Former racers pay for their retirement
By JENIFER GOODWIN, Staff Writer | Union-Tribune | 22 August 2008
CALIFORNIA — Retirement can be a time for exploring one’s creative side, at last unburdened by the demands of work. It’s hard to say whether a horse finds such exploration liberating, but it certainly can be lucrative.
Unfurl the Flag, a chestnut-colored thoroughbred who earned $650,000 during his racing career, is spending his retirement using his muzzle, a canvas and a water-based, nontoxic palette to create works of art.
His abstract paintings, signed with a hoof print and authenticated with a lock of his tail hair, are sold to benefit the California Equine Retirement Foundation, a ranch outside Hemet that provides a home for retired racehorses who might otherwise end up in slaughterhouses.
Unfurl the Flag’s paintings, along with those of a dozen other past and present racing stars, will be on sale for $300 and up Sunday during Pacific Classic Day at the Del Mar Racetrack.
“Sometimes you need to have some inducements, like carrots,” said Sharla Sanders, a volunteer who helped the Flag, as he’s called by caretakers, with his latest creation one recent afternoon. “But you can tell he likes it. He’s being a good boy.”
Animal artwork is an increasingly popular way of raising money for conservation efforts and other animal welfare causes.
A Seattle zoo recently auctioned off paintings by Towan, a 40-year-old orangutan who spends as long as two hours on a single piece. Paintings done by Asian elephants, abandoned after losing their jobs as log haulers when the teak industry downsized because of deforestation, are shown in galleries around the world and auctioned to benefit sanctuaries.
Some in the art world see a benefit to the animals as well.
“Art is a language,” said Aldon James, president of the National Arts Club, based in New York. “How species-centric would it be that we’re the only creature in God’s parade that’s creative?”
Horse painting got its start at the Kentucky Horse Park, a retirement home that takes in the racing world’s most famous thoroughbreds. Their “Moneighs,” as they’re known, have fetched as much as $5,000.
Sanders, a longtime racing fan who works in the mortgage industry, brought “Equine Expressions” to Del Mar a few years ago.
On the Flag’s recent painting day, Sanders prepared hot pink, purple, blue and black paints, while Grace Belcuore, the ranch’s founder, kissed and patted the horse’s neck. Curious, he sniffed, nuzzled and licked the paint. When his whiskers were coated, Sanders held up a blank sheet. The Flag nuzzled that, too, creating a burst of color that looked like a child’s finger painting.
“Hey, look what you did!” Sanders said, holding up the work.
Some horses are afraid of the white paper. Some refuse to go near the paint. Though the Flag was high-strung when he arrived earlier this summer, he quickly became a friendly, sociable horse with a knack for art.
“I love watching horses do what they do best,” said Sanders, a Huntington Beach resident. “It’s magnificent. But I don’t love the ugly side of the business.”
Every year, tens of thousands of thoroughbreds are sent to auctions, where they’re sold by the pound to slaughterhouses. Horse sashimi and tartare are delicacies in Japan and some European countries.
The fate of thoroughbreds outraged racing fans in 2003, when a horse racing magazine revealed that 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand likely had gone to a Japanese slaughterhouse. Under pressure from activists and Congress, the last U.S. slaughterhouses closed last year in Illinois and Texas.
Horses are still shipped to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico, though activists are trying to get Congress to outlaw the practice.
“It’s horrendous,” said Belcuore, 80, who founded the California Equine Retirement Foundation 22 years ago. “It’s like an old person. Just because we can’t do what we used to do, do we slaughter them?”
Belcuore’s love affair with horses began nearly 30 years ago, when she fell for John Henry, a small gelding known for his difficult personality who thrilled fans by going from underdog to winner of more than $6.5 million.
After John Henry retired, Belcuore was relieved to learn he was safe at the Kentucky Horse Park. But she wondered what happened to other retired racehorses.
Some are used for breeding; others are retrained as performers or family pets.
Always lurking is the global demand for horse meat.
After retiring as a school principal, Belcuore used her savings and pension to buy 10 acres in Winchester, a rural hamlet crisscrossed by dirt roads in the hot, dry hills of Riverside County. She rode her first horse at age 62, well after she bought the ranch and began taking in animals.
Her wards come to her with colorful names – Aly Bubba, Truly a Judge, Sami Lost – along with fractured bones, torn tendons, fluid in their ankles and arthritis.
Feeding, housing and paying veterinary bills for each of the horses, who can live well into their 30s, cost at least $500 a month. While a few former owners make donations or sponsor their horses, others shirk financial responsibility once the racing days are over, Belcuore said.
The ranch is now home to 72 horses, but it isn’t large enough to accommodate every horse in need. To retire there, a horse must have won big or been popular with racing fans. Dependent on donations, Belcuore takes in the animals she thinks fans will recognize and want to support.
To help, the Flag paints.
Cindy Nierman and Tom Harris, who live east of Imperial Beach, joined several partners to buy Unfurl the Flag for $40,000 six years ago, when the thoroughbred was 2. His biggest moment was winning a $350,000 race at Hollywood Park in 2005.
During the race, he injured his leg. He had surgery and was working toward a comeback when he reinjured the leg.
Nierman and Harris turned to Belcuore.
“The Flag laid his body down every time he went on the track. He gave us 110 percent every time,” Nierman said. “We owe him a decent life.”
Nierman and Harris are not paying for his monthly upkeep, though they said they have bought several pieces of horse art and made other donations. The rest is up to Belcuore.
“Horses have so much dignity,” she said. “They’re beautiful. They’re intelligent and they fill you up with so much love.”
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Story source: Sign On San Diego
Photograph: NELVIN C. CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
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