EQUINE PROTECTION OF NORTH AMERICA

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E.P.O.N.A.'s NEWEST RESCUES AND SPONSORS

E.P.O.N.A.'s THOR: Recovering from Severe Malnutrition October 7, 2006; Photo by Carole Shaw

(As THOR recovers, he will have dental care issues to be addressed. For now he can only eat three small meals a day and any carrots and apples must be given in small bite-size pieces still merrily crunchible).

MORE ABOUT E.P.O.N.A.'s THOR

MEET THOR, now being sponsored by Bill & Carole Shaw, Campaign For Barbaro's New Hampshire Cochairs. On Saturday October 7, Carole made a special trip to Epping, New Hampshire, towing goodies of baby carrots and apples plus special Flex formula cookies to help E.P.O.N.A.'s (Equine Protection Of North America, one of our team links) with Thor's veterinary needs. He is a 16 year-old ARTIC WHITE Percheron gelding at 17.5 hands high with dental issues to be addressed over the next few weeks. A second special visit is planned for this coming Saturday, October 21, 2006 with another basket of goodies in store for THOR, KATIE, PETEY, GUY (aka JAKE), and several others now stabled and up for adoption soon. PLEASE ALSO SEE E.P.O.N.A.'s THOR, BARBARO, and SPECIAL FRIENDS (THE GRACE FOUNDATION of NORTHERN CALIFORNIA) in MUSICAL VIDEO PRESENTATION at www.photoshow.net/horsesandfriends (NEW). WORKING TO SAVE OUR HORSES FROM SLAUGHTER ONE LEGISLATOR AT A TIME FOR S.1915 with help of www.campaigningforbarbaro.com Until We Make A Difference, We Will Continue Campaigning For Barbaro And His Horse Friends.

E.P.O.N.A.'s newest rescue THOR takes a break to snort: Photo by Carole Shaw, October 7, 2006 October 7, 2006 Photo by Carole Shaw E.P.O.N.A.'s KATIE is being sponsored in part by the EXCELLER FUND. Please read more below about how EXCELLER became a martyr for Thoroughbred horses everywhere. Even when The Movie SEABISCUIT was made, EXCELLER used "RICH IN DALLAS" one of the seven thoroughbreds used to help make the smash hit a star. We will feature more about him in another update on the EXCELLER FUND.

KATIE (21 year-old Thoroughbred) was rescued the same day as THOR back in early September 2006 when WMUR Channel 9 news arrived at E.P.O.N.A. to record their safe arrival in horse trailers. Twelve volunteers assisted to ensure their safety and care. It was a rather cold day when visiting them Saturday, October 7, 2006. Both THOR and KATIE still have bony hindquarters; but KATIE still has ribs showing and the blankets kindly hide those. She is extremely affectionate and came over for several neck rubs. She currently has at least five adopters hoping to have her. Generally, EXCELLER FUND assists E.P.O.N.A. with retired Thoroughbreds from the racetracks.

Most curious and gentle PETEY loves carrots and attention; photo by Carole Shaw. Congradulations to July's Poster Horse of The Month (named by E.P.O.N.A.) as he goes to his new home by October 31, 2006.

"Many of these glorious horses behave like large friendly dogs or a child and nuzzle your hands, face, and shoulders"... From my experience - Cle Shaw.

PETEY, has been adopted and will be going to his new home at the end of October 2006. He is one very lucky horse who was featured back in late July as E.P.O.N.A.'s "Horse Of The Month."

Besides PETEY, there were opportunities to meet CHANCE and ICEMAN - two permanent residents being sponsored for life with E.P.O.N.A. Their amazing true stories can be viewed entirely at http://www.eponarescue.org/Retirement.htm .

CHANCE was quite a famous event horse. When only 6 years-old, he suffered a terrible leg fracture during a bizarre ice storm a few years ago. His break was just below his knee. Initial prognosis was good following orthopedic surgery until cracks in his cast went unnoticed and his leg bones fused crooked. Severe crippling was permanent. At 10 years-old, this warm blood remains a lifer with E.P.O.N.A. under full sponsorship. Contributions are welcome directly through E.P.O.N.A.

