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In a sport where horses are started as two year olds on a hard-surfaced track pulling carts carrying humans, there are many casualities and injuries in store for the young and undeveloped Standardbred pacer racehorse. Many of the horses are used, abused and traded like commodities instead of being respectfully cared for and admired for the athleticism and sportsmanship the horses truly bring to the sport. In what is becoming an apathetic society where life is no longer valued except for material gain, the pacer race horse's quality of life is slowly diminishing to that of a commodity. The sad reality for many pacers is that if they can't run to make money, they are sent to auctions or slaughter houses. The horses are flipped by unscrupulous horse dealers/owners/trainers/hustlers and even those horses who make their owners fortunes rarely if ever receive a decent retirement for their years of effort - a retirement that they have more than earned with their winnings. The horses that are fortunate might end up in a non-profit horse rescue society for someone else to adopt and take of. The few true horse trainers and sportswomen/men in the pacing race industry who care for their animals and give them a future after their racing days are such a rarity now as to have become almost a 'scarce population'. These individuals have been reduced for the most part to silence and dismay in the life. The Standardbred horse that is trained as a Pacer has a further obstacle to overcome even if the horse does find a home away from the racetrack after its racing days - pacing is not a gait that equestrians are fond of and several months of retraining the horse to trot and canter must now be undertaken to undo the pacing gait and training. Many of the owners of the former racehorses are unsuspecting of the time and expense that the retraining brings. Many do not understand the difficulty that a pacer experiences making the transistion from the pacing to the trot and canter. Since many of the pacers are flipped again for this reason (their frustrated owners eventually give up), the horses lives continue to be constant instability and uncertainty. Many pacers have track injuries that may limit their usefullness as riding horses. For this reason, pacers are often used as trail horses and their sensible demeanor make them ideal for the vocation. More and more, the public is beginning to realize that pacers can be retrained and many can have promising new careers in almost any riding discipline. The Standardbred Fan Club's aim is to try to educate the public about the merits of the pacers as equine companions when they are discarded by the racing industry. We believe that may be the only hope in this age for the animals. |
One of the goals of the club is to set up a Standardbred re-training center - a place where teenagers and people interested in the breed could work with the horses, re-training and starting the horses into new riding careers.
The Standardbred Fan Club's founder,, wanted to bring to light the beauty of the Standardbred horses and the many talents that the breed has after a racing career. Felicia felt that way too many Standardbreds end up in the slaughter houses because people generally assume that a "pacer can't canter", or cannot move on to any other careers than trail riding.
One of the goals of the club is to set up a Standardbred re-training center - a place where teenagers and people interested in the breed could work with the horses, re-training and starting the horses into new riding careers. One  The club is currently working out of Epona Stable (Vancouver, BC, Canada). Please email with any questions to the email address below STBfanClubSPAM@Standardbredfanclub.com (ps. to discourage web site crawlers that harvest email addresses, please remove the SPAM from the email address above!) |
does not want to deplete the already substandard funding
available to the Standardbred adoption societies.
But ofcourse, she would be grateful for 
