If I Won the Lottery: Open a Racehorse Retirement Rescue

If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t stay in the crowded horseless suburbs I live in.  I’d move out to the country, buy one of the many farms going into bankruptcy and turn it into a racehorse retirement home.  I may stay in my home state or move to another state, depending on how much I won and how close good vet care would be.

Taking proper care of horses is expensive.  They need good food, hay, pasture to roam, a warm stable and quality vet care, including a yearly dental check-up.  They also need companionship.  It would drain all of my winnings, even if I won several million dollars.  If I could only save one horse, it would be worth spending all my lottery winnings on.

Why Race Horses?

I used to love horse racing.  All anyone needed to do was shout out a year and I’d tell them what horse won the Kentucky Derby that year and who rode the horse.  Once, when I was homeless in England, I wound up winning big when a 33-1 longshot named Red Marauder won the prestigious Grand National. (Pictured above.)  

But now I have a love-hate relationship with racing.  I hate the inbreeding, the drug use, the complete disregard for the fragility of young horses and especially the way horses are discarded when they can no longer race.  Horses live to an average of 30 years, but ex-racers are dumped like garbage.  Even 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand was sent to a slaughterhouse.

I love the horses, though.  I love their courage, their beauty, their obedience even when they are being run to death.  None of those horses deserves to be treated like garbage, disposed of at the whim of their owners or trainers.  Perhaps guilt makes me want to open a retirement home for racehorses.  Perhaps it’s because horses are like dreams on legs and I’m sick of my nightmares.

Easy Does It

The best way to set up a retirement home for racehorses would be turn my farm into a charity instead of a business.  This way it could carry on after the lottery money dried up and could even carry on after my death.  However, it costs a lot of money to set up a charity.  The paperwork is staggering.  I would need to hire a lawyer in order to set the charity up. 

I’d then have to know my limits.  I’d have to accept only a few horses and no more.  Many animal rescues start with good intentions and then take on far too many animals that the manpower or the space can handle.  It then becomes a hoarding situation and the animals are worse off than before.

Unlike many other excellent racehorse rehabilitation charities that retrain horses to other jobs, my charity would be for no-hope horses too lame or too injured to be ridden or pull a buggy.  Retraining racehorses requires land for a riding ring, a well-stocked tack room and a trainer familiar with ex-racehorses.  I’d rather concentrate on saving horses considered no-hopers by other horse rescue groups.