By Page H. Gifford
Correspondent
After the horses are done with their showing or racing careers, they are retired and one of the places they retire to is the 245-acre Saddle Creek Farm in Cunningham. It is a place for them to unwind in a peaceful environment and live out the rest of their lives. Farms like Saddle Creek are important for this reason.
Lori Brown, a former horse show mom who traveled the circuit with her three daughters, devotes her time and love to horses differently now that her daughters no longer show. Brown bought the farm in 1999 and initially owned hunters and jumpers, but in 2012 when her daughters went to college and moved away, she found a new purpose – caring for retired and rescued horses. She currently houses 80 horses, but her numbers can change as horses find their forever homes or pass away. Her mission nowadays is to use her horse farm as a halfway house for rescued horses, and a sanctuary for those put out to pasture until their final days.
Since Brown had the facility and the experience, she was able to help when the Standardbred Retirement Foundation contacted her, looking to board horses in Virginia.
“Our weather is nice, not too hot and not too cold. It’s easier for horses to grow old without extreme temperatures so I agreed to take in a few of their retired horses and that’s how it began,” said Brown. All these horses have been Standardbred racers, meaning they pulled sulkies or carts and are pacers or trotters instead of thoroughbred racers. Most of the horses were eventually used as riding horse.
Brown began rescuing horses in 2018 when another nonprofit organization, Save Our Standardbreds from Slaughter (SOSS), contacted her to take in a couple of horses saved from a kill buyer in Louisa. SOSS’s mission is to rescue these horses, rehab them, and find forever homes.
“Unfortunately they are not always able to do that,” Brown said. “The kill buyers keep getting in horses, good people keep paying their bail money to save them, but without a home offer they have no place to go, and the retirement foundation is forced to retire them in their program. At this time the foundation is full so unfortunately, unless a horse has a home offer, he cannot be saved.”
Most of the horses rescued by Brown came from auctions in New Holland, Pennsylvania. “Every one of my horses has a story,” she said. “There are stories of hard work, abandonment, love stories, stories of life, just like people.”
She told the story of Luna. “One horse was a little different than the usual horse coming from New Holland, and seemed to have been cared for by somebody before she ended up in the horse auction and then to me by way of the kill buyer.” The horse was pregnant and gave birth to a little filly born on the full moon before Easter. Brown named her Luna.
Grumpy Jake, his registered name, was nothing like his name but was instead what Brown calls an absolute sweetheart. Jake’s is a love story. Brown was contacted by a man from Ontario, Canada, desperately trying to find a place for his horse to stay until it was well enough to make the trip home. This man gave his horse away to a friend several years ago, who promised to keep him forever. That was not the case and the friend sold the horse. The original owner then found the horse in a sale in Canada but he needed $5,000 to buy the horse back and didn’t have the money. He lost the horse again. For the next five years, he searched for this horse.
“He told me there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think about him,” Brown said. “He contacted every rescue organization to please look for his horse, Grumpy Jake. Well, he [finally] got his phone call…that Jake had been found at a kill buyer in Virginia.” He paid for Jake immediately, but Jake was not healthy enough to travel to Canada. Brown was contacted and Jake is with her, rehabilitating. He will eventually be reunited with his owner, who was crying on the phone at the good news.
“My goal is to give each horse the best quality of life for its remaining years,” Brown said. “The key to that is not only medications and feedings but grouping them with others by needs and personality. But we have to be their voice and tell their stories.”
“Things are going well and most of the horses have been with me for over 10 years. As they get older and especially in the winter months their lifestyles change and they need additional care,” said Brown, explaining that there is some benefit to staying out in big fields with their herd, eating the lush grass during the spring and summer, and hay through the colder months. Others need grain added to their diets to maintain an optimal body condition due to worn down teeth that come with age. These horses are held in smaller paddocks and are usually fed in groups of two, twice a day. “The key to successful meal times is to match personalities. I get more one-on-one time with them and I love that. My job is to keep these horses well and happy so they can enjoy their senior years.”
Recently the Virginia Equine Alliance gave a $15,000 donation to Brown for her dedication in caring for these horses in their later years.
“I am very appreciative of the donation from Virginia Equine Alliance. This money goes directly to benefit my Virginia horses. We plan to use this money to pay for dental cleanings and set some aside for unexpected medical procedures as necessary.”
“Virginia’s horse retirement farms like Saddle Creek Farm are important in supporting horses in their later years with a comfortable quality of life. The VEA has had a long-standing relationship with Saddle Creek Farm, and we are grateful for the good work that Lori Brown does with standardbred horses. We were honored to present Lori with a check for $15,000 that will support the farm’s operations for years to come,” said Darrell Wood, communications director for Virginia Equine Alliance.
Volunteer Connie Payne, who admires the work of Brown and visits the farm often said, “My first ever visit was on New Year’s Eve of 2016, to meet the horse I sponsored through the Standardbred Retirement Foundation. It’s an awesome place because so many horses get to live out their retirement there. Over the years, I have become truly attached to Saddle Creek Farm and what it represents. It’s a refuge for standardbreds, and being a fan of standardbred racing, it’s great to give back.”
Brown added, “I have not taken in additional horses. I am committed to caring for the horses I have here and 80 retired horses take up quite a bit of my time. But after having said that, I will never turn away a horse in need.”
