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On the duly appointed day I drove to Penn National race track near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to look at five horses, though it turned out one had sold the morning before I had arrived. As it turned out, I was pretty much sold on the first horse I looked at. He was a 6 year old, 16.3h liver chestnut gelding. Much like that scene from Jerry Maguire, he "had me from hello" when I approached his stall and he came up to the door, put his forehead against my chest, and snuffled softly against my stomach. He had good feet, but was slightly crooked in the front legs, and had something of a big ankle on the left front. His tendons all looked and felt good, and he was a nice mover with big, kind eyes. His back was a bit long, but he had an elegant uphill front end, and a powerful hind end. He looked like he could run and jump, and acted like he would try anything you asked of him. Since I had his registered name, I went home to do some research on his history. The Jockey Club does a marvelous job of record keeping, and pretty much every obscure statistic about a horse's family and history can be found at their site for a small fee. There are several free sites, but few offer the depth of information that you can get from the source itself. I discovered that this horse was a grandson son of the great Alydar, and had a very good dosage index for distance-something important in my sport of eventing. I also learned that he had not raced as a two-year-old, and had raced a whopping 40 times. Thus, I felt that (a) he was entitled to have a few cosmetic issues on his legs, and (b) he was obviously a tough and sound animal to have come through all that with no major problems. The final step was the pre-purchase vet exam, including x-rays. In many cases you may be able to negotiate a better price by not doing a pre-purchase, or by doing only a clinical one. If the horse is blemish-free that may be a good option. In my case however, there were some blemishes, and I wanted to be sure that they were merely cosmetic. It would be rare for a horse with any significant racing history to have a totally clean vetting, so any issue that come up should be discussed with your vet in the context of what is acceptable in light of you intended us, and what is not. Our boy passed the clinical well, including all his flexion tests and hoof testers. The x-rays showed some minor arthritic changes in one hock and that the ankle was most likely an old osselet, with no bony changes in the joint-essentially a windpuff. It was felt that horse would be fine for my chosen activity of lower level eventing and dressage. Next time: bringing your new horse home and helping him adapt to life away from the racetrack.
Resources on the web:
Referral and adoption organizations (by no means a complete list, but basically the largest and most well-known):
Pedigree and performance information:
General information on the issues surrounding ex-racers:
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