Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4)
Page 31
Personal Best was going to have a different story from Tiger’s, or Market Affair’s. By the time he was as long in the tooth as Tiger, he would be retired to the stallion barn. He was having the story we wished for all of our racehorses, from the moment their noses poked into the world atop their feathery little foals’ hooves. But Tiger’s story wasn’t bad either, I reflected. As for Market Affair—all I could do was work like the devil to make sure that stories like his were told differently in the future.
I wasn’t sure what that it was going to look like, yet. All I knew was that there were people out there now who believed in change, and they believed that I was going to help bring it about. Whatever happened with Personal Best, with the farm, with Alexander’s dreams of standing big stallions there—I was going to be involved on the other end of the business, with retirement, just as heavily as I was with bringing new racehorses into the world.
It seemed like a good balance.
Acknowledgements
The Thoroughbred Makeover wasn’t my idea.
That honor goes to The Retired Racehorse Project, an organization of trainers, riders, and other dedicated equestrians who have been putting together Thoroughbred retirement and retraining events since 2010. The Retired Racehorse Project’s training challenges, which have included the Trainer Challenge, the 100 Day Thoroughbred Challenge, and the Thoroughbred Makeover and National Symposium, have been an incredible asset to the racehorse retraining community. Using national conferences and social media, they bring the stories of retired racehorses, along with the training challenges and triumphs that come along with these amazing horses, right into people’s homes.
If you haven’t visited Retired Racehorse Project’s wonderful website yet, please do so. You’ll find resources on training retired racehorses, along with some great YouTube channels full of all the Thoroughbred videos you need to get through a rainy afternoon. You’ll leave inspired and that much more knowledgeable about the amazing athlete that is the Thoroughbred horse. Go to retiredracehorseproject.org for more information.
I hope they’ll forgive my lifting the title “Thoroughbred Makeover” for the purpose of my little book about the challenges facing racehorses and retirement!
I’d also like to mention some of the Thoroughbred rehoming organizations I’ve been privileged to work with.
Hidden Acres Rescue for Thoroughbreds, in Cocoa, Florida, has been kind enough to put a lead-rope in my hand and put me to work with their wonderful horses. They always have a beautiful selection of horses available for adoption — visit their website at hiddenacresequinerescueandtraining.com.
Thoroughbred Retirement of Tampa (T.R.O.T.) offers retirement, training, and adoption services to horses from Tampa Bay Downs, a racetrack that appears in several of my books. I’ll always appreciate T.R.O.T. for helping me put together my very first author event. Their website is at tampatrot.org.
Way back when, before any of these stories were written, I decided to find myself a Thoroughbred fresh off the track and retrain him, blogging about him at retiredracehorseblog.wordpress.com. Final Call went from racehorse to winning hunter pace horse in less than six months. Thanks, Final Call. You’re a one-in-a-million horse, and you helped make all of these stories possible.
And finally, going back to my teenage years, thanks to Amarillo Elbert. You had a silly racehorse name, but you were the best hunter/jumper/dressage/eventer/trail horse/school horse/best friend a girl could ask for. You made sure the motto of my life would be “It’s all about the Thoroughbreds.”
There are hundreds of organizations and thousands of dedicated people across the country working to ensure safe and happy retirements for racehorses, both within the racing industry and without. There’s probably someone in your neighborhood. Reach out, see what you can do to promote Thoroughbreds with them. Together, we can be breed advocates, creating awareness about the true value of these incredible athletes.
About the Author
Natalie Keller Reinert grew up with horses: first riding hunters, then discovering her true love, eventing, with a green off-track Thoroughbred named Amarillo. But never one to turn down an experience, she has also started and galloped racehorses, groomed for Olympians, rode on mounted patrol in NYC, and so much more. Today, Reinert lives in Florida with her family, where she spends most of her time writing.
In 2014, Book 2 of the Alex and Alexander series, Other People’s Horses, was named a semi-finalist for the the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for full-length horse racing literature. In addition to the Alex and Alexander series, Reinert has published the Heroines on Horseback historical romance series, the eventing novel Ambition, and Horse-Famous: Stories.
For more information and to keep up with new projects, visit NatalieKReinert.com. You can also follow Reinert on Twitter at @nataliekreinert and on Facebook at facebook.com/NatalieKellerReinert.
Keep reading with Natalie Keller Reinert’s equestrian fiction and historical romance novels.
