TRF at 40: STILL SAVING HORSES AND CHANGING LIVES

WRITTEN BY L.A. SOKOLOWSKI | PHOTOS PROVIDED

Do a good deed and throw it in the river and one day, said the 13th century poet Rumi, it will come back to you in the desert.

“Throwing pebbles” is exactly how Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF) current and former executive directors Kelly Armer and Pat Stickney, and director of major gifts and planned giving, Kim Weir, liken the 40-year mission of good deeds behind the oldest Thoroughbred racehorse rescue and retraining program in America.

From its national headquarters in Saratoga on Spring Street, good deeds and second chances have been cast like pebbles into water and its unique vocational programs have slaked the hopeful thirst of horses and humans who have found themselves in the desert at the most vulnerable point in their lives.

A New York State Of Mind

Since 1983, the mission of the TRF has been to save retired racehorses who are no longer able to compete on the racetrack from possible abuse, neglect, and slaughter. Spurred by her own concern over their fate, New Jersey advertising executive Monique Koehler envisioned an aftercare organization that would be a safety net for racehorses with nowhere else to go.

“It all began with a bay Thoroughbred from humble beginnings named Promised Road, who never rose above the claiming ranks in his own 64-start career. His legacy wasn’t made on the racetrack but it has lived on for four decades in the TRF,” says Stickney, who began as a TRF volunteer in 2006.

Promised Road became the first hooved teacher and pioneered the flagship TRF Second Chances Vocational Training Program launched in 1984 in cooperation with Wallkill Correctional Facility.

Today, the TRF Program provides vocational training in equine care and management to incarcerated men, women and youth, with eight programs (and growing) around the country guiding the care and handling of roughly 165 Thoroughbreds in the hands of about the same number of inmates.

The rigorous inmates training program includes teaching horse anatomy, nutrition, and how to care for injuries. Graduates receive certification, based on the level of skillsets mastered and, after release, TRF cites graduates as going on to careers as farriers, vet assistants, and caretakers.

“I believe in and love the TRF Second Chances Program because it is literally that: It is a second chance for our equine athletes. Their days at the track are over but for these individuals, it gives them a second chance at life,” says NMR Hall of Fame jockey, Ramon Dominguez.

“Since that one horse and one dream,” Armer says, “we have grown to an official 2023 ‘herd count’ of 425 retired racehorses at 18 farms nationwide. Many of whom are changing lives through TRF Second Chances Programs from coast to coast.”

“While the TRF Second Chances Program began as vocational education,” says Stickney, who last accepted the position of TRF executive director in 2019 before stepping down in 2023 to resume a part-time role as its chief financial officer, “it wasn’t long before other benefits were realized; inmates not only learned viable skills but gained confidence and empathy. Studies have shown a reduction in recidivism rates at facilities that host the program.”

A grant from the Thoroughbred Equine Research Foundation helped TRF enhance learning experiences in the program through the purchase of teaching aids and equipment and in 2022, an expansion opportunity made possible through collaboration with the New York State of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYDOCCS) and a matching grant from Business for Good, as well as “many, many donors,” expanded the TRF Second Chances Program into Wyoming County Correctional Facility in Attica, where a restored and repurposed dairy barn welcomed the first six horses in October 2022 .

“With opportunity,” says Weir, “for further growth up to 25 retired racehorses.”

Saving Horses And Changing Lives

A tenet of horsemanship is that the horse is the great equalizer. It will not judge its rider’s age or gender or origin, and that natural equanimity is reflected in the TRF Second Chances Program at the largest prison for women in the United States: Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, Florida, housing female offenders at all security levels.

One such graduate of the TRF Second Chances Program at Lowell, who credits its horses with helping turn her life around, is Lauren Vannucci: “On August 19, 2012, drinking and recklessness caught up with me.” Instead of finishing community college to get a nursing degree, she served five years in prison on DUI charges that left a 52 year-old motorcyclist a quadriplegic.

“Going to prison is humbling. The first day that we were transported to the farm and I saw the horses, I was overwhelmed. It brought tears to my eyes and I felt hopeful.” The work included feeding and grooming, riding lessons with Ocala trainer Carol Fletcher for those interested and with it, a chance to retrain retired racehorses that could be adopted out.

Lauren became one of the farm’s best riders, earning its program certification and, as a model inmate, found her sentence reduced and she was released in 2017.

A month later, she was working for consignor Niall Brennan Stables and today, is a digital media professional in the Thoroughbred industry. She knows she got a second chance and promises, “I’m making the most of it.”

