There are around 14,000 racehorses in training in Great Britain with approximately four to five thousand leaving the sport each year. Some of the successful ones go to stud to breed the next generation of racehorses, some go racing abroad, but due to the fantastic versatility of the thoroughbred, many go on to be successfully retrained to go into eventing, dressage, showing, polo or to be a hunter or a hack.
But what happens to the ones that are quirky or difficult, or fall on hard times later in life? This is where New Beginnings steps in.
We bring in horses straight from racing or more often from private post racing homes where for whatever reason the owner can no longer look after them. At New Beginnings we also assist the RoR (Retraining of Racehorses) through their ‘Vulnerable Horse Scheme’ to provide care, compassion and stability for the most vulnerable former racehorses that need that extra help and understanding.
We always have a waiting list of horses to come in, but we will never turn away a horse that is in desperate need of the care that we offer.
At New Beginnings we never sell our horses, but once they are ready to be re-homed, we look for forever loan homes. This enables us to guarantee security for the rest of the horse’s natural life. We offer a safe and secure ‘Life Past the Post’.
We started in 2010 and have grown in both expertise and experience to offer each and every horse that comes to us the security that they need and deserve. Our journey started with just a few acres and a few horses but our passion for thoroughbreds, determination and tenacity has helped us grow into an established retraining and rehoming centre, the only one of its kind in the North East, with 30 horses in our care at any one time and a reputation that we are proud of.
We are not directly funded; we raise our own money from Donations when a horse comes in and when we rehome a horse. We attend race meetings throughout Yorkshire to promote New Beginnings alongside the promotion of the fantastic welfare that these horses receive both during and after racing. We take our exhibition unit and two former racehorses, the horses will stand all day and let the racing public get up close and touch a horse often for the first time.
We have a Racewood Equicisor that we take along with a selection of silks with a racing back drop this allows them to ride in the style of a jockey and realise how fit a jockey really is. We also have a full-size painted horse, this has the bones, muscles and ligaments on one side and the digestion system, lungs, heart kidneys etc on the other side.
As you can imagine looking after an average of 30 horses at any one time costs a lot of money. We need to raise in the region of £5,000 per week to keep doing the valuable work we do.
