LAST RACE RANCH
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Riggsey
Let us introduce to you our very first foster racehorse! Riggsey! He will be turning four years old come March and he is retiring from his racing career. Riggsey has left the racetrack and is resting nicely on Audrey’s rescue farm in Encinitas, CA called Saving Horses Inc. Audrey has a tremendous experience in horse rescues (and ponies too), she has traveled all over the US saving neglected horses and brought them to her farm. Riggsey is resting and settling into his new home. This will be a great way to introduce you all to the process of how Last Race Ranch works.
The first step is to pick up the racehorse from the racetrack or racehorse farm with all the vet papers, x-rays, ownership, health cert, vaccination records, and anything else that will be helpful to the next home. The next step, is to get the newly retired racehorse to a farm that specializes in caring for racehorses to allow the horse to settle in and enjoy some down time. On the racetrack, racehorses have a regiment, every early morning they are doing some sort of workout, whether light or hard, the morning is filled with practicing all the activities required to be a very fit racehorse, like going to the gym. While our new retiree is enjoying his or her “cooling down” period, they are fed well and walked everyday. They get the opportunity to play in horse pens rather than standing in a stall. They make new friends in the pen next to them and any other animals running around on the farm like goats and dogs. They get to have fun living the farm life. The third step is to hire a horse vet to perform a full exam on the new retiree. Identify any pressure or pain the horse may be experiencing, many of our retiree racehorses will have nagging tendons and ligaments in the knee or leg joints that may need lots of nurturing and time to heal.
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The final step and the most exciting step is when our retiree gets a clean bill of health, it’s time to find someone who will want him or her to be a new horse. Some of the places where our horses could arrive to become:
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Hunter/jumper
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Dressage
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Cutters
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Trail Horse
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Pet to ride
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Pet to love
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And anything else that could be out there
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With Riggsey, he is already progressing through the beginning and ready for his horse vet examination. Riggsey is unique in that he is blind in one eye. We do not know how that happened, but the story that has followed him is that he got his eye caught on a fence at the farm when he was a weanling (less than a year old) or a yearling. Upon reviewing pictures of Riggsey’s eye, the diagnosis is that Riggsey’s eye is submerging itself back into the orbital bone and into the front of his skull (see pic). The vet says that Riggsey needs to remove his eye by performing the surgery at the equine hospital. Whenever there’s a trip to the equine hospital, it can get expensive. This is where Riggsey needs your help, and with you, this is where Last Race Ranch will do most of its hard work, raising funds for Riggsey’s surgery and aftercare. Our initial goal is to raise $5,800 for Riggsey’s eye surgery (3K plus aftercare expenses, medications, vet exam, and boarding). We are very excited to get started, if you would like to help, please click on the “Donate” link below. Thank you for your humility and your eagerness to give to help Riggsey, we are all so grateful that together, we can make a difference in the horse racing world to horses who deserve a great life after their last race!