Six months ago, ICEMAN had his eyes surgically removed because of a serious complication. It caused extremely severe eye pain from a optic degenerative nerve disease that shrinks the eye tissue involved. He remains in a special stall at night with CUZ of CAM (Lucky). He is 18 hands high, chesnut, and a Thoroughbred cross. Plus, he is the 15 year-old grandson of "acclaimed NORTHERN DANCER." After viewing photos of him at the peak of his performing events, one could only give this horse respect! Sadly, he too, became a victim of neglect as he became blind. When he was rescued, his right eye was visibly shrunken due to Uveitis, a horribly painful degenerative eye disease. Despite attempts to place him with former owners by working with New Hampshire Equine Humane Association, he was brought back to EPONA after his eye condition worsened. Today, he shares his quarters with CAM (LUCKY) in a special double compartment stall.

LUCKY is also called CUZ of CAM, an 11 year-old Standardbred gelding bought at a New Holland auction in Pennsylvania. "The EXCELLER FUND" outbid a killer buyer in order to save Cam's life from the slaughterhouse." His rescue is in honor the the 23 Standardbred horses that died in Gaitway's stable fire in New Jersey, November 23, 2000. CAM's tatoo is not legible so his ownership could not be determined. Upon medical examination he had Strangles which was contained and his life was saved. It is believed he was heavily used by the Amish as a carriage horse. At one point, he was to be euthanized. But thanks to Barbara Kraus of the EXCELLER FUND, his prognosis of survival greatly improved after treatments were started following medicinal monthly injections advised by a veterinarian out west. So now CAM (LUCKY)resides permanently with EPONA thanks to the Heinemann Corporation's generous donations.

BELOW ARE EPONA MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS:

RELATED TO SPONSORING, please visit www.eponarescue.org

Membership Options:
Junior Membership (under 18 years of age): $5.00 per month ($60.00 in full)
General Membership: $20.00 per month ($240.00 in full)
Reserve Grand Champion: $50.00 per month ($600.00 in full)
Grand Champion: $100.00 per month ($1,200.00 in full)
Of course, additional pledges are always welcome!

Executive Director - Leah Doyle; Phone: (603) 679-1896

VISITING IS ENCOURAGED and works best by appointment as there are team leaders/staff there then to assist and answer questions. Because certain horses require extra special care, they cannot have people just show up unannounced. There are liability issues involved if someone's child unattended, gets hurt. That is why appointments are made. Saturdays - visiting hours are generally 3:30 to 6:00 pm. Staff must work around you while there to feed and water the horses requiring special extra meals like THOR. ICEMAN needs EXTRA CARE as he is blind. THANK YOU and appreciate your interest and sponsoring care! (PLEASE NOTE: As it gets darker earlier, the hours will change to earlier times so you can visit during daylight hours).

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit rescue organization, your membership, sponsorship,
or contribution is fully tax-deductible. Please Click On The LINK BELOW: http://www.eponarescue.org/Membership.htm

For INFO on EXCELLER: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceller

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE EXCELLER FUND please visit:

www.excellerfund.org/main.htm

The horseracing world has well-known since before 1997 that the horses are brutally killed alive! Please read the following article from Daily Racing Forum.

ABOUT THE EXCELLER FUND

EXCELLER's TRIUMP TO TRAGEDY

EXCERPT FROM DAILY RACING FORUM

by Mike Mullaney, Features Editor, August 3, 1997

EXCELLER stopped being EXCELLER when breeder interest waned. At that point, he became just another horse. His final destination was similiar to that of an estimated three million American horses from 1986-1996.

Anne Pagmar, who led him to slaughter, said EXCELLER knew what was going on . He smelled blood and expressed fear. Tied off and hung by a single hind limb, fractious (rebellious) horses thrash while their executioners bludgeon and bludgeon. They are alive when their throats are cut and they are bled to death.

It is an unpleasant reality; it isn't the topic of pleasant conversation, and probably won't be part of next Sunday's Round Table agenda.

One American horseman, when told of EXCELLER's last walk, said, "They have to die sometime."

That response leads to another question: How hardened must the human spirit become to survive in this sport?

Not everyone has grown cold. Christine Picavet galloped horses after coming to America from France, and one of those horses was EXCELLER. She went on to become a noted artist and she painted the horse twice. She still bears the scar of a playful bite. When she heard EXCELLER's story, she struggled for words describing his generosity and kind disposition. Then, in tears, she apologized, begged for time to compose herself and put the phone down. Could that horseman's emotionless response be a product of denial?

Haven't you wondered what happens to horses who won't survive surgery? Not many get the sendoff GO FOR WAND or RUFFIAN received, with services and burial in the infield of a major racetrack. Horsemeat is still favored in many of Europe's industrial countries, and many stockyards that specialize in this particular trade in America are European owned.

