December 13, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Photograph by Barbara D. Livingston
The stables and fields are full of thoroughbred horses, long-legged former competitors with eccentric names like Banker’s Jet and Southern Wish, and their retinue of dedicated attendants.
But those animals are not the glamorous members of the winner’s circle; they are forgotten, unsuccessful, or broken-down ex-racehorses saved from neglect or slaughter. Their caretakers are prison inmates — sometimes just as battered as their wards — who very often develop surprisingly powerful bonds with the horses.
Most of the roughly 200 men and women who spend each day working in the prison stables, a program of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., had never mucked stalls or groomed horses before.
Many of the prisoners have come from “places where their only method of survival was aggression and violence,” says Diana Pikulski, executive director of the nearly 25-year-old charity. “Horses are prey animals and people are predators. If you approach a horse either with tension in your body or aggression in your body or anger, you’re not going to get anywhere. You’re never going to catch that horse.”
Her group, which currently cares for 1,235 horses and has an annual budget of $3.3-million, works with seven states to create thoroughbred-rescue farms on land owned by state-prison systems.
The inmates build the barns, maintain the pastures, and take care of the horses. At each facility, an average of 20 prisoners gain academic credits and experience in agriculture, construction, barn management, and horse care. But they learn other skills too, says Ms. Pikulski.
“These guys have to learn good horsemanship — it’s basically kindness and leadership and love, and gaining the trust of a horse,” she says. “They have to come a full 180 and learn to do just the opposite to get what they want, using no force, no violence, no aggression, no intimidation. It has an amazing effect on them.”
