His name is Immortal Wink (Gimmeawink) and after a career that spanned nine years and 142 races, most of them in Puerto Rico, he was done. He was 10 and had suffered through the kind of wear and tear that is typical with horses who run so often, last so long and wind up at the bottom tier of the sport. He would never go on to a second career, at least one that is typical for a retired Thoroughbred. He just wouldn't be able to do it.
But there were people who didn't believe that meant he was expendable. In 2016, he was purchased for $1,000 by the founders of Caribbean Thoroughbred Aftercare (CTA), was retired, and was given to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF). He was given a job, to help improve the lives of the female inmates at the Lowell Correctional Institute in Ocala, Florida. It's a job he does well.
“I just fell in love with him,” said Rachel Gehrke, an inmate who cared for the horse she came to call “Wink” for about 18 months. “I felt it was really therapeutic. I was going through a lot when I was in Lowell and I was going through a lot before that. I wasn't able to talk to people and I wasn't able to fix things. It was so bad. Knowing that I was going to see my baby every day lifted me up. He would wait for me at the gate every morning. Getting to care for him, that got me through my time there.”
Rachel Gehrke with a horse | courtesy of TRF
Gehrke, who was released in 2021, is now living in Ohio, is engaged and is working toward getting her degree to become a veterinary technician.
Maggie Sweet is the executive director of the TRF, and while she is thrilled that the industry has made so many strides when it comes to taking horses off the track and retraining them for second careers, she doesn't want the Immortal Winks of the world to be forgotten. She'll tell you that not only do they, too, deserve a dignified retirement, but that they can work wonders in programs like the TRF's Second Chances Program. In Second Chances, inmates are paired with retired Thoroughbreds. They can learn important skills they can put to use once released from prison. But, more importantly, through the bonds they develop with the horses, they almost always seem to become better people.
“Our point is that we want to bring to the attention of the racing industry that a lot of the focus is on the retrain, re-home model,” Sweet said. “I think that is ideally what we should be aspiring to. But I think that it's important to note that not every horse can be retrained and re-homed, and that we still have the same responsibility to that horse. We have established that even if a horse can't go onto a second or third athletic career, there are other things the horse can do that are as important, possibly more important.”
Her other point is that old-timers like Immortal Wink, who is 20, were retired before the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (TAA) was formed and therefore weren't able to benefit from the funding the TAA now spreads across dozens of aftercare organizations.
“It's also really important to note that there is this big group of horses, which we have started calling the 'legacy herd,' who are still around from the time when the TAA didn't exist,” she said. “They came around when there was no formalized funding source for aftercare. The racing industry has this obligation to retroactively take care of these horses because if we don't, we're shooting ourselves in the foot, and they're the ones who are the most at risk.”
Wink with Shelley Blodgett in Ocala | courtesy of the CTA
It was Shelley Blodgett who got this whole thing started. She became the co-founder of CTA, but this was before that organization existed.
“Shelley was a racing fan and had been following Immortal Wink because he was an older horse who had made so many starts,” said Kelly Stobie, the CTA's other co-founder. “She reached out to me to ask if I could help get him retired. We went through the whole process of getting him retired. I was able to convince the owner to do so. We wound up having to pay $1,000 for him. We couldn't have gotten him retired without doing that. Then Shelley reached out to the TRF and they were willing to take him into their program. I am sure he had a lot of wear and tear from racing. He just wasn't going to be able to become a riding horse. With the TRF, horses are used mainly to teach the inmates. He was such a sweetheart, such a lovely boy. I have a beautiful picture with him before he left. With his having had a lot of racing and a lot wear and tear, we thought he'd be better off in a sanctuary companion home. The TRF offered to take him. He's been amazing. He's been educating these women for so many years now. They are lucky to have him, and he's lucky to have the TRF.”
It didn't take the TRF long to learn that Immortal Wink had some spunk.
“He's a little bay gelding, and he is a feisty little thing,” said TRF Director of Equine Programming Chelsea O'Reilly. “So, despite his size, he is out in what they call D-Field with the other sassy geldings, and he's the smallest one out there. So they might assume that he is just going to be meek and quiet, but he is so full of personality, even at his elderly age now. They always think that he's going to be super quiet and he's not. He's out in the sassy gelding field with horses half his age.”
Gehrke was a quick convert.
Immortal Wink | courtesy of TRF
“I trusted that horse more than I trusted anything in my life,” she said. “Period. He was such a good boy. I had never been around horses until I got into the program, but I am an animal lover by nature. I had just never been around a large animal like that. It was a new experience. I thought it could be fun, that it could be cool. I thought, 'Let's try this.' It changed my thoughts on pretty much everything. You start to understand how their brain works. Horses display their emotions more than most people do. They'll give you a sign. They're just easy to read. These horses are so amazing. I love that horse.”
It's not just one horse and one inmate. Hundreds of women have gone through the Second Chances Program at Lowell, which was started in 2000, and have worked with dozens of horses. For many of the inmates, the connections they form with the horses are personal, meaningful, uplifting and something that had been missing in their lives. To Sweet, the message is clear: there are a lot of horses who come off the racetrack who are less than perfect, old, tired, a little beat up. That doesn't mean that they can't be put to good use or that the industry should ignore their situations.
“This horse was pulled from Puerto Rico, where he was a true iron horse, a war horse,” she said. “Then he was able to have this amazing effect on the mental health of these women who are incarcerated at Lowell Correctional. This particular horse, Immortal Wink, has touched a lot of lives.”
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