Thoroughbred Logic, Presented by Kentucky Performance Products: Keeping Them Safe

When a cheap horse, an uncertain prognosis, and a questionable future collide, sometimes the only thing standing between a horse and the wrong outcome is someone willing to take the risk.

Welcome to the next installment of Thoroughbred Logic. In this weekly series, Anthropologist and trainer Aubrey Graham, of Kivu Sport Horses, offers insight and training experience when it comes to working with Thoroughbreds (although much will apply to all breeds). This week ride along as Aubrey shares her logic on keeping at-risk horses safe.

Welp… I made yet another really financially irresponsible decision. Yep, new scratch and dent horse shipping in soon.

My Facebook doesn’t look like normal people Facebook. When I’m on it, I’m not doomscrolling from one terrible event to another, or one dumb movie scene to another. More often than not, the whole thing is horses. Occasionally I get to see a beach, too — when a horse person briefly escapes to anywhere that is not Aiken or the barn. Thank you, algorithm.

But all this to say that I get a lot of equine content daily. And every once in a while amongst all the horses for sale, I see something that makes me make rash decisions. I’m not talking about Jessica’s (Benchmark Sporthorses) newest crop of outstanding looking Thoroughbreds (they look amazing!).

No, I’m talking about the ones where all the pieces that I paste together show that luck is what is going to get the horse safe, not logic. And for those, if I can, I’m apt to do dumb things.

This weekend, trapped at my computer trying to finish a draft of the book I’m putting together from these articles (this is very exciting!), I bought a scraggily horse named Star Of the Beast in Florida. His ad notes that he recently was cleared to go to work after rehabbing knee surgery. Not restarted. Low low fours. A flag went up in my brain. Cheap, not restarted, and untested on a surgery. Crap.

Star of the Beast as advertised in FL. Photo from Facebook.

Sure, he might be totally fine. The person listing him might have been super responsible in screening potential candidates (she was very nice). That is 100% possible. But my “I don’t like this” meter was already tipped.

When I asked about his surgery, they had no information besides that he had knee surgery and he was good and ready to go. Where the chip was, knowledge of prognosis…? Asked for radiographs and they didn’t have them. I was going in blind, which was fine, but that meant so was anyone else.

This pedigree will turn out one very talented sport horse. Courtesy of Equineline.com

His JC name was not in the post, so I tracked it down from his pedigree (which was — and which I like — Yes It’s True x Tiznow as grand sires on sire and dam side, making a talented, but not particularly easy horse) and found that this class horse had run 27 times, made over $100,000, and hit the board (first, second, or third) in half of his races. His speed figure was pretty consistently in the seventies and verging near the end into the eighties (that’s reasonably fast, folks, and very consistent). Practically every race. In his last race at Gulfstream, he placed second in a $10,000 claimer with eight entrees. Then he suddenly retired.

Star of the Beast clearly ran well and while almost always in the claiming range (lower tier races), he appears to have been run responsibly, posting results on a normal, healthy horse timeline of nearly every month for the past two years (and two races in his two year old year). The last race should not have been his last. Clearly something happened. And that would be the knee. Putting the pieces together, it seemed that the track connections would have been the ones to send him for surgery and then retire him. Again, responsible. That’s good.

A snippet of his running record. Courtesy of Equibase.com

I could have just accepted the situation and brought him up blind. But I knew there was more info out there if his people had been kind enough to do the surgery. I reached out to two Florida contacts and in the comedy of how small the world is, found out that, in fact, this horse had been through her barn. She knew the track owners and had the ability to track down the discharge papers from the surgery. Bloody fantastic.

I read through: The prognosis is up in the air. C3 (third carpal bone in the knee) had sustained a fracture and a large chip as well as another fracture line that extended from that site towards the rear of the joint. The fragment was successfully removed surgically, and stall rest is assumed to have healed up the fractures. That said, according to the report, there was already “marked degenerative changes” at the site.

The lateral view of the equine knee. Courtesy of open.lib.umn.edu

OK, so we ship him up, see how he does. This will be another ride the horse, not the X-ray. Eventually, once I know what is under the hood (and more about what is in that knee), we’ll get him to an appropriate longer term home with a contract that he can always come back if he starts to falter. I’m looking forward to the challenge and to his glow up. Also, the nerd in me really wants to see his radiographs. I’ll keep digging to see if we can access those too.

