Natalie Voss

A multimedia series featuring longform writing, photographs, and video shot by Voss gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to become a jockey. Ten students began the Spring 2015 semester at the Bluegrass Community and Technical College's North American Racing Academy learning how to properly mount a Thoroughbred. A few months later, they were galloping in an open field. 

Several days after New Year's, New Jersey resident Dina Alborano posted a video on social media of a crowd of horses jogging down a livestock chute somewhere in Louisiana, imploring her followers on Twitter to donate money to prevent the horses from shipping to a slaughterhouse in Mexico. The cost to purchase 11 horses and pay for their quarantine and transport, she later told Horse Racing Nation, would run $32,000. She pleaded with casual fans, horse rescue keyboard warriors, and top racing journalists, owners, and jockeys to give something – anything — toward the horses' rescue and rehoming.

“It just doesn't pass the smell test.”

Attorney Drew Mollica repeated the phrase, utterly mystified a few days after his client, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott, was handed a fine and suspension for overages of both flunixin and furosemide in Saratoga Snacks from a Sept. 20 race at Belmont Park.

Mott was told the horse's furosemide levels were ten times the legal limit, despite the bleeder medication having been administered by a third party veterinarian at a third the usual dose, per Mott's request. Given his client's pristine reputation and clear medical records backing up Mott's account of the furosemide administration, Mollica already thought the situation smelled a little fishy.

By now, he thought it stunk.

On Jan. 27, 2015, six Thoroughbreds went to the post for the second race at Turf Paradise, but only five came back. Four-year-old Time for a J fractured the sesamoids in his left front leg and was euthanized on the track.

What separated the dark bay gelding from most other horses who meet the same sad fate is that he had been officially identified as unsound before he entered the gates on that January afternoon. It was a red flag that at least one trainer and multiple racetrack officials chose to ignore — all completely within the bounds of Arizona state law.

A plain brown package arrived at the doorstep of Dr. Mary Scollay, equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. There was no return address label. No packing slip. According to what she had read online, the small vial inside containing a dark red liquid was “a proprietary formula that is an extremely potent blood builder.” It was “extremely fast acting” and “best given the day before an event.” It also “would not test.”

As summer fades into fall, horse farm managers are either baling and storing some of their last hay harvests, or loading their lofts and storage buildings with hay bought from nearby suppliers in preparation for winter. Even though the outside temperature is about to drop in most of the country, experts say this is the time to think about hay fires.

Just a few weeks ago, a fire ripped through a pole barn adjacent to a horse barn at the University of California-Davis, destroying the building and its hay stores before firefighters got the flames under control. Fortunately, no horses or humans were harmed in the blaze, but the financial loss of the hay in the midst of California's drought will be a heavy hit to the school's bottom line, as it would be to any private operation.

A study published in the September issue of Veterinary Pathologysuggests that laminitis may not be the sudden-onset illness we tend to imagine. Researchers from Finland, Australia, and the United Kingdom worked together to document cases of 14 laminitic horses and ponies with high insulin levels in their blood (known to be a common precursor to laminitis). Specifically, researchers looked at the lesions inside the lamellae — the soft, interlocking finger-like projections that hold the hard outer hoof capsule onto the internal structures of the hoof.

What they found was a bit counter-intuitive: after rating the severity of the lesions, researchers could find no correlation with the length of time the horses had been reported to be suffering from symptoms of the illness and the time the lesions were forming in the feet. In fact, in several cases, the lesions must have been beginning before the horses showed the first signs of discomfort.