On Monday morning, April 4th, I checked my messages on my phone. There was a message from Sunday. My phone doesn’t work great down at my barn and often the voicemails don’t come through until I go up to my house on the hill. This message was from the R.A.C.E. Fund and it was urgent. There was a Thoroughbred at the auction who was scheduled to ship to slaughter that evening. If he had a place to go, they would try to raise the funds to get him out of there.
There are so many horses at these auctions. The R.A.C.E. Fund can’t save them all so they focus on the horses who have a place to go. They do their absolute best to find someone willing to help the horse. In this case, Marlene Murray, President of the R.A.C.E. Fund, reached out to TPR and many others desperately trying to find this horse a place. They believed he was Home Bouyant, a 19 year old retired racehorse.
By the time I heard Marlene’s message, I feared it was too late for him. I felt terrible. But I texted Marlene to let her know to text me in the future because I’m more likely to receive texts at the barn.
We need your help in order to help HB!
Marlene called me later that day to tell me that Home Bouyant had not yet shipped, but that he was likely to be gone by Wednesday. She couldn’t raise the funds to buy him—and save his life—unless he had a place to go. I didn’t have room for him on my farm and his care wasn’t in our budget, but I said we would take him. Marlene advised me to look at his pictures and videos before making the commitment. I did and it made me want to help him even more. His condition, his beautiful tail, and the comments about the training he obviously had told me that he had once mattered to someone.
We’ll probably never know how he ended up at that auction. Did his owner pass away? Did someone decide they wanted a new horse? Maybe they lost their job or sold their farm. It doesn’t really matter. There are always better options than sending a horse to slaughter. What matters now is that this boy is safe. He made it out of there and to quarantine, arranged by the R.A.C.E. Fund, and finally to Leighton Farm for some rest and then the start of a new life.
Home Bouyant has thrived since he arrived here in April 2022. We gave him plenty of time to recover from the trauma of the auction and to get to know us before we started working with him, first in hand and then under saddle.
It takes a lot of resources to help horses like HB but they are worth it! We are currently looking for his forever home while we care for him and continue his retraining. If you are interested in adopting him, click here to get qualified to adopt.
Please help us help him.
