Baby it’s Cold Outside

It is 7:00 am and I am on my way to Churchill Downs to work on my race filly.  Her name is Given the Chance and she is a 2 year old.  She had her first serious breeze yesterday and will most likey be tight and a bit sore this morning.  Kind of like really going hard at the gym.  A little bit about my filly.  I own her with my husband, Ramiro Salazar.  We bred her mother and her sire is ChangeintheWeather.  I was there with Ramiro when she took her first breath in this world.  She grew up to be a very gawkey yearling.  We had every intention of selling her as a yearling but fate had other ideas.  As we got ready to send her to a yearling sale in Timonium, MD, it was dicovered that she had a chip in a front ankle and lucencies or (OCD’s) in both stifles.  The sale was rough and rather then give her away we decided to send her to Florida with friends of Ramiro’s.  The idea was to remove the chip and get her broken.  Well money issues kept that from happening and she was turned out.  To make a long story short, when we went to check on her in May 07,  she was turned out alone and was very underweight and not at all cared for.  I found a great lady, Lisa McGreevy of Abby Road Farm, to take her in and get her taken care of.  By June 25,  Lisa talked me into going ahead and getting her broke, by Oct 07 she was ready to start breezing, so she came home to Churchill Downs.  No longer was she the ugly duckling but a beautiful swan.  She is sound and showing that she may have what is takes to be a nice racehorse.  She is intelligent and has a good eye.  Thanks to sale of another yearling this year we will be able to pay for her training.  This why I want to share her story and mine with everyone.  Too show that what you see isn’t what you always get.

As for me it is worth braving the cold to make sure she is the best she can be.  In future posts I will show you how my job as an equine physical therapist helps me do that.