“We don’t really change people’s lives, the horses do. But there is satisfaction in seeing these girls succeed,” said John Evans, former equine program director for the TRF Second Chances Program at Lowell Correctional Institution and, for his two decades of work with TRF, first recipient of the Thoroughbred Charities of America Award of Merit.

“Was this the most gratifying job that I had in racing?” asks Evans, who also had a role in the superstar career of graded stakes winner and Florida Horse of the Year, Forbidden Apple. “It was. There’s no question about it.”

What spells success are lower recidivism rates than at nonTRF prisons. “Hardly any of our inmates come back,” Evans says. Estimating 65% of Lowell’s incarcerated women are also mothers, horses are a “big factor” in helping women, through working with these forgiving creatures, to be more nurturing with themselves.

“One of the biggest things [female inmates] gain,” Lowell assistant warden Stacey Tosi said, “is confidence. They learn more about themselves. What they are capable of. Things that they never thought they could do.”

Trf Second Chances Juvenile Program

The transformational power of what Weir likes to call “these magical beings” was brought for the first time to incarcerated youth in a 2021 partnership, between TRF and the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, called the TRF Second Chances Juvenile Program at CSI-Ocala. Serving young men ages 12-18, it is adjacent to the TRF Second Chances Farm at Lowell Correctional Institution.

The inaugural program’s livestreamed opener (catch the replay here https://www.trfinc.org/ juvenile-at-csi-ocala/) included a tour of the new equine facility built at the Center for Success and Independence (CSI), the juvenile residential commitment program operated by Youth Opportunity Investments in Ocala; remarks from Eric Hall, Ed.D., Secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice; and an introduction to its program teachers: TRF retired racehorses Fifth Angel, Hurricane Sergio, and Jade Master.

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice saw a unique vocational training opportunity through the TRF partnership and they were right.

“The equine program provides an opportunity to gain hands-on training while receiving the benefits of animal-assisted therapy,” said Juvenile Justice Acting Secretary Josie Tamayo. Hands-on horse work helps young people grow and build skills they never knew they were capable of while empowering better transitions back into their home communities.

At the same time, TRF was helping racehorses like Jade Master make their own transition home. The chestnut gelding’s off-track journey began three years earlier in Puerto Rico, where the graded stakes winner had earned over $200,000 the hard way (19 wins/43 starts).

Jade Master came to Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare in 2020 where, after steady rehabilitation for racing injuries, he found a second career at a riding school. His unwavering kindness made him a lesson favorite with kids, but his soundness wasn’t as steady as his disposition. He was simply unable, physically, to hold up to the rigors of the riding program.

“Aftercare takes a village,” Weir says. “TRF has been happy to open its doors to several horses from this organization and provide a soft landing for the remainder of their lives. Jade Master is now thriving in his third career as a teacher in the TRF Second Chances Juvenile Program.”

Trf Summer Night Bbq At The Barn

This year’s BBQ at the Barn, Tuesday, August 22, starting at 5 p.m. at The Saratoga Winery, is extra special as the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation turns 40 with (IYKYK) a spiffy new event tent to scoff at raindrops. Always a sell-out night of food, drinks, raffles and silent auction during Travers Week, do good, have fun and get your tickets at donorbox.org/events/418503.

The Next 40

“The TRF Second Chances Program represents the American dream to me,” says Tyler Frame (then-Tyler William Murray), who spent almost nine years at the Central Maryland Correctional Facility on second-degree arson charges before making the most of his second chance through his work at a stable he helped place on the Maryland Department of Agriculture network of Horse Discovery Centers, and championing a bill to enforce anti-bullying regulations.

Now it’s his turn to try and better life for others. “If that’s not living the American dream,” Frame says, “then I don’t know what is.”

A dream – and blessing -- is how Julianne ‘Jules’ Stowell, who also completed the TRF Second Chances Program at Lowell, sees the way TRF saves horses and changes lives. The Port Canaveral, Florida “beach girl” says life took a wrong turn with a wrong relationship, adding up to six years incarceration on theft and probation violation charges.

“But God has a sense of humor. When I was little, I went to Disney World and fell in love with a pony that, of course, we couldn’t bring home. So instead I go to prison and wind up with 50 horses. Then I work for Niall [Brennan Stable] and now I’m up to 200 horses a day!” Stowell’s responsibilities include building daily training and breezing lists, updating the website, and client relations like escorting owners coming to the stable to see their horses train.

“I owe it all to TRF. Incarceration makes you more afraid of loss and of taking chances. But their program was the best thing I could have done.”

Armer and the TRF team look forward to 40 more years of casting good deeds like these into the river: “This is a good story and only getting better.”