There are several grassroots organizations...to save horses from slaughter such as the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, created by Monique Koehler; the UNITED PEGASUS FOUNDATION, run by Helen Meredith; the EQUIS FOUNDATION, presided over by Linda Moss; and the CALIFORNIA EQUINE FOUNDATION, with Kathleen Doyle as its President. Doyle is trying to push through the California Legislature a proposal called "Save the Horses," which would classify horses as companion animals, not as animals bred to be slaughtered, and make out-of-state exportation of horses for slaughter a felony. Doyle needs 600,000 signatures on a petition this summer for the proposal to be put on the ballot in November 1998.

Monique, Linda, Helen, and Kathleen...see a pattern? With few exceptions, men are conspicuously absent from this initiative, and so, too, are racing executives.

But there is one last nagging question: If complaints of poor customer service fall on the deaf ears of racing executives, what chance do horses have?

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Unique Superstar Exceller Met Tragic End
By MIKE MULLANEY July 20, 1997
Features Editor
Daily Racing Form

Exceller's name was listed on the ballot for election to the Hall of Fame in April. Also that month, if the account of two people close to the horse is to be believed, his name went on the list of equine martyrs.

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Best remembered as the only horse to beat two Triple Crown winners, he proved his quality on a global scale by winning graded or Group 1 stakes on both sides of the Atlantic. Upon his retirement in 1979, he was sent to stud at Gainesway Farm in Lexington, Ky., where he sired several stakes winners, but nothing spectacular, then was sold and sent to Sweden in 1991. He was all but forgotten until Daily Racing Form recently began a search for him as part of its "Whatever Happened To" series.

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The search was completed three months too late; Exceller was put down April 7. According to both the woman who tended to him-and whose duty it became to kill him-and to the director of the Scandinavian Racing Bureau, he wasn't destroyed because he was ill or injured, but because he had become a liability to his bankrupt owner, Gote Ostlund, who didn't care to spend diminishing resources on a horse from whom he couldn't profit.

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Ostlund, an owner and trainer of standardbred horses, was making his entrance into thoroughbred racing when he purchased Exceller from owner Nelson Bunker Hunt for an undisclosed sum. Ostlund speaks limited English, but on Wednesday he told Daily Racing Form that Exceller, 24 at the time of his death, was dead because "he was very old."

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Ann Pagmar, who owns Jaboruder, the small farm in central Sweden where Exceller spent the last year of his life, offers a sinister motive behind Exceller's death, and her story is backed by Bjorn Zachrisson, director of the SRB.

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"Shortly after Exceller came to me last year, the owner called and told me to kill the horse because he couldn't pay for him," Pagmar told DRF. "He said that since we weren't breeding Exceller, there was nothing else to do with him. The owner didn't want to pay for a stallion license and he wasn't paying me, so I offered to take Exceller, to buy the stallion license and to breed him. "He wouldn't give him to me, saying the horse shouldn't keep moving from one owner to another. The stud fees would help me get paid, but the owner was very stubborn. He wanted to kill the horse.

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Over the next few months he called several times, asking if I had killed Exceller yet, and I kept telling him I needed written authorization. He finally sent it to me in April. He told me to bring the horse to the slaughterhouse, and that's what I had to do."

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While Zachrisson says he didn't see the notice himself, he said that Pagmar had been updating him and told him when the notice arrived. "She was very upset by all of this," Zachrisson said.

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Pagmar details a heart-wrenching story that led to Exceller's final moments.
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"I had him a year," she said, "and I became very close to him, like I do with all my horses. He was stressed when he first came to me because he had been diagnosed with some sort of infection and he hadn't been bred in a few years. At the farm he came from, he had been standing next to the stallion who got all the mares. He wasn't allowed to breed, so he had to watch, and that made him very angry. After some time here he recovered mentally and physically.

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"Exceller was very nervous when he arrived here, but in time he became a different horse. My other horses are Shetland ponies, and soon he calmed down to the point where he would walk with them, even play with them. He was in super condition. The owner never visited to see for himself. It didn't seem to matter. He told me to take Exceller to the slaughterhouse, and I walked him over myself," Pagmar said.

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"I made an appointment because I wanted to get it over with quick, but they were very busy when we got there and we had to wait. Exceller knew what was going on; he didn't want to be there. Standing with him like that . . . it made me feel like Judas."

