Painted Forest Comes Home

-from Dorothy

We get our off-track Thoroughbreds from a variety of sources-some come from trainers we have known for years and are regular contacts, some come from complete strangers that see our program and want to retired their horse into it and sometimes, we see a horse we just have to have somewhere and go after it.  That was the case with Painted Forest.

For a long time, I have wanted to own a "colorful" Thoroughbred.  I know, color is as color does but I knew if I could find the flashy, the rest would follow as we have rarely found an OTTB we couldn't get along with.  It's been a long, very bitter winter here at the ranch and one day, I couldn't help but peruse some online racetrack listings.  And there he was: 15.2 hands, stocky and a true "war horse", that is, one with lots of starts which always equals lots of great experience under their belts.  Oh, and did I mention he had more than enough white to be registered as a Paint?

A little reseach showed that he was from a nice family (pedigree) and sold for $155,000 as a yearling and then came back the following spring and was offered at the Fasig-Tipton Two-Year-Old in Training sale.  He blazed through his workout and brought a final bid of $145,000, but did not bring his reserve and went home.

PF eventually ran 62 times at 9 different racetracks.  He ended his career with 4 wins, 7 second and 8 thirds and earnings of just over $55,000.  We are always attracted to the horses that have lots of starts under their belts, even if they didn't win at the highest class. It can generally be assumed that if they were allowed to stay around the barn that long, even running at the lowest levels, it means they must be easy to get along with because nobody keeps a mean horse around if they aren't winning!  He had not had much more than a few weeks off in over three years, so we knew he was something special if he still had such a great attitude about life. Imagine how you would act if you hadn't had a vacation in three years!

After talking to other sources at the track, we learned that nobody had a bad thing to say about the horse. In fact, everyone said the same thing-he was super calm, super sensible and a pleasure to be around. Can you say winner? We made the deal to bring him the ranch soon after.

Due to the winter storms that kept rolling across the country with great regularity, it took a few weeks to get him home with our regular driver.  He finally arrived on February 27 and after a 1200 mile van ride, stabling at 3 new stables and a totally new environment, he settled right in.

After a few weeks of R & R, it was time to see what he was like under saddle. Because PF is officially "my" horse and not Dale's, I decided to bring him along to a group riding lesson I was scheduled for so I could ride indoors (our weather still is not anywhere near "spring:" here).  I brought along my regular horse, Te, just in case PF wasn't up for it but as it turns out, PF was more than ready.

This is simply one of the smoothest and kindest little horses I've ever ridden. He's had enough time off to start filling out and get pretty out of shape from race training. His last start was around January 19th, I believe. He's starting to feel frisky enough to run around the pasture and throw his tail over his back when the cows pop over the horizon.

We went to the barn, where he stood quietly while tied as any other saddle horse, without pulling back or wiggling around, while I tossed my stock saddle on him. ( And with 40 plus pounds of gear, I was glad he's on the smaller side, as I literally tossed it!). I snugged up the cinches, both front and flank, tight enough for him to know they were there and keep things in place if he hopped around.

I then led him into the round corral, just a few steps out of the saddling stall.  At that point, he finally noticed the flank cinch and like many horses, he had to toss out a few bucks while circling the pen...just in case he could shake it off!  He was doing his best imitation of a rodeo horse, but the deep going quickly took the wind out of his sails. With that, I loaded him in the trailer and hauled 45 minutes to an indoor arena, where I joined my group lesson for an afternoon session.

Making a lot of assumptions about Painted Forest, as he's had 7 years of race training and lots of miles in tack, I simply took him in the round corral at the arena, led him to the mounting block, where he stood like an old timer, and got on. He didn't disappoint me, taking everything I did in stride until I felt sure we wouldn't endanger the other riders by joining the group in the larger area.

We went through the paces with the class, playing follow the leader for serpentines at the trot, going through poles on the ground, and bending circles. We did a couple of solo canter loops around the arena in both directions, and kept a level head when the local train went past the building. We ended the session with an introduction to leg yielding, as a nice cool down, and he made a real effort to try to figure out what I was asking.

Following the trailer ride home, he was stripped of tack and enjoyed a good roll. He'll get more time to just hang out and be a horse, but it's great knowing what a wonderful little horse I can count on for fun days ahead.  Sometimes you just see a horse and know you have to have it and I am sure happy we saw him and got him!