Porter's Rescue Sets Up Shop in Louisiana

When owner Rick Porter established the National Thoroughbred Welfare Organization he did not aim low. His stated goal was to end the slaughter of Thoroughbred racehorses. Porter, along with NTWO President Victoria Keith, have taken their first significant step toward curbing the influx of horses that go to slaughter by establishing a rescue program in Louisiana at Evangeline and Delta Downs.

Both tracks are run by Boyd Gaming, which has agreed to provide financial assistance to NTWO and other support in an effort to find homes for retirees coming off its racetracks.

Louisiana has been known as one of the worst areas in the country when it came to Thoroughbreds going to slaughter and the problem has been widely addressed on social media.

Keith said that initially, the NTWO has been given stalls at Delta and Evangeline to keep the horses, and would use layup farms in the area. They are also looking for a farm in Kentucky where they can keep horses.

“It has been a big problem there,” said Keith. “They represent the perfect storm. They are near Mexico, they have a lucrative breeding program and two of the most notorious kill pens in the country are right there in Louisiana. The kill buyers found that it's quite a good business to use Facebook to extort money from those who can't bear to see a Thoroughbred get slaughtered, so they go to extremes to get their hands on the Thoroughbreds. It's been horrible for racing to look at, week after week, Thoroughbreds in the hands of these people. We just desperately wanted to stop it. This is a plan we came up that we thought would be stronger than a band aid. It's terrible and these horses really needed someone's help.”

“Every horse that races at our tracks deserves to find a good, loving home after it retires,” said Vince Schwartz, Senior Vice President of Operations for Boyd Gaming. “The NTWO's noble mission is one we are proud to support. Both Delta Downs and Evangeline Downs want to see this inhumane practice eliminated from racing, but we can't do it alone. We encourage our community partners and race fans to join us in supporting racehorse protection and welfare through the good work of the NTWO.”

Keith said that the NTWO will have a full-time employee working the backstretches and training centers at the two Louisiana tracks. Their mission will be to let people know that there is an alternative to slaughter and that her group will take their horse and find it a home.

“There are two rescue groups down there that I know of but they just didn't have the resources they needed,” Keith said. “Clearly there weren't enough resources down there because weekly we were seeing these horses picked up. I went down there and talked to some owners and they said we'd be welcome with open arms because this is something they needed, that they had horses that needed to be retired and they had nowhere to go with them.”

Keith said her organization will adopt any horse, but it hopes to find as many as possible that can be retrained and used as pleasure horses.

“Our employee will go around from trainer to trainer,” she said. “The agent should be able to befriend and know everyone on the backside. Once you become familiar with the horses you might ask a trainer if now is a good time to retire that horse, that he can be turned over pretty easily to the sport horse folks. We have a lot of connections with the sport horse trainers and owners.”

Keith applauded the groups around the country doing similar work, like CARMA in California and the Turning For Home program at Parx, but said the effort to keep Thoroughbreds from going to slaughter still needs all the help it can get.

“Because of the presence of social media, not only is it not hidden it's blatantly in your face,” she said. “From a moral aspect you feel terrible for these horses and you want to help them. It is also important from a PR aspect because racing is taking a PR beating over this. I personally believe we need to correct this and if we don't I don't know how we can defend ourselves. You have to put out an active program showing you are doing something. The TAA is a good program, and there are a lot of other good programs, but we think we have to do even more to show how much we are willing to do to try to stop this from happening so people won't so easily blame the industry.”

Keith said that after the programs at Delta and Evangeline are established, she will work to create similar programs at the state's two other racetracks: Louisiana Downs and the Fair Grounds.