Saving Baby Page 22

  Instead of calling the local paper, I tried a Lansing TV station, keeping in mind how well we had done with TV the previous year, and reached the program director. As luck would have it, she was a horse owner herself. We spent the first twenty minutes just talking to each other about our horses, and when I finally was able to get around to why I was calling, she thought it would make a wonderful story.

  Dr. Stick was delighted, even allowing the news team into the operating room to watch the surgery on Lookalike, Michigan State’s first CANTER arthroscopy patient. He had also cleared using the $20,000 donation with the contributor, a Dr. Lyle Hartrick, who, it turned out, knew me and the CANTER program from the Detroit Race Course.

  The piece ran a week or so before Thanksgiving, at noon, five o’clock, and eleven o’clock, and it even ran for more than one day, far beyond anything I had hoped for and certainly far beyond anything Dr. Stick expected. Our relationship was off to a solid start. And Lookalike—she came through her surgery great, ending up as a family horse used for Western trail riding. She was the first of five CANTER horses to be operated on successfully that year.

  The season was soon over, and I’d have a few months before needing to go out again to Muskegon every Saturday. I missed Pumpkin. We were now into December, and I was constantly reminded of her, as I had taken her in just before Christmas so many years earlier. But I was finally at peace, to some degree, because of our ability to keep the kill buyers from the new track and to rehabilitate those horses who were so injured they had no chance whatsoever of moving to a new life without surgery.

  It was during that period of letting down, of coming to realize that I could finally take a breath, with the tree already in the house and the girls soon coming home for the holiday, that John started shouting.

  “Jo Anne, Jo Anne, get in here!” It was a Saturday afternoon, and he had been flipping channels to watch different football games, when there, on CNN Headline News, was the segment that had run in Lansing.

  I was so frustrated that we didn’t have a tape in the television. “Sometimes they repeat,” John said. “Let’s put one in just in case.”

  Sure enough, around it came again, right after a story about the Pope and then another segment on pandas at the San Diego Zoo, just like the previous time. It kept coming, in fact, every single hour. After about the third or fourth time, John said, “they’re probably going to change stories now,” and it seemed they had. The Pope and the pandas were bumped. But the CANTER piece ran yet again, and kept running!

  Checks started coming in from as far away as Washington State. Magazines with wider circulations than any who had already covered us began calling for interviews.

  CANTER was now on the national stage. More racehorses than ever were going to be saved.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The CNN segment did prove to be the kindling that allowed CANTER to transition from a precarious flicker to a steadily intensifying glow. In 1999, our budget was $15,000 and change. By 2002, it was $107,000, and by 2004, $220,000. We were written up in publications ranging from The New York Times to the Chicago Tribune. A single article’s worth of coverage in The Associated Press garnered us placement in more newspapers than I can count.

  Feature articles about CANTER, some with huge spreads and lots of color photos, also appeared in magazines that for non-racing equine enthusiasts are the equivalent of Sports Illustrated for guys who love pro ball: Equus, Chronicle of the Horse, Practical Horseman, Horse Illustrated, and a number of others. We were even written about in the USCTA News and USDF Connection, the official publications of the United States Eventing Association and the U.S. Dressage Federation, thereby reaching people all over the country who might want to repurpose a Thoroughbred who was no longer going to race.

  Dr. Stick was thrilled about all the publicity, as Michigan State’s involvement was frequently mentioned. That made it easier for the development department at the university to go after new funding to support CANTER’s surgery program there.

  For me, “thrilled” was an understatement regarding how I felt about CANTER’s growth. The more money we took in, and the more people who knew about us, the less likely it became for us to lose a Michigan Thoroughbred to slaughter. Better still, people from other states were contacting me about starting CANTER affiliates at racetracks in their own locales. By the end of 2000, there was a CANTER Illinois and a CANTER West Virginia, with plans in the works for CANTERs at racetracks in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New England, and Texas. Unfortunately, we had to rescind the Texas franchise early in the process. Its director refused to display anti-slaughter information on the Web site’s opening page. There were at that time two active slaughterhouses in the state, and she did not want to risk offending anyone. But CANTER’s entire raison d’etre was to save horses from slaughter. To attempt to remain neutral on that score ran counter to the heart of the mission.

  While my administrative responsibilities kept growing, much of the day-to-day work continued to revolve around the rescued Thoroughbreds themselves, with so many cases proving particularly charged emotionally.

  At one point I received a call from a woman who said she had a former racehorse who never performed well at the track and couldn’t do anything else. She needed to get rid of it because there was something wrong with its legs, and she couldn’t afford the veterinary bills.

  It was Simply Darling, whom I had met some ten years earlier during my very first season at the Detroit Race Course, when her trainer overfed her on grain and risked colic rather than split her rations in half and pay to have someone feed her the rest later in the day.

  The beautiful, gentle mare, with so many years of questionable care since I last saw her, let me stroke her neck as soon as she came off the trailer, happy for me to breathe from my nostril into hers. I learned that in sixty-six lifetime races, she made only $11,000. Why anyone would put a horse through sixty-six races for so little money I will never understand.

