LIGHTS ON BROADWAY's in the news

LIGHTS ON BROADWAY's story is on the front sports page of the Ft Worth Star Telegram today. Gary West's article about Lights is great and has some good pictures of our horses. It also gives the Remember Me Rescue website address and talks about some of our other rescues.

For more information go to http://www.teamkeen.com/ and click on the link to the story.

Overcoming the odds, from hopeless to Graded Stakes Placed

Owning stake horses is the dream of everyone in the horse racing business. Dreams come true when hard work and dedication are top priorities. When a trainer and owners team up to make the best decisions for a special horse anything can happen. In KING DAN's case he could have easily slipped through the cracks and never reached his full potential. He was diagnosed with OCD's in both stifles as a two year old but his dedicated owners decided on the surgery to help him have a quality of life he may not have had without it. KING DAN was sent to trainer Dallas Keen with the hopes of making a racehorse. When he arrived at the Keen stable he was a fat little horse with a smart eye and a playful personality. He enjoyed training but was the 'class clown' on the racetrack. It didn't take long to see that if the surgery was a success KING DAN could be something special, he is. KING DAN has now defeated multiple stakes winners like RECAPTURETHEGLORY and HALO NAJIB and was only beaten 1/2 of a length running second to the millionaire JONESBORO in the Texas Mile on April 25th.
Congratulations to owners Tom Clark and Jack Randall on their decision to give this horse a chance to be all he could be and to their special GRADED STAKES PLACED HORSE KING DAN.

Last of the 20 Horse Rescue

Anyone who follows our blog or keeps up with the website knows we have been working on a 20 horse rescue for quite sometime. The first seven horses from Louisiana were brought here in February and the remaining horses were taken to the owners farm in Oklahoma until we could accommodate them. We posted about the horses being moved and asked if anyone in Oklahoma could help. Many horses were placed with people that lived in the area. There were still 6 horses needing new homes.

I had a gentleman named Andy Peele contact me a couple of weeks ago. He was interested in adopting a few mares for his small thoroughbred breeding operation. He offered to transport the last 6 horses here to our farm and adopt a few broodmare prospects from the group. Andy and his family decided to adopt 4 of the last 6 horses and brought 2 geldings to our farm the following morning.

The first 7 horses from the 20 horse rescue were in good shape and healthy. These were not so fortunate. I was very angry when I first laid eyes on these geldings. Very thin, lame from lack of hoof care, full of worms and still holding on to their winter coats, these horses were in terrible shape. Their teeth were so sharp they could hardly chew grain. No vaccinations records and several hundred pounds underweight I have my work cut out for me on these two guys.

Luckily both of these geldings are very sweet and enjoy all of the attention they are receiving here. They have been introduced to grain slowly and have 24 hour access to grass hay along with receiving timothy/alfalfa flakes during the day. We will not be able to ride either of the horses until they gain some weight, their top lines are too thin and we don't want their first experience to be an uncomfortable one. I will be taking pictures to update everyone on their progress.

This rescue will be an expensive one. Just to list a few costs, 2 power pack wormers $120, Vaccinations for 2 $230, shoeing $200, floating teeth another $140. We are already up to $690 and we haven't included what is it going to cost to feed them. Anyone who would like to can donate to their fund on the Remember Me Rescue website at http://www.teamkeen.com/. There is a link to paypal there and also a donation widget. We appreciate your support in helping these two geldings start a new life.

Lights On Broadway in the Spotlight

The story of Lights On Broadway seems to be getting lots of attention these days. Between the news crews, reporters, and camera people our barn has be a busy place to be lately. I can only hope somehow through this horses mishaps others may be saved. Lights was lucky, he was in the right place at the right time and escaped a terrible end. So many more are not as fortunate.

Lights On Broadway was the inspiration for our project which started after he arrived at our farm in Burleson, Texas. Dallas and I were already involved with horse rescue placing over 35 horses in the previous two years. We had been doing so without any financial assistance or donations but after Lights arrived I was inspired to do more. We called our project Remember Me Racehorse Rescue and applied for a non profit status. By December of 2008 we were an official 501(c)3 and we began to bring more exracehorses to our farm to be retrained and placed in new homes.

Since the beginning of Remember Me we have retrained and placed 9 horses and have 6 horses currently for adoption at our farm. The sound horses are easy to find homes but the horses with problems are much more difficult. Some of these horses we will need to keep for several months while they rehabilitate before they can be placed in permanent homes. This gets very costly. 4 of the 6 horses currently in our program are in the rehabilitation process.

We have been very fortunate so far that I have kept a waiting list of potential adopters and been able to place sound horse very quickly. We have decided due to the large amount of horses that need homes not to charge an adoption fee. This is where all animal lovers and the horse community come in. We have hoped to fund our program totally through donations. We added a paypal widget to our websites and blog as well as invited others to copy the widget to their sites in hopes of raising money online but it hasn't been enough to totally fund the project.

On the Sunday before Derby Day our local Channel 8, WFAA, will be running a story on Lights On Broadway. This weekend sometime his story will be in Gary West's horse racing section in the Ft Worth Star Telegram, (thanks ST and Gary for the great picture by the way). Hopefully we can raise awareness to our mission and attract a few big sponsors to help fund our Remember Me Racehorse Rescue project. Anyone interested in becoming a Remember Me Sponsor please contact Donna at remembermerescue@live.com or call 817-689-1214. Donations can be through the official website at www.teamkeen.com and are tax deductible.

Horse Rescue News

After several weeks of trying to arrange a ride for the remaining 13 horses from the original 20 horse rescue we see some light at the end of the tunnel. This particular rescue has been a tough one. The horses were originally in Louisiana with a trainer who had contacted Thoroughbred Transport to haul the horses to a local sale barn to be sold at auction. Instead the owner of TT contacted us about the situation and we offered to take the horses at Remember Me Rescue. We didn't have the room or the financing to take all of them at once so 7 of the 20 were brought to our farm and the remaining 13 were moved to the owners farm in Oklahoma. The 7 were quickly adopted out and we starting attempting to make arrangements for the other horses.
Due to the remote location of the owners farm no horse transporters could arrange shipment of the horses for us. It was not on a local route and the owner had no way of moving all of the horses to Oklahoma City where the big vans could load the horses.
About a week ago I was contacted by a man named Andy who is in the process of starting a small breeding operation and is looking for mares with nice pedigrees to add to his broodmare band. He was interested in coming to see the rescue horses in our program. I let him know that as hard as we had tried I couldn't find transportation for the horses. Andy offered to haul the horses for us in hopes that one or two of the mares would work for his breeding operation.
Now we are just trying to line up every one's schedules so we can pick up several of the remaining 13 horses.
If anyone is interested in adopting or sponsoring one of these retired racehorses please contact us through our website at www.teamkeen.com . If you wish to donate to these horses care and retraining there is a paypal widget on the site to making donating quick and easy.