I love these challenges. And I’m always a sucker for an underdog.

It helps that this one is pretty damn cute. Photo from his Coggins.

So let’s back up for a second. Most Thoroughbreds for sale online are going to be fine. Honestly.

Straight off the track, even lower in price, there are many folks who are going to jump at the opportunity to restart them. Most Thoroughbreds are priced in a range that requires someone who actually wants them to get them. Good. If they make it to Facebook, there are often knowledageble enough people sharing them and monitoring their sale. Could it be better? Oh, absolutely. But my point is, not all of these horses are in need of swooping in and scooping them up. Then there are some who are.

This handsome beast (Midnight Trouble) came in a stallion (oops), but is going to make someone one wonderful gelding if I can ever decide to let him go up for sale. Photo by Lily Drew.

There is a particular equation that I don’t like. It is one where a) low dollar or free meets b) untested but with c) known issues. That always makes me wary.

Here’s the logic: Most professional rehomers need horses to be sound to come into their program. They need to be capable and able to carry a new rider forward… and soon (otherwise they’re losing not making money; for many, that is their full time job). And so when one is available with known issues, but no knowledge of how they will hold up with a new job, it generally takes rehomers out of the game.

Non-profits are poised to help horses like this, but mine included (stall13.org) works on donation of horses, not active shopping. So that becomes tricky. Add to this that most non-profits are operating in a seriously underfunded aftercare universe and are already full to the gills. Grabbing one more at a cost off Facebook might not be feasible, let alone a good use of funds.

Datesfreedom came into the Stall 13 non-profit after bouncing from track to auction pipeline. That was a bit of a different story than just me shopping around on Facebook. Dates is now poised to head to the 2026 RRP Makeover. Photo by Lily Drew.

The confident, capable riders who don’t rehab and retrain Thoroughbreds for a living are usually after a single horse (or a few horse) lifestyle. The ones I encounter daily are looking for sound horses, or at least those that they can assume will be sound in the long run. Rehab an easy bowed tendon on a nice horse? Sure. One can assume that they’ll go back into work. But often, they’re hunting their next mid-level eventer or hunter and not taking any chances with untested waters and questionable prognoses. Want to get them in the game for horses on the Island of Misfit Toys? Those horses need to be tested, and a seller needs to be able to confidently have a sense of what they should and should not be able to handle.

For instance, Cassie Howe adopted Major Spin out of Stall 13 Thoroughbreds with one hell of an ugly knee. He had been tested, shown to stay sound through a full show season, and had a good “ride the horse not the X-ray” prognosis. I could not be happier that Spin (now Clifford) landed with Cassie. What a ridiculously lucky horse.

Photo courtesy of Cassie Howe.

So who does that leave for the untested horse with a known problem that costs very little money?

I don’t really know. And that is what scares me.

Look, sometimes it works out. They find their way to somewhere who can help them get going, test the knee, see what they can do. But in other cases, they end up with someone who doesn’t have the knowledge to understand the risks, or doesn’t have the experience to train a fresh Thoroughbred when they are feeling sound enough to express themselves.

These horses walk a tight rope. Some fall into great hands. Some disappear into back forties and into the dark corners of craigslist.

Fletcher (Reflection) once we got him muscled and spruced up at Kivu in Georgia a few years ago. Photo by Alanah Giltmier.

Fletcher (Reflection) was one such horse. Sired by Flatter, this horse was one hell of a class act. Erica Brown found him for free on craigslist in someone’s back field. He was skinny and in need of a lot of TLC, but she got him going and then sent him to me. We didn’t know about the knee repair until I asked my vet to investigate the odd lump, finding two well-placed old screws. The screws weren’t a problem, and the arthritis around it limited his range of motion but not his soundness. OK. Ride the horse you have…

Fletcher won his first horse trial, he brought joy to those who leased him, and for a long while was the classiest horse in my barn. By the time he headed back to Erica, he had a heck of a solid foundation under his belt.

But Craigslist, guys? Shit.

Fletcher’s knee rads, edema included from his time at Kivu. Radiographs by Countryside Equine Services.

This is the type of stuff that scares me. And this is why Star of the Beast is coming this way. So tune in next week to see what we have when he walks off the trailer.

In the meantime, go ride folks. And here’s hoping that the sun finally starts to dry up all this damn mud.

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