Saving Baby (25 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 backstretch, 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.

“I was having dinner at the Turf Club the other night,” he said to me one day, “and had so much fun with Bill McClaughlin.” The Turf Club was an exclusive, private dining club at the track that you had to pay a lot of money to join, and Bill McClaughlin was the track's new general manager. John and I never saw him at meals because we didn't belong. We always ate in the snack bar area, and on my own, I would pick up a bite in the track kitchen.

“Lots of chitchat, as always,” Bill continued. “Then I mention your name. I like watching him when I do that. From his white collar it starts to get red on his neck, and it goes all the way to the top of his head. He just despises you!” Bill finished off with a hearty laugh.

It would have made me nervous had Bill not so obviously relished needling McClaughlin.

John was always interested in hearing about the suit. He was very much in favor of making the track admit its accountability, and I was glad there was a decision about how to handle Baby's death on which we agreed. And while he had never warmed to the idea of my continuing to go back to the track, he must have had something of a change of heart with my CANTER success because one Saturday afternoon in October, we were tailgating at a University of Michigan football game when he noticed that the Channel 7 news team from the local ABC affiliate had a canopy and a tailgating party only about ten car lengths away, and he encouraged me to go over.

“You know, that's Robbie Timmons over there,” he said, pointing to the anchorwoman for the five o'clock news broadcast. “Why don't you tell her about the track closing and all those horses needing homes? Maybe if she did a story on it and it got on TV, you'd have more people interested.”

I had been talking a lot to magazines and newspapers but hadn't thought of trying to make contact with television stations.

“My husband suggested I come over and talk to you,” I said as I approached Robbie. “Are you aware that the Detroit Race Course is closing this year and that many horses there need homes or will go to slaughter? I know this is a bad time to talk about this,” not giving her a chance to shoo me away. “But I could fax you information about the closing and how I am trying to—I have a rescue called CANTER, and I'm trying to find homes for these horses.”

To my delight, she responded, “That sounds very interesting. Here's my fax number. Yes, why don't you fax me some information?”

Soon enough, I received a call that the station would like to come out to the backstretch to do a story. “I would need you to be there,” Robbie told me. “You'd need to show me exactly what you're doing. We'd interview some of the trainers, too.”

After receiving clearance from the track for access to the backstretch and permission to videotape, which I had not been at all certain she'd be granted, she came with an entire news team, and they followed me around, videotaping how I took pictures of the horses outside their stalls, my clipboard in hand to record information. She also did interview various trainers, as she said she would, asking what they were going to do once the track closed. “I don't know,” they'd answer. “I can't move out of state, and a lot of these horses are going to need homes.” No one, including me, mentioned slaughter on air. The Racing Commission would have taken away our track licenses unceremoniously, Ladbroke would have barred me from the premises, and the HBPA would have asked me to resign from the board. If, damn it all, I
had
gone public with what is well known in the industry as “racing's dirty little secret” about horses going to slaughter, I would have been branded as a crazy lady. It would have been so easy for the track to say, “Her horse died, and she went nuts.”