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Pagmar said she didn't know what happened to Exceller after she left him, and didn't care to know.

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"No, no burial ground, no stone, nothing," she said. When asked what happened to the body, Ostlund said he didn't understand the question.
Ostlund did tell DRF that Exceller was sterile at the time of his death, but Pagmar says, "We bred him to a mare early this year and she got in foal, and the only reason she didn't carry the foal to term was that she was very old."

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Zachrisson told DRF, "Ann told me that Exceller 'looked like a million bucks,' and in my book he still looked like he had one or two good years left in him as a stallion."

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Zachrisson said Exceller's troubles began in 1995, when he was "rumored" to have been infected with an undetermined disease. He didn't cover any mares that year and was later moved to Denmark, where he remained idle until 1996, when he was moved to Jaboruder.
"Many breeders lost interest when he was rumored to have been infected," Zachrisson said, "but he was no failure at all. With his first crop of 2-year-olds in 1994, he was second on the stallion list (as a sire of 2-year-olds) with 14 runners and five winners. In 1995 he was sixth on the general list with 29 offspring and 13 winners and third on the 2-year-old list with 11 runners and four winners. In 1996 he was fourth on the general list with 29 runners and 10 winners."

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Zachrisson said Exceller covered 41 mares in 1991, his first year in Sweden; 40 in '92; 20 in '93; and 17 in '94. Of the resulting foals, 58 were registered. He had been standing at Stuteri Sac in Landskrona, 30 miles north of Malmo in southern Sweden, until the 1995 season, after which he was moved to Vasaholm Stud, also near Malmo.

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"He was in good health and apparently had no fertility problems after covering that test mare successfully earlier this year," Zachrisson said. "The only reason he did not cover any other mares this year was because his owner was placed on the forfeit list in 1996. Ostlund officially went bankrupt, which put him on the list, and rules are that no one on the list can have any financial transactions in thoroughbred racing.

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"This is the sad fact and does not reflect on the good merits of Exceller."
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Exceller Remembered As A Truly Class Act
By MIKE MULLANEY
Features Editor
Daily Racing Form

When told of Exceller's demise, Charlie Whittingham, the horse's trainer in 1978 and early 1979, said, "It's a sad thing . . . you'd expect more from people. He sure ran some awfully big races for me."
Before he came to Whittingham, the Kentucky-bred was trained in France by Maurice Zilber and Francois Mathet.

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He won a maiden event and placed in two group races at 2, and as a 3-year-old-though he won the Prix Royal-Oak and Grand Prix de Paris-he was overshadowed by Nelson Bunker Hunt's other stars, Derby winners Empery and Youth.

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He was maturing, however, and at 4 Exceller won the Coronation Cup and beat the classic winner Crow in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud. He also ran third to Epsom-Irish Derby winner The Minstrel in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

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With his arrival in the U.S. that fall, Exceller began a series of entertaining jousts with Johnny D. and Majestic Light. The former took the Washington D.C. International, the latter the Man o' War, and Exceller the Canadian International Championship. But when Johnny D. won the Turf Classic, he won the championship.

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Exceller then went to Whittingham, and early in '78 he won the Arcadia (carrying 126 pounds, spotting the runner-up 13), San Juan Capistrano (126, giving Noble Dancer a pound and a beating), Hollywood Invitational (127, giving runner-up Bowl Game, eventual turf champion of '79, four pounds), Hollywood Gold Cup (beating Text, Vigors and J.O. Tobin, running 10 furlongs on the main track in 1:59 1/5 under 128) and the Sunset (under 130).

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Only Triple Crown winners Seattle Slew and Affirmed stood in the way of a Horse of the Year title. Slew beat Exceller in the Woodward, but Exceller got a break in Round 2, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, when Affirmed's saddle slipped and Slew's rider temporarily lost an iron.
A savage pace led to an epic performance as Exceller-22 lengths behind-rallied to beat Slew by a nose.

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Exceller closed the campaign with a victory in the Oak Tree Invitational, but at season's end was left title-less as Affirmed took the Horse of the Year crown, Slew was named champion older horse and Mac Diarmida, who never ran against Exceller, was named the turf champion.

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Exceller lost all four of his starts in '79 (though he placed in the Big 'Cap, Century and Capistrano) and was sent to Gainesway having won 15 races and $1,654,002 from 33 starts.

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Marion Gross, stallion manager there, recalled him as "always a very healthy horse with a great temperament. I could show him anytime, and a 14-year-old kid could handle him."