Saving Baby

by Jo Anne Normile

  On the main gravel road near the house, a lot of people have horses in their backyards, so sometimes I’d go riding with a neighbor. But more often, we went ourselves, and the world disappeared.

  Winter was such an especially wonderful time to ride her, as long as there was no ice. Her body kept me warm—it was like sitting on a heater—and if it was snowing, her all-black hair would become covered in white, making for a beautiful apparition. We never galloped but rather just enjoyed the sights in the woods, perhaps a deer running or birds foraging for food. With no leaves on the trees, you could see far into the distance.

  As a Quarter Horse, Beauty would grow a very thick winter coat, heavy and furry, and I would open my fingers and push them along her neck, feeling the warmth coming off her body. It was fun to move my hands through her wooly covering, and when we’d come home, I would just hop off. Beauty was never even sweating, as we only walked, never trotted.

  Nobody was ever more glad to see Beauty return to the barn than Pumpkin. Our second horse, Pumpkin had been advertised in the paper for $400, saddle and bridle included, and when we went to see her, it was clear she was starving. She had on her heavy winter coat of hair, but even through that, each rib was easy to see.

  It was December 1984, the same year we brought Beauty home. A bucket of water for Pumpkin to drink had frozen over. At the same time, the ground remained soft; she was standing in mud that rose well over her feet.

  After calling the vet to come give her a prepurchase examination—she looked so bad that I wondered whether she might need to be put down—we took her home on Christmas Eve. My neighbors told me years later that when we first brought Pumpkin to the barn, they thought, “Jo Anne has got to be crazy.” She was so very skinny and miserable looking. But by the next May, after Pumpkin shed her winter coat and had already been well fed for months, her new coat had the look of satiny, polished mahogany—a deep brown with orangey highlights.

  That beautiful, docile horse—part Morgan and part Quarter Horse, the vet thought—became the one on which my daughters’ friends would ride if they had never been on a horse before. She would canter for Jessica and Rebecca, but if Pumpkin knew you didn’t know what to do, she wouldn’t go faster than a walk.

  Lowest in the pecking order, she was particularly attached to Beauty, who was definitely the leader of the herd. Pumpkin depended on Beauty; it had been just the two of them for years. Often they went out together, me on Beauty and one of the girls on her. But if I went out alone, she, more than any of the others, would run around and whinny. We’d hear her in the distance, and neighbors would tell us she whinnied from the time we left until the moment we arrived back home, beside herself with worry.

  It wasn’t as bad once Pat came to stay with us and Baby was born, but Pumpkin never became truly comfortable with Beauty’s leaving, even for very short periods. “Is it really you?” she’d say with her scent, blowing into Beauty’s nostrils upon her return. “I’m so glad.”

  Now thirty-one years old, Pumpkin was retired. With Jessica in medical school and Rebecca away at college, she didn’t get ridden anymore, nor did she need to. It was her time just to eat and enjoy the sun on her back. But she was my connection to my daughters; I loved having her with me. Always gentle, she had absolutely no bad habits. She loved apples over carrots, and I was happy to oblige. I was happy to put a fan in the barn near her in the summer, happy to do whatever I needed to let her know she’d never lack for anything, the way she once had.

  When Pumpkin and Beauty had first come to live with us, I loved listening to them munch their hay in their stalls at last check every night, around ten o’clock. It was so relaxing. I knew they were safe. They were eating. They had everything they needed. I could go to bed happy and sleep well, comforted that despite what had happened to Pumpkin, I had been able to save her. The world then was a good place.

  It was what I was trying to re-create, at least to some degree, in the winter of ’98, and I thought I was succeeding. Not only did I have Beauty and Pumpkin to complete the picture, and “little” Sissy, I also had Pat, the mother of my “children,” who herself had been through a lot. Although she was such a large horse, almost sixteen hands, she was so very people-oriented, a true pet. You would never have been able to guess that she had been a racehorse before she became a broodmare. But Don Shouse, her owner before me, had indeed raced her until she was found to have bone chips in her knee and could no longer run, which was why he turned her into a mother.

