Racehorses Past Their Prime Find Retirement Haven
By Robert Stern
LISTEN TO AUDIO OF DOMINIKA NAWROT AND HER HORSES
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
HAMILTON – When sudden blindness robbed Duke of his eyesight many years ago, it also abruptly ended his days as a competitive racehorse. Sightless, Duke was as good as dead.
Dominika Nawrot draws blood from Homer, a retired Standardbred in the care of the Standardbred Retirement Foundation, to test for equine infectious anemia.
As recently as five years ago, some 105,000 horses in the United States were slaughtered for their meat, many simply because they were past their prime as racing, riding or companion horses, according to a 2010 federal report on horse-slaughter prevention by the Congressional Research Service.
Duke avoided that fate because his compassionate racing family handed him off to a nonprofit organization in New Jersey – where the horse is the official state animal – that either serves as a sanctuary for retired harness racehorses like Duke or places them with loving adoptive caretakers.
In its 22-year existence, the Standardbred Retirement Foundation, which is located in Mercer County, has found adoptive homes for more than 2,300 horses.
Many others that are too old or too physically impaired to be easily adopted, including Duke, remain in the foundation’s care for life.
“No one wants to adopt him because it’s hard to cope with a blind horse,” said Dominika Nawrot, the foundation’s horse trainer, barn manager and volunteer coordinator.
Duke and other horses live at the leased 133-acre farm where the foundation is based in Hamilton, Mercer County, while others in the foundation’s care are at boarding facilities elsewhere.
Duke has learned to adjust to his blindness in remarkable ways, endearing himself as one of Nawrot’s favorites, she said.
He has the trust and confidence to run as long as a rider has him under saddle, she said.
“He’s kind of our wonder pony,” Nawrot said, using the term loosely since Duke is 21 years old and his pony days are long gone.
Duke even has a companion horse, Taxi, which he relies on as his “seeing-eye pony,” Nawrot said.
Dominika Nawrot leads a retired Standardbred, Graig, out of his paddock while her pit bull puppy, Herbie, checks things out on Feb. 14, 2011.
Every horse with which the foundation gets involved is a Standardbred because that was its founders’ desire.
Standardbreds are the horses in harness racing, where the horse is hitched to a two-wheeled cart.
That doesn’t mean Standardbreds, even those with a wildly independent streak like Nawrot’s own Ozzy, can’t be adapted to horseback riding, Nawrot said.
She said Ozzy’s willingness to be ridden is almost beyond belief, considering the nasty temperament of his younger years at the track.
“Now we use him for pony rides at our events. He’s kid-safe. He’s dog-safe,” Nawrot said. “I do 50-mile endurance rides with him.”
But there are vast numbers of other unwanted horses across the United States that caregivers like Nawrot and organizations like the Standardbred Retirement Foundation don’t have the resources to reach.
These days, many wind up exported to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada to be butchered for their meat because the last three horse slaughterhouses that operated in the United States shut down in 2007.
