A Haven For Retired Champions
"Old Friends" Offers A Quiet Retreat For Thoroughbreds That Are Past Their Prime
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Play CBS Video Video Haven For Retired Horses Only On The Web: Michael Blowen operates Old Friends, a Kentucky facility that provides a retirement home for elderly racehorses. Richard Schlesinger reports.
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Michael Blowen and retired thoroughbred Popcorn Deelites. Popcorn wasn't a racetrack star, but he was a star on the silver screen, as Seabiscuit. (CBS)
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Interactive The Triple Crown Past winners and a closer look at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes.
"We have an understanding, but it took me a long time to get the understanding," Michael Blowen, who runs a retirement home for thoroughbreds called Old Friends, told CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger.
What's the understanding?
"Well, it's that hes the boss," Blowen said.
Blowen has quite a collection of old friends at Old Friends. Swan's Way raced 81 times when he was younger. He's slowed down a little at 17 years old.
"He's the only one I can beat," Blowen said. "When I wake up in the morning, I see these wonderful great champions in my backyard. I think it's like having Larry Bird or Michael Jordan here."
Blowen used to be a movie reviewer in Boston. But he owned a few horses; raced one and learned a lot about the business especially the dark side.
He saw horses that were too old or too injured to race or to breed sent off to slaughterhouses.FYI: Find out more about the retired champions, including how to help
Only On The Web: More with Old Friends' Michael Blowen
It even happened to Ferdinand, who won the 1986 Kentucky Derby and ended up being killed 16 years later when he stopped making money for his owners.
"Everybody who was ever around this horse said this was the kindest, nicest, sweetest horse anyone was ever around and that's what happened to him," Blowen said.
When Blowen heard about Ferdinand, he decided he had to rescue as many other horses as possible.
These may be some of the luckiest horses in the thoroughbred world. Blowen can only take care for only 30 through his organization, and there are only 20 groups like his in the country. That's not a lot considering that in one year, more than 36,000 thoroughbreds were born.
Old Friends relies mostly on donations to rescue and maintain the horses. Some owners pay the roughly $2,300 per year for their horse's retirement, but just a handful. Too many of them sell the horses to slaughterhouses for up to $1,000.
"If you can't look at this animal and see something spectacular, if you're just looking at this horse as an economic commodity, then they should be racing cars and not horses," Blowen said.
The horses at Old Friends still attract a crowd, even though their moneymaking days are behind them.
Busloads of people come to Old Friends to see them, admire them and learn from Blowen that horses like Sunshine Forever, once worth $20 million and then almost slaughtered, still have great value even though they're not worth much money.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
FYI: Find out more about the retired champions, including how to help
Only On The Web: More with Old Friends' Michael Blowen
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.





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See all 74 Commentshttp://horsewelfare.8k.com/
Again thank you,
Lorraine @ Horse Lovers United, Inc.
Too few end up in good homes. I have four of them. One ran 72 races in a six year career (many on an arthritic ankle - now permanently fused). She was rescued off a meat truck. I bought one (beautiful, well bred) to keep from auction. Lean body types are not favored there - she may have headed to the slaughterhouse had I not bought her. Two came from Communication Alliance to Network Thoroughbred Ex-Racehorses (CANTER). All we know of one is at some point in his career he was abused. He is still optimistic and hopes every hand that comes near holds a treat. The other is grandson to both Seattle Slew (Triple Crown winner) and Alydar (second place in 3 Triple Crown races). He is sane, good natured, spent more than 8 years on the track, but we think he was treated well. Both horses were rescued from a neglect situation.
I run tack shop. I believe every business has an ethical obligation to help support that which neccessitates the business. My store supports a local horse rescue and CANTER's New England chapter. Humans have a moral responsibility to help rectify any suffering we help create.
CANTER's web site is www.canterusa.org, and there are others, including Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation www.trfinc.org.
The race industry is a web woven of contradiction. There is the glorification of physical strength set against the backdrop of the many who don't make the cut, and another strand of the fact that these young horses are asked to accomplish feats of miraculous athletic prowess long before their bones have been completely formed. In other equestrian sports, nobody would ever think of asking a juvenile horse to work so hard, or even carry a rider, before the animal had grown closer to adulthood.
There are numerous racehorse rescues out there, all deserving of all the help, support and publicity they can get. Perhaps the sad plight of Barbaro will finally focus some attention on the dark side of the Thoroughbred racing industry and help find a few more happy endings for some very deserving horses. These animals are innocent pawns in a big money game.
You may have been the first to actually talk about the fate of these magnificent creatures than can end up at the slaughter house. This is a first for evening news. Youy have the love and support of the (((Barbaro))) Nations Please continue focusing on such centers and the men and women rescuing our equines.
A one of interest:
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/wild_mustangs/
Many owners have abandoned their horses because they weren't young, "beautiful", or fast enough on the track to win. With a little foresight and a little legwork these horses could find a home in a show barn or someone that wants a backyard friend.
To the slaughter plants and the foreign owners I'd ask you to go home and slaughter your own horses and not ours. What? Your home country has outlawed this terrible atrocity? Gee, I wonder why...(smirk)
"but the horse is part of our national heritage, an intergral part of our culture deserving of respect." yeah? Do they sustain your family with their flesh, live short, sickly lives just to be sacrificed to feed your children? I'm not anti-meat, but I am sick of the cruelty we all ignore because it suits us better.
Title: A Bill to amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption and other purposes.
Until this Bill is made into law, horses are still being slaughtered in Illinois and also being sent to slaughter in Mexico and Canada and are still being sent overseas for human consumption, no horse is safe until this Bill becomes Law to protect out American Horses.
As wonderful as this article was, let it be the first step in opening your eyes to what is happening to some of the horses in our country. Do not let this insidious activity continue to take place. If you felt compaasion & appreciation for what Michael Blowen is doing, then please take the time to call or write your representaives in the Senate & the House & let them know how you feel. All of God's creatures should know kindness.
http://www.hsus.org/video_clips/horse_slaughter_cruelty.html
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