  She had actually broken her knee during a race. When she became mine, I had the vet x-ray her to see if we could take out the pieces of bone, but by then her body had already reattached them. It was too late. You could even see protrusions on her knee.

  Pat wasn’t in pain, but, like someone with arthritis, she did have some restriction of movement, which worsened as she grew older. It didn’t hamper her activity when she had Baby. She could still run around the pasture freely at that point.

  I enjoyed making sure Pat and the rest of the herd were always cozy in the barn, closing the barn doors if it grew very cold and always checking to be certain they all had lots of bedding. It was such a comfort to be in the barn with all the horses chomping on their hay, everyone healthy. Such solace. And it was easy to enjoy because I wasn’t coming home after work every day to an answering machine full of messages from people wanting to talk to me about buying a horse.

  But sometime in March, I did receive a call that put everything in a different light.

  A man named Jeremy Bricker phoned out of the blue and told me he knew of me because people at the barn where he boarded a Paint horse—a multicolored breed—had talked about me. But he couldn’t find my Web site online, he said.

  I barely was using e-mail at that point, let alone designing Web sites. I was still faxing virtually all of my communications, and I told him so.

  “I would like to help you,” he said. “I think what you’re doing is really good. You could reach the world if you had a Web site. Your search for people who want these horses wouldn’t have any geographic bounds. I’ll create the site, design it, and maintain it. It won’t cost you any money. It would be my part to help you help the horses.

  “You wouldn’t be limited to lists of people with descriptions of horses they were looking for,” he added. “You could take pictures of horses that trainers were trying to unload and put them on the site so people could see available horses for sale. That would pique interest in Thoroughbreds that didn’t match the wish lists of potential buyers.”

  A soon as he said “no geographic bounds,” I realized I had never truly been healing, never making real peace with my decision to keep away from the track. I had simply been feeling defeated, knowing my efforts would be only a drop in the bucket compared to what was needed.

  I was back in before he finished his pitch. It wasn’t a thought, something I had to weigh. What I had been feeling all along simply bubbled to the surface. I couldn’t leave Baby lying there in the form of all the slow and injured horses and now, in the form of all the horses who would be sent to their deaths because their trainers were going out of business. In truth, I never could. It would have gnawed at me terribly if the season had started without my saving horses. My conscience could never have come to terms with such a decision.

  “I don’t have the money to pay you,” I blurted out, even though he had already told me it wouldn’t cost me anything. Whatever extra money I had, I wanted to devote directly to buying horses slated for slaughter.

  “I told you, don’t worry about the money,” he said. “This is my way of helping you help the horses. We will do it.

  “What is the name of the organization? That will have to be on the Web site.”

  “It doesn’t have a name,” I replied. “It’s just something I’ve been doing.”

  “Well, the first thing we have to do is think of a name,” he answered.

  Thus began my true entry into e-mailing. Not just Jeremy and I but also a woman na
med Jill Rauh, a librarian in eventing who lived on the other side of Michigan and knew about my work, began brainstorming online about a title for connecting people who wanted a horse with those who wanted to get rid of one. I said I wanted it to be an acronym so that whenever it was put into print, it would be in all capital letters—no periods between them—and have to jump off the page.

  We worked in reverse, first thinking of an acronym and then trying to find words to fit the letters. At one point we came up with TROT and then filled it in with “Teaching Racehorses Other Talents,” congratulating ourselves that we had come up with the perfect name. But after a fitful night’s sleep, I came to terms with the fact that it wasn’t going to work because Standardbred racehorses—those who pull sulkies—are called trotters. There’d be a disconnect between the name and the fact that we were saving Thoroughbreds.

  Then one of us suggested CANTER, and the e-mails began flying as we worked over our virtual word puzzle. Finally, Jeremy wrote:

  “How about this? Communication Alliance to Network Thoroughbred Racehorses. I just can’t think of anything for the ‘E.’”

