New Horse New Start

My journey begins in Dec 2009, after much thought and consideration I decided that adopting a horse would be better than buying a horse. The thought of all the horses that need good homes is overwhelming and there are TONS of them. I searched for weeks on numerous websites, all with horses that need homes. Thoroughbred race horses were amongst the largest of the numbers of rescues. I have owned and ridden many breeds and never really thought about ever getting a racehorse.

I looked on a site called C.A.N.T.E.R that helps place former racehorses in new homes. After looking on their site on mare caught my Eye. Her name was Super Goodtimes. She was cute and had a sweet face, not very flashy but sweet looking. I looked at her add plenty of times before I ever inquired information about her. CANTER requires adopters to be approved, and they make reference checks with barn owners, vets and farriers. They really are looking out for the horse's welfare. I filled out an application but didn't get my hopes up, I was afraid of getting excited over a horse to find out that I wasn't approved. Well about a week later I got conformation that I was approved and was free to adopt any of their horses.

I finally requested information on that mare Super Goodtimes. The foster home said that she didn't race very much and she was off the track for a while and had already started retraining. She had fractured her knee in the past, and had surgery done to remove the chip. The vet said she was sound and shouldn't have issues with it in the future. The fact that she had an injury like that made me nervous and I did a lot of research about it, the outcome were usually great...some horses even returned to racing.

After many emails and gathering enough information as I could I decided to go look at her. My friend Erin and I made the 45 min drive in the snow to visit her in kirtland. I was greeted by the volunteers there, they were very nice and answered all of our questions. We brought her into the crossties to check her out. She was a little pigeon toed, but nothing major. No scar or scar tissue on her knee, in fact we were not 100% sure which knee it was. She was very calm she let me touch her legs, feet, and face...which was positive. We were going to lunge her but it was icy in the round pen, so we turned her out and laughed as she bucked reared and hopped in place. We left and got stuck in the steep driveway and had to be pulled out (maybe a sign?)

I thought about her a lot, going back and forth in my mind about adopting her. It was really a hard decision, my heart said go for it and my mind was saying are you nuts?? A few weeks later I went back to see her again this time I took my grandma. Being winter in Ohio everything was still under deep snow and ice. So we took her in the barn and I attempted the 7 Parelli games. It was a small area but she was very willing to try. She had no clue what I was doing. As a racehorse she probably thought I was crazy. But she was calm and tried to think her way through it. After playing with her for a while I was sure she was the one. Coming next..."Izzy" comes home.