“With a horse like that, with high earnings and nine foals, Jesus, God, that’s not what she deserves at the end of the day.”Īnd so on a fateful day in December of 2012, as a veterinarian hovered near, insisting the sorry animal be euthanized on the spot, her poor condition making her unfit even for slaughter, Lovell and her personal horse-shipper intervened. The last foal that was weaned off her just ran through the Select Yearling Sale at Woodbine and sold for $16,000!” Lovell says. “She made $436,000 on the track and produced nine foals, one after the other, as soon as she retired. Of all the horses Lovell has pulled from the junk heap of discarded horses, the mere mention of Press Exclusive brings her to tears.
“By the time she made it to Ottawa, where the kill buyer off-loaded her to do paperwork before proceeding to the slaughterhouse, a sale-barn vet wanted to kill her immediately because she was in such bad shape,” says Mindy Lovell, longtime Thoroughbred rescuer, owner of Spring Hill Farm and operator of Transitions Thoroughbred Program.Ĭovered from head to toe with deep cuts and abrasions, Press Exclusive sustained four fractured ribs and blows to the face that caused grotesque swelling. No longer valuable as a racehorse or a broodmare - she gave birth to nine foals-she fell down among the legs and hooves of the other slaughter-bound horses, and was pummeled as she struggled beneath them, writhing in the shavings and manure. Press Exclusive earned $400,000 on the track and foaled 9 babies before she was a “downer horse” on slaughter truckĪll that money, nearly a half million dollars worth of racetrack winnings, couldn’t help her as she thrashed in panic and fear.įlailing beneath the hooves of 30 other terrified horses, last December in a tractor-trailer heading for a Canadian slaughterhouse, once-winning race mare Press Exclusive had lost her balance on the truck, and her place in the world.
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