  Immediately, I e-mailed back, “Ex Racehorses.”

  “Ta da,” Jill typed, and we knew we had it. A little clumsy, but it would work, and Jeremy went on to create the Web site, buying the domain name and designing the pages.

  Now, when the track opened, which coincided with Jeremy’s going live with the Web site, I walked the shedrows doing more than just handing out “Horses Wanted” lists with their wish-list descriptions of horses that people in the sport disciplines hoped would materialize. “I can place a free ad for you,” I’d say. “Do you have any horses you want to put on the site? You can get more money than the kill buyer would give.”

  Then I’d have to talk people into letting me take a picture of a horse they wanted to sell. It was not easy because a trainer would have to stop his work and lead a horse out of a stall so I could get a conformation shot—a photograph from the side so people would be able to see bone angles and other details of that nature. “The guy in the next row let me take a picture,” I’d say in a teasingly nonchalant way when someone tried to refuse. “He’s going to get a lot more calls than you.”

  Begrudgingly, the trainer would lead the horse out, and I would try to crinkle something to make it turn its head toward the camera. The animals look more fetching that way.

  Then I had to bring the film cartridge to the drugstore and pay a premium for overnight development. There was no one-hour film development yet, and digital cameras were just coming into use for the general public. I was years from owning one.

  Once I had the film developed, I’d label the photos and overnight them to Jeremy—I don’t think I had even heard of the word “scanner”—and he’d get them up on the site.

  Sometimes, I’d take five or six photos of a horse and have to go back and reshoot the next day because none of them was any good. It was always a race against time because the trainers could get a few hundred dollars from the kill buyer very quickly. Also, many had no idea what I was doing; they didn’t even really know what the Internet was.

  “Look, so-and-so in the next shedrow sold a horse in three days for fifteen hundred dollars,” I’d tell someone itching to put a horse on the trailer. “If you could be a little patient, you could get many times more than you would otherwise.” It was true. Now that people from outside the Detroit area would be “shopping” online for the racetrack’s horses, prices would be driven up. More buyers meant more competition for Thoroughbreds.

  Still, I was looked on with no small amount of suspicion. Everyone always wanted to know, “What’s in it for you?” They couldn’t believe I would do this just to save horses and not to turn a profit as a middleman.

  I called CANTER an HBPA program to lend it legitimacy—the board trusted me enough to allow that and championed it as a win-win-win-win: one for the horses, one for those trying to make a last bit of profit off a horse before getting rid of it, one for those excited to buy a Thoroughbred for sport discipline purposes, and one for racing itself, which would benefit from the PR that the industry tried to find good homes for horses it wanted to retire.

  Even so, CANTER was slow to take off—until Shane Spiess became involved. A well-respected trainer with a large stable, he sent horses to slaughter all the time. He was also savvy. After he made considerably more money than he could have gotten from a meat buyer by selling a couple of horses to people in the sport disciplines who had put their names and specifications for an animal on the “Horses Wanted” list, he started buying Thoroughbreds from other trainers. He’d snatch up different trainers’ horses for $300, $400, $500, then turn around and sell them to eventers and others for $1,000 or more. “Shane to the stable gate,” you’d hear over the loudspeaker, as nonracing people came to inspect a horse and needed to be signed in. I didn’t care as long as the horses didn’t go to slaughter.

  After a couple of months, other trainers started to get wise to him. “Hey, I just sold you that horse,” they’d say when they’d see a Thoroughbred going on a trailer to be taken away.

  “Yeah, I just sold it, too,” he’d answer.

  That validated what I was doing in the eyes of the other trainers, making them much more willing to work with me. Now people were coming up to me and asking me to take a photo of a horse, asking, too, for my advice on how they should price a particular horse. Whereas at first there were fifteen to twenty horses on the Web site, most of them Shane’s, the number began to grow from all the trainers wanting in.

