participants and supporters. You are ALL winners in our eyes!!
As anyone who has trained a horse knows, physical conditioning is only part of the equation — the mental side of an athlete's development can be just as critical to their career trajectory, if not more so. A recent virtual session of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Summit tackled questions surrounding learning theory and behavior in horses, and examined the way our understanding of equine learning can apply to retraining off-track Thoroughbreds (OTTBs).
Our academic understanding of the way horses learn doesn't always mesh with traditional training methods, according to Dr. Robin Foster, certified behavior consultant and research professor at the University of Puget Sound and Dr. Camie Heleski, equine lecturer at the University of Kentucky.
To understand the differences, it's important to know the basics of learning theory. Learning theory refers to the way an organism, from slugs to humans and anything in between, navigates its environment by creating associations between its behavior and its environment. Generally, different species are thought to have different capacities for learning and cognition based on academic research. On a basic level, an organism may learn from positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or punishment. Reinforcement, whether positive or negative, is designed to increase the frequency of a behavior, while punishment is designed to decrease the frequency of a behavior. The term positive reinforcement describes the addition of something the animal wants — in a horse's case, a treat or a scratch on the face or withers, as a reward for a desired response. Negative reinforcement refers to the removal of something the horse doesn't want.
“In the horse industry, we don't use positive reinforcement enough,” said Heleski. “Negative reinforcement is mainly what we use for traditional training. We squeeze the horse with our legs, applying pressure. The horse moves forward, we remove the pressure.”
Of those three choices, horses (and lots of other species) are shown to learn best through positive reinforcement. Punishment is commonly employed with horses, but isn't actually the most effective way to teach them.
“This is not only true with horses but it is perhaps especially true with horses — when horses do something that is unwanted, maybe it's unsafe, it's not a behavior we're looking for, it's annoying — it draws our attention,” said Foster. “I can't tell you how many people will say, 'I just want to stop that behavior.' It we want to decrease a behavior we don't want, we punish it. But there are better alternatives because punishment itself does not provide any alternative for the horse. It's really important to focus more on the behavior you want the horse to do ad make sure you reinforce that.”
It's easy to think punishment is effective, because it often generates a quick response, but Foster said it's rarely a permanent one. Because the horse hasn't been shown what the handler does want, it's likely the horse will repeat the undesired behavior eventually. This is especially problematic with Thoroughbreds, who Heleski and Foster agree are more sensitive to perceived threats and are therefore sensitive to punishment or reinforcement.
Heleski said she tends to encounter a bias against positive reinforcement in much of the equestrian world because many trainers are averse to giving horses frequent treats. The concern for many is the horse will come to expect food, and become mouthy or pushy in search of it. Most experts suggest handlers ignore pushy behavior and focus on rewards in specific instances where a horse is exhibiting desired behavior — keeping in mind that sometimes, the desired behavior is the absence of something, like kicking out or pawing in a grooming stall. Some horses are especially reactive to treats and will get excitable, searching for the food or trying to guess what their handler wants from them (which, at the start of positive reinforcement training, may be unclear to them). In those cases, Heleski suggests putting a gate or stall door between the horse and handler at first, or dispensing treats into a pan on the ground rather than feeding by hand.
If handlers are really concerned about “mugging” for treats, Heleski said research shows scratching on a horse's withers is a hugely impactful positive reinforcement. The attention, which mirrors mutual grooming, has been shown to decrease heart rate. Foals are also well known to enjoy scratches to their foreheads or the undersides of their necks.
One question Heleski and Foster are asked often is what to do about stereotypic behaviors like cribbing and weaving, which seem to be a focus for some horses no matter what type of reinforcement or punishment is used to stop them. Foster explained that although it may not feel this way, horses aren't doing these things to frustrate the humans around them.
“These repetitive behaviors that bother us — and they really bother people — they are very soothing to horses,” said Foster.
On a biochemical level, many of those behaviors have been shown to provide an enormous stress relief for the horse. It's a coping mechanism for anxiety about something around them. If the horse isn't doing significant harm to themselves, Foster suggested, it may be better to let these things ride. Otherwise, you're trying to take away a coping mechanism that could be very important to the horse, probably without providing alternate stress relief.
The good news for OTTB owners is not only that Thoroughbreds are known as a breed to be quick learners, but they also come off the track knowing a lot already. The racetrack routine includes lots of different stimuli that a horse wouldn't necessarily get in a riding barn.
“If I were to adopt a 3-year-old of another breed, most of the time they would not have had anywhere near the number of experiences that a 3-year-old Thoroughbred has had,” said Heleski. “I think that's a huge selling point to adopting these horses.”
