This is Sweetnorthernsaint and you might remember him as the favorite in the 2006 Kentucky Derby--yes, the one in which Barbaro left him in the dust. Sweetnorthernsaint is now seven and has been retired from racing for a year. He is also a gelding, which means that he is not going to earn his feed in the breeding shed. What's an owner to do?
Some owners of geldings literally run them into the ground--dropping them down in class, hoping they will be claimed and become someone else's responsibility. Others run until they can run no more and you don't even want to know where many of them end up.
But not so for Sweetnorthernsaint who is spending his retirement on a beautiful horse farm in Maryland, being re-trained as a fox hunter. His new owner, Lisa Reid, owns the farm with her husband Michael, and she is very excited about the prospect of giving Sweetnorthernsaint a new job--one she feels he will take to perfectly.
"I'm going to teach him dressage and then how to be a fox hunter," she said. According to her, Sweetnorthernsaint is very laid back and the perfect size for what she calls a "lady's horse." "He isn't quite big enough to be a huntsman's horse," Reid qualified. "I really liked him from the first time I saw him."
The re-training is not going to happen overnight, But Reid is known for her patience. "I like him," she said. "I see no reason why he wouldn't he here forever."
Saintly new owner for a well deserving horse.
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