Kenwood Racing is passionately committed to finding good, safe homes for the horses in our care when their racing days come to an end. It doesn’t matter if they were successful runners or not, almost every horse can be re-purposed after racing for a productive and happy 2^nd career, and/or given a happy retirement.

A recent example is Wandagonenotastray, a promising two year old purchase who ran well in his debut races in New York for us. He was named by one of our favorite co-owners, Rafael Lopez, to honor his late wife Wanda.   Unfortunately, Wanda (the horse!) came up with a tendon injury and despite our best efforts to go on with him, we ultimately determined it was not in his best interest to continue racing him. Some people might have tried to “squeeze the lemon” and get one or two more races out of him at a lower level, but we’ll never risk the safely of horse or rider trying to run a horse that has a legitimate issue that warrants retirement.

It took several months of rehab. at Daydream Farm in Hamburg, Pa. under the care of a wonderful hands-on horse person we work with, Richele Grieb, to make Wanda sound and comfortable and ready to be adopted by a caring family. It cost us several thousand dollars to do this, but with Kenwood, the welfare of the horse always comes first. When the time came, we reached out to our contacts and got word of a possible good home for Wanda with a lifelong horse woman, Katie Landwehrle. As she described herself in a recent email to us “My mother swears that I started riding when I was 4 and I went to a birthday party with a pony ride and apparently I absolutely refused to get off of the pony lol. I grew up eventing in Vermont, and began riding hunter/jumpers after moving to Long Island. My parents were very supportive of my riding even though they were clueless, and when I was 13 they purchased me my first horse, a 3 year old thoroughbred mare off the track. Ever since then I have loved thoroughbreds athleticism, their quirky brains, and their enormous hearts”.

Katie made the 3 hour trip from her home on Long Island to Daydream farm to visit Wanda on January 26^th, instantly fell in love with him, and took him home that very day. As she wrote “I went and saw him this morning and he was a gentleman trailering home. I’m hoping to work with him towards a hunter/Jumper career and perhaps fox hunting if he enjoys trail riding. My property backs up to a state park with 3,500 acres of trails!”. She sent us the photos below as he was on her trailer heading for his new home and said”

Just wanted to let you know that Wanda trailered well, and is settling in nicely! He’s made friends with the other gelding here and seems right at home :) hoping my ferrier can come out this week (he’s missing a front shoe), and then we’ll start lunging to build up some muscle. I’ll keep you updated :) … My husband and I have two young boys, one of which (Aiden) absolutely adores horses! He has his chores in the morning which consist of feeding the dogs, collecting the chicken eggs, and helping me to feed the horses”.

We wish Wanda and Katie and her family many decades of happiness together.

Photos courtesy of Katie Landwehrle