  Simply Darling’s temperament was true to her name, and a veterinarian from Michigan State University adopted her immediately. But she had a serious case of cellulitis in her legs, a bacterial infection that proves very painful, causing swelling. In severe cases, like hers, the skin cracks and oozes yellow fluid and is very difficult to treat. The vet, who adored her, tried everything. But her condition eventually led to her having to be euthanized. I rued that she had to live such an awful life but was glad that at least in the end, she knew the best in veterinary care, not to mention kindness, sweet words, sufficient feed, and water.

  Twoey was so attached to his goat that he shared not only hay with him, but also grain. Mares won’t even share grain with their foals, but that’s how strongly Twoey felt about his friend.

  Then there was Twoey, or Two Links Back, as he was known officially. A black bay who was never going to be able to enter a sport discipline because his knee was already too compromised, he was sold to CANTER for $600, with his trainer advising me to also take the goat who lived in Twoey’s stall.

  Goats on the backstretch were not uncommon. Horses are such herd animals that they need companionship, and goats can live well in horses’ stalls, going in and out to say “hello” to different horses at will by slipping under the gates. But Twoey’s goat belonged only to him. They were so bonded that Twoey could not even be taken out to the race track without the goat accompanying him. He was a wreck if the goat so much as walked down the aisle a little bit, away from his stall, to get some water.

  I did take the goat along with Twoey—I would never have been able to load him into the trailer otherwise—after finally finding a foster farm that would have them. Goats can be destructive, and many people want nothing to do with them. From the foster farm, I eventually managed to get Twoey adopted by a sister rescue organization called the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. The foundation took the goat, too, named Captain Kidd by the owner of the farm that fostered the duo, and the two lived, with no exaggeration, happily ever after at a wonderful facili
ty in Missouri.

  If only it always went that way. One day I received an e-mail both ominous and anonymous: “CANTER horse, Make It Happen, has been sold for slaughter.”

  I remembered Happy—Make It Happen’s barn name—immediately. It fit him perfectly; he had such a sweet disposition. When I had gone to meet him in his shedrow, he was gentle and curious, wanting only to smell my face, and very people oriented, just like Pat. He liked for me to touch him, to stroke him. He had a beautiful, fine-boned head, too, which he hung out of his stall on a tilt with a “Don’t you want to take me home?” look, like a puppy in a store window.

  I had to buy him for $700 from his racing trainer. But I wasn’t worried about the price. With his good looks and agreeable character, I knew I could adopt him out through the CANTER Web site for $1,000 and use the extra money to steer another horse away from the kill buyers. I was right. Within hours of posting his photograph, I heard from a woman who wanted to take him. It turned out she was on the board of directors of an organization in Southwestern Michigan that needed horses for its summer camp.

  It wasn’t going to work. I explained to her all the reasons that a horse coming directly off the track is not a good choice for children. It doesn’t know “whoa.” And pulling back on the reins, which to most horses means stop, means “go faster” to a racehorse. Furthermore, I told her, Thoroughbreds are thin skinned for leg pressure. They’re not used to legs dangling around their sides; the jockeys ride tucked up. If someone rides with a heavy leg, the horse might bolt. Finally, I said, racehorses go left very well because they run around the track counterclockwise. But it’s hard to get them to turn right. They haven’t been taught “right.”

  The woman, friendly, smart, and articulate, countered that the camp wouldn’t be opening until the summer and that in the meantime, her husband, a Grand Prix dressage trainer and rider, would retrain Happy at their farm. I said I still didn’t think it would work because being trained alone at a farm is different from being out on a trail with a group of other horses and that children were not professional riders, like her husband. I was concerned, too, because I knew by that point that there were rescues designed specifically to save camp horses from slaughter each fall, when a lot of summer camps gave them up because they didn’t want to pay to take care of the horses over the winter. Come spring, the camps went to classified ads offering horses on the cheap and picked up new ones all over again. I even told the woman that I didn’t adopt horses to children’s camps unless the camps kept their horses through the winter, to which she replied that her particular camp did.

  She also said that some of the children at the camp did have experience riding horses and wanted to do more than just walk/trot. That resonated with me. And so, after being worn down by her smarts and her persistence, I agreed to adopt Happy out to her.

  That’s why, when I read the e-mail, my stomach plummeted. If this anonymous tip-off was correct, I had made a ghastly error, the worst possible kind of error I could make. That horse had had CANTER’s name on its papers. I okayed this camp. How was I going to be able to live with myself?

  “Would you please come forward?” I implored the e-mailer. “I need more information.”

  In the meantime, I called the camp woman, who denied in no uncertain terms that Happy had been sent to slaughter. I reminded her of the terms of a CANTER adoption—that she could not transfer the horse without our being aware and without our approval, or she would be flouting the terms of the contract.

  “Is the horse even at your farm being trained by your husband before camp season, like you told me?” I asked.

  “No,” she responded. They had decided to let it settle in from racing with the other horses housed at the camp through the winter and would train the horse come spring. She was insulted by my even questioning her.

  But my anonymous e-mailer told another story. In a subsequent e-mail communication, she said that the camp owed a construction company money and gave Happy to the company in exchange for the funds due. The construction company, in turn, traded Happy for a pony that a kill buyer had on his trailer.

