More on Madeleine Pickens

The New York Times ran a nice piece on Madeleine Pickens early last week detailing her involvement in thoroughbred racing. Pickens' first husband was the late Allen Paulson, who owned a number of top notch racehorses, including Cigar.

Pickens, like Gretchen Jackson, admits she was originally ignorant about the existence of horse slaughter even when she and her husband were big time owners. "All the years, we'd had something like 800 horses, and it never occurred to me that there could be something like horse slaughter," she said. "There would be an injured horse, and I'd say, 'What will happen?' And they'd say, 'The glue factory.' I thought they were joking."

Paulson died in 2000 and Madeleine continued in the business, campaigning Rock Hard Ten who finished second to Smarty Jones in the Preakness. She was intending to disengage herself from the sport. About two weeks before her wedding to T. Boone Pickens, however, she received a phone call from Michael Blowen, founder of the wonderful equine sanctuary, Old Friends. He told Pickens that he had found her first Breeder's Cup Champion, Fraise, and he was bringing him home. Pickens had sold Fraise to Japanese buyers and was told that he had been sent to a riding school.

Pickens paid for the transport of Fraise and another Grade I stakes winner, Ogygian, to Kentucky and began to advocate against slaughter with the support of her husband. They do their work through the Humane Society of the United States and you know the rest--she hopes to create a sanctuary for the wild mustangs on federal land in the West.

The latest on the plan is that it has gained the support of Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and has been released by the Committee of Natural Resources to the full House for a future vote.

"If you take the horse off the range, you now have a moral obligation to take care of that horse for the rest of its life," according to Pickens. "We are personally responsible for these horses."