Go Geta Job - 2002 Gray Thoroughbred gelding
Back in June '08, I was looking through the CANTER Ohio website, just window shopping, as I often do. For those who are not familiar with CANTER, it is a non-profit organization that helps to rehome Thoroughbred racehorses. I saw the picture of a gray gelding by the name of Go Geta Job. He was a tall, elegant horse, and I have always liked (but never owned) dapple grays. This was the picture I saw on CANTER (used with permission).
I wasn't in the market for another horse, but I found myself calling the trainer listed on the site for more information. He told me that he no longer had the horse and gave me the number for his new trainer/owner, who had moved the horse from the Beulah track in Southern Ohio, to Thistledown, in Cincinnati. So I called him. No answer. I called again, left messages, in both English and Spanish. He never called me back. I assumed that he had been sold and it was not worth his trainer's time to call me back. So I dropped it. I didn't need another horse anyways.
Fast forward to early November. I was reading the COTH (Chronicle of the Horse) forums, and saw a thread about race trainers being banned for sending horses to slaughter. Several horses from Suffolk Downs (in Boston) were found and rescued at the New Holland auction. Suffolk Downs has a "zero tolerance" policy regarding slaughter. They put up the money to rescue those horses (kudos to Suffolk Downs!), and banned the trainers who sold the horses to slaughter. While at the auction, the rescue workers found several more Thoroughbreds, and decided to save them.
One of these horses was Go Geta Job, the gray that had caught my eye several months before. You can read the account of his rescue and the conditions at the auctions here. He was very thin, and banged up from both the trailer ride in the kill buyer's van, and from the stressed horses who had beat him up in the holding pen at New Holland. When I heard of his plight, I felt somehow responsible for him, that I had let him down when I didn't follow up with his trainer back in June. So I found out which organization had rescued him (The Montana Fund), and put in an application to adopt him.
This is what the rescuers found at the auction (taken soon after his arrival at his foster home with Stacy):
Stacy reports that he is doing well. His cuts and scrapes are healing, and he seems to be in good spirits. He is a friendly, sweet horse. Stacy tells me that he is a very nice mover, and appears sound at all gaits in turnout. He has had his vet check, and the vet said he "needs lots of groceries but seems otherwise healthy".
It is amazing how much a horse's condition can deteriorate in such a short time. These are some pictures of him at the track in October, just a few weeks before his rescue.
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And here are a couple more from January 2008.
And this is from his one and only career win, 9/2/07 (thanks very much to photographer
Jeff Zamaiko).
Here are a couple more pictures from his foster home, about 10 days after his rescue.
Here are a few more from his foster home, from 11/25. His cuts are starting to heal, and what a cute face!
He will be coming home to Tennessee soon. Plans for him? First, he will get a few months of rest and relaxation with a bit of ground work and plenty of attention. He needs time to recover mentally and physically from the track and from his auction ordeal. He needs time to put on some weight. Long term, we will see what he is capable of and what he wants to do. If he has the ability and the mind, he may become a lower level eventer. If he ends up being a trail horse on our property, that would be OK too. Regardless, he is safe.
A little more background on this horse. First, this is a link to his pedigree. And a link to his race record, such as it is. Why they kept racing this horse, who really SUCKED as a racehorse, I cannot imagine. Forty eight starts. One win. One place. Four shows. Why on EARTH would they continue to race this guy? Did they not get the message that he was a terrible racehorse? He was supposedly sound when he retired, so I am hoping this means he is a pretty durable fellow.
Update 12/1/08 - After a harrowing trip from Maryland over the weekend, the boys are home. I went with my trainer/barn owner, Hilary, who adopted one of the other horses saved from New Holland, a 6 yo bay gelding named Flanked in Gold (new barn name Isaac). We left Tennessee on Saturday morning. The trip took a bit longer than expected but wasn't too bad. We got to the barn at about 7 pm. I was surprised by how thin Storm was. I guess the camera adds pounds to horses too, because he looked much thinner in person than in the recent pictures that his foster mom had sent. We went to a hotel for the night, then came back in the morning to pick up the boys.
Despite the cold rain, loading them on the trailer went fairly well. Isaac was a little hesitant but was easily bribed with a little sweet feed. Storm pretty much launched himself onto the trailer, almost bowling me over in the process. We set out on the road in a pretty major rainstorm, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We anticipated some traffic (unfortunately, due to work schedules, this was pretty much the only weekend we could go), but it was much worse than we had predicted. Probably as a result of the rain, there were tons of accidents, and we were pretty much in stop and go traffic from a bit north of Baltimore to just north of Roanoke VA. The trip that would likely be under 9 hours with decent weather and no holiday traffic ended up lasting about 14 hours. The boys were prefect angels, and quietly munched hay for the entire trip.
We finally got them home to Tennessee at about 1 am, and set them up in their new stalls. I was even more struck by Storm's condition when I got him home, because his stall is right next to Cabana Boy's. CB is a tall guy, about 16.3 hh, but is fairly lanky, with long legs and a short back. But his neck looked enormous in comparison to Storm's. This poor horse could easily put on 200 pounds. Even with a medium weight turnout blanket, it is easy to feel his ribs without having to push.
He seems to have settled in well. He is very easy to handle, and came up to the gate of his pasture when called. He is very polite on the lead, although he is not thrilled with standing still for long. He seems to be a little uncomfortable being groomed, even with just a soft brush, probably as a result of countless healing cuts and bites all over his body. He does like to have his face rubbed and petted, and seems to enjoy the attention.
Here are a few pictures of him from today
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12/12/08
I think he has gained some weight. He is still pretty ribby, but does not look emaciated to me anymore. He has learned to cross tie and seems to already know the basics of lunging. He is not doing any serious work on the lunge, mostly walking, just to get his brain working. He seems to like having a job. He is obviously starting to feel much better, and even needed a chain over his nose today to take a walk around the jump field.
12/31/08 No new pictures - the weather has been awful. I think he has gained a little more weight, and his appetite continues to improve. He is finally showing some enthusiasm for hay. He has done fairly well with lungeing, on the rare occasions that the weather allows us to do anything. He does have a bit more "attitude" than he did upon his arrival, but I am at least glad to see a little spark of life. He is generally well-behaved, and easily corrected when he acts up a bit. Will try to get some new pictures this weekend.
1/9/09 OK, a few new pictures. He looks so sweet and calm in these. Can't tell we were getting frustrated with him because he WOULD NOT STAND STILL. Which seems to be his number one issue at the moment, the horse is unable to stand still for more than a few seconds at a time. Hopefully, this will get better when he has a real job.
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