“Most people who know me will assume that I will cite Buckpasser as the horse who most influenced my life, and I will admit that this was a tough choice, as he is my most favourite horse of all time and I have enjoyed owning his daughter, Jilly Pilly, and racing her kids and grandkids. But I have to say that an aged gelding named Up Pops the Devil, whom I met in (I believe) 2002, would have to top even the great Buckie.
I was working for Woodbine and did some horsemen’s liaison work in Fort Erie at the time. On one of my trips, I happened to make some money on the old boy, who was 10 at the time, so on my next trip to the Fort, I decided to pay him a visit and brought him some carrots. He was a grand looking, stakes-winning son of Our Native. He had faced the starter an incredible 127 times in his nine seasons at the track, winning 27 times and banking over $266,000, but he clearly was nearing the end of his career.
There was not as much focus on racehorse retirement in those days as there is now, so I wasn’t overly optimistic that he would find a good home at the end of the year. But I asked the trainer to let me have him when he was done and he generously complied. Enter trainer Edward Freeman, who picked the horse up and transported him to Woodbine (Edward eventually became a founding member of LongRun –
www.longrunretirement.com). The ‘Devil’ was then relayed on to Gail Wood’s farm, where she and her sister, Dr. Ruth Barbour, worked on converting him to a healthy retiree.
I really couldn’t afford to pay his board nor did Gail ask for compensation, so I rewarded her with a bottle of her favourite libation. And, although it seemed The Devil might not be able to stand up to another career, he was adopted by Woodbine’s Brian Hall and his wife and went on to be a Trillium Circuit champion for a number of years after that.
Up Pops the Devil clearly led me to help establish, along with a large number of like-minded individuals, a formal retirement program for these deserving horses who run for our pleasure, and I’m sure everyone who has ever been involved either with thoroughbred retirement will testify that, although at times challenging, it is a most rewarding and life-changing endeavour.”
By Vicki Pappas, for Ontario Horse Racing
(C) Ontario Horse Racing 2015. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.
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