And, if that horse doesn't shine - what then?
Well I guess it would depend on the person. Would in not?
Some will remain w/their owners but many do not. If the horse fails to satisfy the owner's expectations then there's a good chance it will be sold. Many horses are passed around and, a few owners down the road, and it's off to auction and the slaughter house.
I've copied the parts of today's TBFriends' blog that are pertinent to this discussion. The link is tbfriends.org. Read it and weep.
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Sunday, March 2nd...
We always try to honor requests, and there have been hundreds (actually only 3) letters asking for more pedigree information on rescued horses. The 3 letters say Tbfriends could be much more entertaining if I gave you pedigrees of horses we save. To be truthful, I hardly ever care about pedigrees. But there are those of you who study the thoroughbred breed. Now remember, often we are never given the registered name of a race horse. Especially if we buy that horse from a feed lot. I could research their lip tattoo, but once again, I hardly ever care. From January 2007 to January 2008, here are the sires of horses we rescued. Only sires with 3 or more horses coming to our ranch will be listed.
From January 2007 to January 2008 we rescued 11 horses by the sire Bertrando.
9 horses by the sire General Meeting
8 horses by the sire Memo
8 horses by the sire Avenue Of Flags
7 horses by the sire Candis Gold
6 horses by the sire In Excess
4 horses by the sire Dynaformer
4 horses by the sire Belong To Me
4 horses by the sire Caller I.D.
3 horses each by the following sires: Holy Bull, Comet Shine, Western Fame, Tychonic, Pine Bluff, Event Of The Year, Epic Honor, Cutlass Reality, Mud Route, For Really, Sky Classic, Victory Gallop, and Cees Tizzy.
Just from scanning our list, there were 64 horses from race tracks with the same 2 sires.
There were 93 (I think) horses with single sires.
Our Storm Cat and sons of Storm Cat list is long. Probably the most unsound of the bunch. And we ran out of barn names for the Storm Cat line. How many horses can you call Tiger?
Here is a documented fact: Storm Cat has a stud fee of three hundred thousand dollars. Since 2001 we have rescued 14 of his sons and daughters for an average price of 35 cents a pound.
Just from observations: Horses by Bertrando, Belong To Me and Tychonic go on to have successful jumping careers.
More observations: Horses by Victory Gallop, Memo, General Meeting and Candis Gold are beautiful movers. Many of our horses from those sires go on to have dressage careers.
Yet still more observations: Horses by Mud Route, Bertrando, B.Hoedown, Wild Again, Kissin Kris, Comic Strip, Epic Honor, Benchmark, Slewvescent, and Thunder Gulch all seem to have the same sweet personalities.