The word “aftercare” commonly used in the thoroughbred racing business to describe what happens to their post-racing career “dumped” runners, isn’t the word I’d choose at our farm. Post-racing careers are a forethought, not an afterthought here.
We don’t outsource any stage of training on our farm except race conditioning. We start and finish horses here with their long term best career interests in mind. From foal to dressage, jumping, polo, trail riding pleasure horse, or the hunter world, we do it here, ourselves, and our horses are like treasured family members, not economic tools or production machines. We’d only sell a horse to like-minded buyers, and in that case, always with a “put option” back to our farm in an emergency…our ties to our horses are never completely severed. To us, racing is just an interim step, not the final step, and certainly not an assured step, in a horse’s life.