Gastric ulcers are startlingly common among performance horses of all kinds, and horses coming off the racetrack are no exception. In a recent virtual education session as part of the Retired Racehorse Project's Thoroughbred Aftercare Summit, three experts gathered to share their thoughts on dealing with this issue in off-track Thoroughbreds.
Drs. Frank Andrews, director of Equine Health Studies at the Louisiana State University's School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Rana Bozorgmanesh, associate veterinarian at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute, and Dr. Bill Vandergrift of International Equine Consulting agreed ulcers can be a challenging problem, but there are a few management changes that can help.
A few takeaways:
There is more than one type of “gastric ulcer” in horses – the stomach may have either squamous or glandular ulcers, depending upon their location. Ulcers are really a type of wound caused by acidic secretions into the tender tissue lining the stomach. Glandular ulcers are those that appear in the first third of the stomach, which in horses is really like an extension of the esophagus; it was previously thought the glandular part of the stomach was resistant to ulcers, but research now indicates that may not be the case. Squamous ulcers occur in the latter two-thirds of the stomach and are considered the most common type. Ulcers may also occur in the esophagus as a result of acid reflux.Ulcers can also occur in the start of the small intestine. While an endoscopy may pick up on glandular or squamous ulcers in the stomach, it likely won't be able to show ulcers that far along in the gastrointestinal tract.
A case of ulcers doesn't look the same in all horses. Those with ulcers in the intestine may experience intermittent diarrhea, which loses protein and dehydrates the horse, inducing further stress. Of course, stress is one of the potential causes of ulcers.Vandergrift told the story of one owner who noticed a horse was losing weight, so began offering the horse more and more grain until it was taking in nearly 25 pounds per day and still losing weight – likely because of ulcers which were worsened by the addition of more high starch concentrate.
Infrequent, large meals of high starch grain are believed to increase stomach acid production, which can cause ulcers or make a case of ulcers more painful. All three experts agreed that small, frequent meals of concentrate along with lots of forage are better for an ulcer-prone horse. Vandergrift also recommends hay pellets instead of long-stemmed forage in cases of horses experiencing diarrhea.
Long-term use of NSAIDs can be a cause of ulcers, but not all risk factors are drug-related. The withdrawal of food prior to competition, the stress of travel and athletic work, and dehydration can all result in increased acid production. Often, owners or managers may struggle to recognize when a horse is stressed by the living environment, daily routine, training load, etc. Assessing behavior can be just as valuable a tool to combat ulcers as diet changes.
Management changes like an adjustment in feeding schedule are only effective after a horse has completed treatment, including pharmacological intervention, for ulcers. Omeprazole is the obvious candidate for resolving ulcers and is considered safe to use over a period of weeks, depending upon the horse's needs. Bozorgmanesh said she also adds misoprostal in cases of horses battling diarrhea, though that isn't safe to use in pregnant mares.
If you're going to use supplements or other feed additives to address ulcers, the same logic applies – those are really best for prevention, not cure of existing ulcers.“Some of these nutraceuticals can reduce the incidence or severity, but if you've actually got a horse that is presenting with ulcers, has had a history of ulcers, then I think you've got to get people involved and work with some pharmacological agents and actually treat those ulcers. Yes, there are nutraceuticals that can help but if you're trying to treat ulcers, then treat them.
Owners should seek out research data and published research that backs up the claims of a supplement designed to reduce ulcer risk. Products that don't have this information readily available should be avoided. Also make sure you know what's in them. Many people are fond of using aloe vera as a feed additive to reduce acid; Andrews cautioned that many of those products may be diluted – if you're going to try this, make sure the variety you purchase is at least full strength.
Ulcers can be the primary cause of symptoms in a horse, or they may be secondary to some other issue.“I look at the stomach as the window to the rest of the GI tract,” said Andrews. “And if there's stress farther down the GI tract, that may manifest itself in ulcers.
Vandergrift said he's skeptical of the use of probiotics as a solution for ulcers.“I think too much emphasis is placed on probiotics or the actual bacteria themselves,” he said. “Many times I think everyone out there forgets that the vast majority of the innate bacterial, whether it's in the large intestine or the small intestine, are anaerobic. Being anaerobic, you can't make a probiotic out of them. They can't live outside the horse. So, the question remains – how do you establish a healthy microbiome?”
Vandergrift prefers the use of prebiotics, which are a type of saccharide that stimulate the growth of good bacteria, making it easier for them to thrive.