  They would even run up to prospective buyers who came to the backstretch with an appointment to see a particular horse, or ride up on bicycles. “Don’t buy yet,” they’d call out. “Take a look at mine first.”

  By the time summer was in full swing, CANTER was exploding with activity. People began coming from Ohio and Indiana. One woman drove from Virginia with her trailer in tow to take home a horse. Someone else bought a horse sight unseen and had it shipped to her in Florida. “Jo Anne to the stable gate,” I kept hearing over the loudspeaker, as shoppers had to be accompanied by someone with a track license. Nowhere else in the country could someone in the sport horse world buy a Thoroughbred this way, with maybe 100 horses for sale to choose from at any one time. No other racetrack had a program anything like it; the track is normally a very isolated place. I knew it, and so did the horse world media. We were written up in Horse Illustrated, one of nonracing’s highest-circulation magazines, along with a number of other horse-oriented publications. By August, I had saved more horses than I had the entire previous season. They didn’t all go to people in sport disciplines. Some buyers just wanted a horse for trail riding, or perhaps for breeding, while others were willing to accept a pasture ornament, a horse whose injuries were so severe it could no longer be ridden but could still enjoy grazing and relaxing. My determination to make right on Baby’s death was fully restored.

  Horses still went to slaughter, sending my mood to the depths. One failure in particular hurt very bad. It was a two-year-old gelding, a gorgeous chestnut, with four tall white socks and a big white blaze between his eyes that went all the way from the top of his forehead down to his nose. He was so gentle and quiet, still looking like a baby without yet having developed his adult bone or musculature. He still had that childlike curiosity, the way he smelled my hand. The only reason he was being gotten rid of was that he had a leg that was toed in and wouldn’t make it through training without breaking down.

  His trainer was going to put him up for sale on the CANTER Web site, but he didn’t have time; the horse had to go that day. I made some calls and, with no luck placing him, decided I would take him home myself. We were pretty full at our barn at home, but I figured I’d try to sell him to somebody later or just keep him. The trailer came sooner than expected, however, and by the time I came out of the HBPA office after I put down the phone, he was gone. It took all the strength I could summon not to cry right there on the backstr
etch, a reaction that I knew would only hurt my cause with all those long inured to the ways of the track.

  Such occurrences were more the exception than the rule, though. And that shift in the balance offered me respite from the depression that I hadn’t been able to see a way out of before. The herd at home sensed this and were happier for the change in my demeanor, which had been calm and gentle over the winter but still shadowed by sadness. I was glad that I was able to come to the barn in a good mood, happy that those at the track called the people who came to see about horses for sale “Jo Anne’s tire kickers.” Their zeal to sell their horses to people in the sport disciplines rather than for a low price to kill buyers looked comical at times. I’d see some of the top trainers jogging a horse up and down a shedrow for somebody, something they would have never done before, leaving such a chore to a groom. But they wanted to make sure they showed a horse for sale to the best advantage. And to their credit, not all were in it solely for the extra money. Some truly did prefer to be able to find a horse a home.

  In the meantime, the suit began to take shape. My deposition was taken, as were those of many others. A number of them occurred out of state. Bill was doing a lot of traveling as well as having to go to court relatively often because the track kept filing motions to dismiss, just as I had been warned it would.

  We had to have Baby appraised, and his value came in at only $25,000. He lost so many races with the first two trainers that his monetary worth had been brought down considerably. And the fact that he had injured a tendon signified that it could be reinjured. Furthermore, he died in a claiming race, Pam’s strategy for a horse’s first race of the year. He had been running in allowance races, losing by only a head, or a neck. Had that been the kind of race he was running when he suffered his fatal injury, his price might have been set above $50,000.

  Still, I was pleased with Bill’s efforts. I didn’t care about the money. I just didn’t want the track to get away with letting Baby die because it didn’t want to spend the necessary amount to keep the surface smooth enough for a Thoroughbred to run safely at high speeds. And on that score, Bill was right there with me, never becoming frustrated with all the depositions and motions. He even appeared to relish the fight.