The Alex and Alexander Series:
The Head and Not The Heart
Alex's life looks pretty wonderful to the casual observer. She's in a committed relationship with a master racehorse trainer. Surrounded by hundreds of horses in the green hills of Ocala, Florida, it's a dream life for any equestrian. But suddenly she's tired of hitting the ground when a flighty racehorse decides to spook, tired of fending off biting and kicking foals, tired of 2 AM calls for veterinary emergencies. And Alex is starting to wonder if she's made the right choices in life. When their racing stable suffers a loss, she and Alexander slowly begin to fall apart. A chance find of a long-lost horse sends Alex alone to New York City, and she wonders if this is the sign she's been waiting for. Is it time to leave it all behind and start fresh?
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Other People’s Horses
Semi-finalist for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award.
Six horses and Saratoga. It's a young trainer's dream come true, and it's happening for Alex at last: Alexander is entrusting the farm's racing string to her while he heads Down Under to help run his sick brother's farm. But Saratoga isn't interested in Alex without Alexander. Unproven and decidedly female in a man's world, Alex finds herself the target of old-school racetrackers certain she married her way into training good horses. At the same time, her naïve assistant, Kerri, is far too interested in the less-than-scrupulous trainer who shares their barn. But running a racing stable doesn't leave much time for petty fights and stable rivalries. Horses need to be worked, races need to be run. And Alex has her eye on something besides the winner's circle: a funny-faced filly, a chestnut nobody with a spotty blaze and a decided lack of brakes. Saratoga thinks the filly has a screw loose. But Alex knows better.
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Claiming Christmas
All Alex wants for Christmas is a little peace and quiet. After all the drama of her summer in Saratoga, she's been taking it easy around the farm, enjoying the horses (and baiting Alexander). But a phone call from a local charity changes all that. When Alex meets Wendy, a young girl with a tragic past, she finds herself going to surprising lengths to brighten Wendy's life – and visiting some surprising places. A filly named Christmas, a horse-crazy kid, and a trainer who never thought much about holidays or children – Claiming Christmas celebrates the bond between horse and human, and between a trainer and student.
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The Eventing Series
Ambition
Jules is positive she’s poised to become eventing’s newest star, but soon finds she’s making more enemies than friends in the close-knit equestrian community of Ocala, Florida. Little mistakes cost big — her students are losing father in her, her owners are starting to pull their horses. And then there’s the small matter of Peter Morrison, the handsome, on-the-rise event rider who keeps showing up when she least expects him.
Jules is convinced that all she needs to succeed is good horse
s — not friends, not romance, not anyone’s nose in her business. But it’s just the beginning of the long, hot, Ocala summer, and as Jules tumbles through the highs and lows of a life with horses, she might find she’ll need help after all to weather the coming storm.
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Short Stories:
Horse-Famous: Stories
Three short stories by literary writer Natalie Keller Reinert, exploring the culture of horse racing and English riding. Set on the backside of a racetrack, "Expendable" was previously published by Bushwick Daily, and is described in one review as "A well-executed short. Natalie Reinert displays a rare knack for providing a ton of insider's info with grit, yet at an effortless pace."
"Horse-Famous" delves into the obsessive, traditional culture of British horsemanship. After half-a-life on the run from the horse business, Holly has spent six months pouring all her energy into renovating an old farm into a model equestrian center, according to the strict rules of the English Equestrian Council Manual, a book she knows by heart. But the white-glove inspection will uncover more than cobwebs in the tack room: in Holly's tumultuous youth, she was a famous rider.
"The Long Walk" follows a young woman just trying to make a living in the horse business, and shows how long the walk from the broodmare barn to the breeding shed can really be. This short is a fascinating insider's glimpse of the breeding farm, where the creation of Thoroughbred racehorses is an industry with its own strange rules and characters.
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Heroines on Horseback Historical Romances:
Miss Spencer Rides Astride
Amidst horses, hunting, and the allure of the Irish countryside, Miss Spencer Rides Astride is the rollicking story of two misfits trying to make their own way, fighting the fates with everything they’ve got, and perhaps, just by accident, falling in love.
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The Genuine Lady
Chased from England by scandal, Lady Charlotte Beacham is starting a new life for herself and her son on the windswept prairies of the Dakota Territory. Sick of gossip, Cherry vows to keep separate from the society of the little railroad town near her homestead. But Bradshaw folks are neighborly, and she soon finds herself part of town life, and hopelessly fascinated by her infuriating neighbor.
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The Honorable Nobody
Disappointed in love and in friendship, Miss Lydia Dean wants nothing more than to retreat from Society. Unfortunately, her fortune-hunting mama is determined to see Lydia in the center of every ballroom, flirting her way to the Match of the Season. And when Lydia suddenly finds herself head-over-heels in love, it is with a most unsuitable suitor: the horse-mad Peregrin Fawkes.
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All of these titles are available in multiple formats at nataliekreinert.com/bookstore