  I called the camp woman back and repeated to her what I had been told.

  Irate, she said she’d call the camp to make sure the horse was safe there and would call me right back. When she did call back, she said that she had spoken to the camp manager and that the horse was on the camp grounds. “I don’t know what your problem is,” she said, “but leave us alone.”

  Back at my computer, I once more e-mailed the anonymous informant, saying, “You must come forward. I’m hours away from this place. You apparently are near there. I need to talk to you on the phone. I need to pursue this.”

  Come forward she did, giving me her name—Peg Yordy—and phone number. The reason she had been hesitant was that the woman in the construction company who traded Happy for a pony with the kill buyer was a friend. By coming forward on Happy’s behalf, Peg ended up ruining that friendship—a courageous and ethical act.

  Unfortunately, the transfer of Happy to the meat buyer had occurred eleven days earlier. The chances that he had already been slaughtered were high. I managed to get the phone number of the kill buyer, but when I called him and started to talk about “this horse that I think you took in,” he interrupted by saying, “I don’t know anything about any such horse,” and hung up.

  Crying, I called Shane Spiess. I never cried in front of trainers; it only hardened them against my cause, but I couldn’t help it. Besides, Shane was different. And he knew Happy, having trained him before the trainer from whom I bought him. “Shane,” I said, “I will pay a one-thousand-dollar bounty to anyone who will return that horse to me. I don’t know where to start, though. The kill buyer hung up on me.”

  “When did this happen?” he asked.

  When I told him, he said, “I’m going to make some calls. It’s a small circle. We all know each other. I don’t know this particular guy, but someone will. I want to prepare you, though. Eleven days doesn’t sound good. I don’t think we’re going to have any luck. I think he’s gone.”

  Still crying, I asked, “Would you please try, though?”

  “Yes,” Shane said.

  Horrible images of Happy in the slaughterhouse were running through my head. Making his way in a single-file line, he’d see his fate by watching the horse ahead of him, finally reaching the metal box himself, perhaps slipping on blood and urine. Then he’d heave after being slammed in the head by a four-inch bolt shot from a gun, meant to render him unconscious but not necessarily succeeding. The gun operator would shoot again and again, slamming the bolt until Happy dropped to the blood-soaked floor.

  Many of the horses, I knew, were still conscious when they were finally hoisted into the air by a chain tied around a single hind leg. It was while those horses were upside down and frequently fully aware that their throats were slit and blood spilled from their necks. I couldn’t bear it. I felt strangled from inside.

  Shane called me back within the hour, telling me that the kill buyer had already taken Happy to a meat auction in Kentucky, where he was sold for $390 to the Bel Tex Slaughterhouse. “Try the auction and see if Bel Tex has picked up its horses from that day of bidding yet,” he advised me.

  “Okay,” I responded, “but would you keep putting out the word to anyone you know in the business that I will pay a one-thousand-dollar bounty for this horse?” I was becoming more frantic by the minute.

  “I already told the guy who took him to Kentucky,” he answered. “He said, ‘For a thousand bucks, I’ll drive down to Kentucky again and try to find this horse.’”

  When I called the auction, they verified that Happy had been bought by Bel Tex and that he was still in the holding pen waiting for the slaughterhouse to pick him up. They didn’t know for sure when the truck was coming. A bit of relief.

  I immediately called Shane back to let him know Happy was still there. Could he please get back in touch with the guy who said that for $1,000, he’d go back
down to Kentucky and get him?

  The meat buyer told Shane he’d get the horse from Kentucky and take him as far as the Shipshewana Auction in Indiana, where he was going with some other horses, anyway. By dint of incredible luck and good will, Peg told me she’d pick up Happy from there, which was a great relief to me since I lived more than three hours from Shipshewana, and she lived much closer.

  On the designated day, she called me from the Shipshewana Auction parking lot. “Jo Anne, the parking lot is full of emptied trailers. We went up and down looking in them. But I did find one trailer that had a horse inside instead of being taken out to the auction. He looks really bad, like he’s ready to go down any time. How do I know if it’s him?”

  I gave her the tattoo number. Every single Thoroughbred registered with the Jockey Club has a number tattooed on the inside of his lip before his first race.

  She flipped his lip, called me back, and said, “It’s him.” Then, never having met me, not knowing me at all other than through our few e-mails and couple of phone calls, Peg found the kill buyer and gave him a $1,000 check, trusting that I would reimburse her.

  She also kept him at her own farm for a couple of months until he was strong enough to make the trip to my house on the other side of the state. His several days in the kill buyer’s hands and then in the holding pen both before the auction and after he was sold, waiting for the slaughterhouse to pick him up, had taken its toll, as it invariably does. Once he was sold for meat, he probably was not given any food or water. Instead, he was confined for days to a space overcrowded with other horses slated for removal to slaughter. Insane with hunger and thirst, they no doubt aggressively bit and kicked at each other in desperation, with the weaker of them, often already in horrific pain from bone fractures that stopped them from running, sustaining gashes and sometimes even gouged-out eyes.