HORSEY BIRTHDAY!
Old Friends at Cabin Creek holds celebration
GREENFIELD, N.Y. » Wendy Marino could have taken the easy way out, by simply helping visitors meet the retired thoroughbreds at Old Friends at Cabin Creek farm.
Instead, like many of the site’s dedicated volunteers, she decided to get her hands dirty.
“You get a wheelbarrow, a shovel and a rake and you muck stalls,” Marino said smiling, despite the frigid cold and light snow that enveloped the landscape on Saturday. “It’s so healing being around these animals. It’s therapeutic.”
Dozens of people turned out for an annual party to celebrate 15 resident horses’ birthdays. In the world of thoroughbred racing, every horse turns a year older on Jan. 1, regardless of their actual foaling date.
JoAnn and Mark Pepper opened the Cabin Creek farm in 2009, as a satellite of the Kentucky-based Old Friends, which founder Michael Blowen started in response to the news that Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand had been slaughtered in Japan.
Old Friends’s mission is making sure no thoroughbred meets a similar fate, by giving them a loving, caring place to live when their racing and breeding careers are over.
As a young facing fan, Todd Cooke’s favorite horse was Thunder Rumble, who in 1992 became the first New York-bred to win the Travers Stakes in 125 years. So Cooke, of Saratoga Springs, naturally wanted to meet the champion horse when he was brought to stay at Old Friends. Even though Thunder Rumble passed in January 2015, at 26, Cooke still shows up to support the farm’s work, which relies entirely on volunteers with no paid staff.
“Once you come here, you’ve got keep coming back,” he said. “It’s such a beautiful place.”
Barbara Nieman, of Saratoga Springs, volunteers six days per week.
“I’m a former teacher,” she said. “I came for a tour one day. When JoAnn heard I was retired she asked if I was willing to help out and I said of course I would. I wasn’t a racing fan, but I went to Skidmore, so I was always aware of the track and would go maybe once a summer when folks came to visit. But I’ve always loved animals. My commitment to the horses is them being here now, not so much their racing history.”
Volunteers are always needed and chores run the gamut, from watering and feeding to grooming horses.
“They can learn how to take care of injuries that aren’t too serious and their general well-being,” Nieman said, “or help JoAnn as a ‘second pair of eyes’ with anything going on with the horses.”
Commentator, one of the farm’s most successful race horses, won more than $2 million during his career including a pair of Whitney Handicaps in 2005 and ‘08.
A horse called King Congie, a 2011 Preakness Stakes starter, came to Old Friends at Cabin Creek after being rescued from slaughter in 2016.
Originally raced and owned by West Point Thoroughbreds, King Congie was sold to a trusted friend, but following another sale, he was sent to an auction house and might have gone to slaughter outside the U.S., if another horse rescue, Rosemary Farms, hadn’t stepped in.
When West Point Thoroughbreds heard about it, they agreed to help support King Congie for the rest of his retirement at Old Friends at Cabin Creek.
The farm relies heavily on donations for its maintenance and the animals’ care, which costs $15 per day, per horse.
“The industry is beginning to be more supportive,” JoAnn Pepper said.
A small fee from every race goes to the non-profit Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, which distributes funds to accredited member organizations that care for retired race horses.
Old Friends at Cabin Creek is located at 483 Sand Hill Rd. in Greenfield and hosts open houses from noon to 3 p.m. every Saturday throughout the year.
For more information, go to oldfriendsatcabincreek.com or call (518) 698-2377.