The faces of neglect

Wee Bit Special on the day he arrived at Circle E Ranch.
Photo: Gayle England

On January 16th of this year, Gayle England anxiously awaited a trailer that she knew would deliver two retired thoroughbreds for whom her rehabilitation facility in Stroud, Oklahoma was their last, best hope.  Each had been living at nearby Rafter G Ranch, where they had been kept under the auspices of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF).

But she wasn't prepared for what she saw.  One of the horses, a 20-year-old chestnut gelding named, Wee Bit Special, was so weak that he had fallen down twice during the 12-mile ride to her farm.  The first time, the driver was able to get him back on his feet, but now, he just lay on the floor of the trailer, with no will or strength to rise.

"He doesn't stand a chance," Gayle thought.  "Four of us pulled him off the trailer and onto the ground, at which point he laid for approximately 10-15 minutes, after which we were able to get him up.  He was horribly shaken and was never able to recover.  Unfortunately, I was unable to help him and turn him around, and on February 11th, he died in our barn when the vet euthanized him."

It was a sad and piercing loss for Gayle and her husband, who own the 500-acre Circle E Ranch, which also cares for rescued thoroughbreds from The Exceller Fund and the Oklahoma Thoroughbred Retirement Program.  "The only comforting thing about this experience for me is that Wee Bit Special died with a full belly and I know he had all he wanted to eat and drink," Gayle recalled, sadly.

Wee Bit Special had arrived at the Circle E Ranch with a much more famous companion, the multiple graded stakes winning Clever Song (a son of the celebrated Clever Trick), whose illustrious pedigree and race record didn't protect him from having suffered the same neglect.  Now 29, Clever Song had long ago thrilled racing fans with his exploits on the turf, winning or placing in 21 of his 27 starts while earning $586,097.

Clever Song at the Circle E Ranch on March 20, 2011
Photo: Gayle England

But the once strapping athlete was now withered as a result of having received marginal care and inadequate nutrition for an extended period of time, and Gayle feared that she was going to lose him, too.  Two months after his arrival at Circle E, she reports that Clever Song is slowly regaining his weight, his strength, and his spirit.  "He's still a little wobbly, but he's trotting around now," she said, and added, "He has a long way to go and at age 29, it will take determination on his part and a watchful eye on mine.  However, he now walks with a spirit of life in him that he didn't have when he arrived here in emaciated condition."

How Clever Song and dozens of other horses got that way is what the Trustees of the Mellon Estate, a major benefactor of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, want to know.  As first reported by Joe Drape in The New York Times, they hired a Missouri-based equine veterinarian, Dr. Stacey Huntington, to assess the condition of each of the 1100+ horses for whom the TRF is responsible, at farms in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and throughout the east coast.

According to Julie Walawender, who had been acting as TRF's interim Herd Manager until she resigned last week, the Mellon representatives took great pains to ensure that the evaluations were done fairly and without bias.  To that end, they hired not only Dr. Huntington, but at each facility, a second AAEP-accredited veterinarian who had no prior affiliation with the farm, to make his or her own assessment of the horses, independently of Dr. Huntington's.  Notwithstanding those efforts, the TRF abruptly notified its satellite facilities on Saturday, March 19th that Dr. Huntington was no longer to be granted access to their horses, apparently believing that by silencing her, it would stem the negative publicity surrounding the reports about dozens of TRF horses whose current condition belies a history of neglect.

"The Mellon Estate was willing to invest whatever it took to put things back on track," explained Ms. Walawender.  "Dr. Huntington was fantastic."  TRF now says it will continue the evaluations of its horses but with one notable exception:  they will hire only vets who have already been caring for the horses they will be assessing, a practice that seems far less objective than the one the Mellon Trustees had instituted.

Gayle England had been trying to get the TRF Board's attention since November of 2009, when she contacted them to complain about the foundation's late payments, failure to provide worming medication and vaccines, and pressure to reduce the per diems being paid to her farm, and several others.  She cited the organization's threats to remove the 27 horses that were then in her care if she didn't accept a lower day rate, and when she wouldn't, the TRF took 24 of them away from her in March, 2010, moving them to the other Oklahoma facilities whose substandard care was revealed during the Mellon investigation.  Because Ms. England deemed that three of the horses were too old or too fragile to be trailered even a short distance, she assumed responsibility for them on her own dime, rather than put them at further risk.

Khastan on January 24, 2011, the day she arrived at Circle E
Photo: Gayle England

But by January, 2011, after the Mellon-funded herd assessments had begun to identify farms where TRF horses were in "dire need," Ms. England was asked by Mellon Trustees Beverly Carter and Ted Terry to accept some of the worst cases for rehabilitation.  In addition to Clever Song and Wee Bit Special, she took 12 other TRF thoroughbreds, including the 23-year-old stakes-placed Ohio-bred mare,Khastan, who had descended down the claiming ladder to end her career for a $5000 tag at Thistledown in 1994; Stone Master, a 23-year-old son of I'm Glad (Arg), who broke his maiden at Belmont in $35,000 claiming company but arrived at Circle E a sorry sight, plagued with rain rot and sloughed off skin; and Rocking Josh, a Kentucky-bred son ofWhitesburg who won or placed in 64 of his 108 starts, amassing earnings of over $557,000.  All three horses had been ingesting toxic rumensin-laced cattle feed at nearby Windmill Farm for an unknown period of time before they got to Circle E.

They are all safe now, thanks to the intervention of the Mellon Trustees and to the kindness of Ms. England, and so many of the other farms who are trying so earnestly to care for the TRF horses on slim wages.  The least the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation can do now, it would seem, is to ensure that these stewards of their treasured retirees are paid promptly, without fuss or finagling, so that the horses can live out their lives in health and peace.