I accidentally did a thing. To be fair, I was deeply enabled (and it was joyous).

I’ve been saying for years now that someday I’d really like to find a project OTTB to do the RRP Makeover with. I think RRP is such a cool idea, looks super fun, and has been a really positive thing for OTTBs in general. I’ve bought their merch, I’ve sponsored an award with them, and I vote every year. Big fan.

Hillary got her new OTTB mare several weeks ago, not solely with RRP in mind, but that’s part of her plan. A couple other friends of mine have gotten OTTBs in the past couple months too, and are likely going to aim for RRP. It seems like 2024 is going to be the year of the ex-racehorse in my friend group, and I found myself like “dang, I wish I had something too, it would be even more fun to do RRP with friends.”.

But, ya know, I can give you about a thousand reasons why logic says that another horse is a bad idea. And then Presto hurt himself, earning himself a vacation and dashing all of our plans for the rest of the season. Before I knew just how badly (or not) he might have hurt himself, I did a rapid spiral and was like “would an OTTB really be that bad of an idea though?”. I have a very strong You Only Live Once mentality… none of us are guaranteed anything ever, and seizing opportunities as they arise has really been my modus operandi over the past several years. It’s led me on some pretty cool adventures, has it not?

I talked about the idea with some friends, who were super supportive, and scrolled casually through the OTTB facebook groups. I didn’t really see me being able to find anything promising for what I could afford (which was really pretty much the Henry price range)… thanks to things like RRP, Thoroughbreds aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Which I think is a really fantastic thing, but it does put the overwhelming majority of them out of my budget. I have other horses and their care to consider, as well as all the care a new OTTB needs, so I had to be pretty strict with the dollar amount I could throw towards a purchase price.

My sad lil budget was my sad lil budget, and it included shipping, so whatever I found had to be both cheap and close. Or free and less close. What were the odds? Slim to none, right? I was like well it’s very unlikely I’ll find anything I like (because we all know I’m also picky) that’s this cheap, so with all the audacity of a mediocre white man, I posted an ISO in one of the OTTB groups.

Here’s the viewpoint I had on the whole thing: if it was meant to be, the right horse would find me and things would work out. Leaving it up to Fate and all that. Which, I dunno, maybe that’s a cop-out, but I do a whole lot of things like that and it’s worked alright so far. I didn’t think it was likely that I’d find one I liked that I could afford, at all, but I threw it out to the universe anyway because you never know.

Most of the horses that I’d come across on my own that I liked were out of budget and/or far away and/or had major problems that I couldn’t live with. To be expected. But after I posted the ISO, the very first response was this:

Hmmmm. Tell me moooore.

Here’s my thing… what I was looking for with this OTTB wasn’t necessarily what I’d be looking for if I was shopping for a horse to keep and event long term to the upper levels. My priorities were a good brain, and I was really looking for the kind of horse that would be a fulfilling re-train. An older war horse, or a solid steady horse that had just never been much of a runner, something like that. Maybe not the most athletic or beautiful animal, but just a good egg kind of horse, if that makes sense. No offense to Presto but i am all full up on orangutans at my own personal zoo at the moment.

This chestnut, Shadrack, sounded like he fit the bill. He’d raced 32 times, earning over 200k, and had won on different surfaces. He’d even hit the board in a stakes race once, and over his 5 years in racing, he seemed like he was a tryer. For most of his career he’d been owned by his breeder and trained by his breeder’s brother and raced primarily in California. He was claimed for 40k last summer by another guy at a race at Del Mar, and then was brought east to Oklahoma and then Kentucky. The woman who had sent him to me was the wife of his current trainer, and she also rides sporthorses, so we got to chatting a bit and I told her a lot about me. She ended up offering him to me for 30% less than his listed price, which put him extremely near Henry’s cost, and within my budget.

The only problem is that he was still in Kentucky, 750 miles away. Dunno if y’all have looked at the prices for shipping horses lately, but it’s not cheap. Diesel is bananas. Shipping basically doubled his price, and that part put him out of my budget. Big sads. He looked and sounded like a sweet boy though, so I sent him to a couple friends, figuring ya know… maybe he’d be good for someone else?

One of my friends was like… I’d really like to be a part of this, so what if some of us from the Patreon group crowdfunded some money towards his shipping, and then he could be kind of like a Patreon group RRP-journey we can all go on together? A ShadrackShippingSyndicate if you will. I was floored that she would even offer to do that, and even more floored that when she suggested it in our Patreon Facebook group, so many people were eager to pitch in. People thought it would be fun to feel like they were part of the journey, and that’s just really freaking cool. My friends are bomb.

Things happened pretty fast after that. Shadrack himself was secured via Venmo on Friday, and pre-dawn on Monday he got on to a trailer and made the trip to Ocala, getting here that night. And well… he’s a stunner. Just a mega classy horse, and way better than I was expecting from the pics and video. How often does that happen?

Anyway – he’s got a really cool story (I’ll tell that in a separate post) and had a fun first day yesterday, and has a scope scheduled for tomorrow to check out his stomach and a farrier visit scheduled on Monday to start getting those feet addressed. Lots happening. Lots to share. Since the Patreon group was so instrumental in making this little adventure happen, all the goodgood behind the scenes stuff, video, and weekly training updates will get posted there. Hillary and I are gonna do kind of a whole “Road to RRP” series thing with both of our horses so hopefully it should be interesting and fun. Obviously I will still share him here too, just not in as much detail or as frequently.

I have no idea if Shadrack will want to event or not – we’ll see. I’ll let him decide what he wants to do, and hopefully we can get on the road to RRP 2024 so we can have an RRParty with all our friends!