Grits
08-04-2015, 11:05 AM
The quotes are only part of the story, and one may dismiss the subject matter, choosing, instead, not to read. But, please do.. because when you care about this game, you understand that it is about horses.
These two individuals are doing outstanding work. Work that I couldn't do, no matter how hard I tried. I'm not sure that any of you gentlemen could do it either. How difficult this must truly be. <3
http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/features/undercover-advocates-789
“Those racehorses usually don’t go through the auction ring,” Sonja says, alluding to the practice of peddling the former runners in parking lot transactions, often by owners and trainers trying to evade racetracks’ no-slaughter policies. “So a buyer doesn’t have a chance to buy this horse, and the horse doesn’t have a chance to be saved. They do that to avoid these horses being found. There’s a chance that somebody at the auction could flip a lip.”
It’s the end of the afternoon at the Good Friday sale in Shipshewana. The sturdy trail horses and the blooded Quarter Horses have been auctioned, the crowd reduced to a few locals who are either looking for a last-minute deal or regard this as the best entertainment in a small town. Keith and Sonja are back at their hotel, uploading two hours of video to a computer. (The Meadowses admit to violating the “no camera” signs: “It’s a public auction,” Sonja says, “so I think the public has a right to be there and document what’s going on.”). The kill buyers are still on the grounds, however. In fact, Jaron Gold, who owns a horse farm in Port Huron, Mich., across the river from Canada, is sitting in the auctioneer’s booth. When he spots a horse that looks cheap enough to peddle to the slaughterhouse, he raises a finger for $100, two fingers for $200. To Lambright these are fair prices for washed-up horses. “What do you do with a car when it’s worn out?” he said later. “You get rid of it. They’re an animal. They’re not pets. What do you want to do? Do you want to leave it alive to suffer and die?”
After the auction ends, at 4:15 p.m., trailers back up to the stables. Wranglers lead horses into tightly confined stalls and tie them up for their final journeys. But the wheeling and dealing still isn’t over.
A racemare named Proud Mover—a 9-year-old daughter of Proud Citizen, runner-up in the 2002 Kentucky Derby (gr. I)—is purchased by Beyond the Roses, a Michigan horse rescue operation whose members identified her by flipping lips. Founder Gail Hirt has rescued 32 Thoroughbreds since last December, including Otis Ridge, who raced at Arlington Park, and Senita Lane, winner of the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Lassie and the mother of foals by Big Brown and Malibu Moon.
Proud Mover was brought to Shipshewana after going barren as a broodmare and sold for $550 to Gold. The kill buyer resold the mare to Beyond the Roses at a small profit and personally vanned her to the group’s farm. She is now back with one of her old owners, Deann Baer of Indiana. When Hirt contacted Baer and told her the mare had been rescued from a kill pen, “she was beside herself. Now she has her turned out with her other mares. She’s retired.”
These two individuals are doing outstanding work. Work that I couldn't do, no matter how hard I tried. I'm not sure that any of you gentlemen could do it either. How difficult this must truly be. <3
http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/features/undercover-advocates-789
“Those racehorses usually don’t go through the auction ring,” Sonja says, alluding to the practice of peddling the former runners in parking lot transactions, often by owners and trainers trying to evade racetracks’ no-slaughter policies. “So a buyer doesn’t have a chance to buy this horse, and the horse doesn’t have a chance to be saved. They do that to avoid these horses being found. There’s a chance that somebody at the auction could flip a lip.”
It’s the end of the afternoon at the Good Friday sale in Shipshewana. The sturdy trail horses and the blooded Quarter Horses have been auctioned, the crowd reduced to a few locals who are either looking for a last-minute deal or regard this as the best entertainment in a small town. Keith and Sonja are back at their hotel, uploading two hours of video to a computer. (The Meadowses admit to violating the “no camera” signs: “It’s a public auction,” Sonja says, “so I think the public has a right to be there and document what’s going on.”). The kill buyers are still on the grounds, however. In fact, Jaron Gold, who owns a horse farm in Port Huron, Mich., across the river from Canada, is sitting in the auctioneer’s booth. When he spots a horse that looks cheap enough to peddle to the slaughterhouse, he raises a finger for $100, two fingers for $200. To Lambright these are fair prices for washed-up horses. “What do you do with a car when it’s worn out?” he said later. “You get rid of it. They’re an animal. They’re not pets. What do you want to do? Do you want to leave it alive to suffer and die?”
After the auction ends, at 4:15 p.m., trailers back up to the stables. Wranglers lead horses into tightly confined stalls and tie them up for their final journeys. But the wheeling and dealing still isn’t over.
A racemare named Proud Mover—a 9-year-old daughter of Proud Citizen, runner-up in the 2002 Kentucky Derby (gr. I)—is purchased by Beyond the Roses, a Michigan horse rescue operation whose members identified her by flipping lips. Founder Gail Hirt has rescued 32 Thoroughbreds since last December, including Otis Ridge, who raced at Arlington Park, and Senita Lane, winner of the 1996 Breeders’ Cup Lassie and the mother of foals by Big Brown and Malibu Moon.
Proud Mover was brought to Shipshewana after going barren as a broodmare and sold for $550 to Gold. The kill buyer resold the mare to Beyond the Roses at a small profit and personally vanned her to the group’s farm. She is now back with one of her old owners, Deann Baer of Indiana. When Hirt contacted Baer and told her the mare had been rescued from a kill pen, “she was beside herself. Now she has her turned out with her other mares. She’s retired.”