Arts, Faculty of
Anthropology, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
McKee, Tamar V.S.
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
This dissertation examines the cultural and historical dimensions of why certain communities in the United States are compelled to rescue animals from abuse, neglect, or death. In particular, it engages with the debate over sending “unwanted” horses to slaughter, touching upon not just the history of cultural taboo over the consumption of horsemeat and concerns about the cruelty and food safety of industrialized animal slaughter, but also what happens to such horses when they are rescued from slaughter. As such, this dissertation fundamentally asks: what makes a horse save-able and re-wanted again? What kind of lives do they go on to live and why? And how are the decisions to “rescue” certain horses and provide them with “second chances” distinctly cultural and worthy of anthropological analysis? Based on the emerging field of multispecies ethnography, this dissertation thus examines how and why a certain population of the so-called unwanted horses, Thoroughbred ex-racehorses, are rescued from slaughter and how this practice is made culturally meaningful by the “horse people” in the self-proclaimed “horse capital of world,” the Lexington / Bluegrass region of Kentucky, U.S.A. My analysis stems from ten months of fieldwork in the Bluegrass where I conducted ethnographic research at two specific rescue operations for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses: one an equine re-training and adoption facility based at the Kentucky Horse Park called the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, and the other a vocational horse care program for male inmates at Blackburn Correctional Complex called the Second Chances / Groom Elite program. Based on my research at these two sites as they are situated within a larger, regional culture intently focused on the production and glorification of horses, this dissertation concludes that the practice of animal rescue involves constant re-evaluation of the moral and economic worth of human and nonhuman animal lives that were previously marginalized to the point of social and/or mortal death, a concept I have termed “redemptive capital.” Redemptive capital helps measure “who” gets saved and why - and furthermore, how once a life is spared death, what implicit debt is owed one’s redeemers.
GHOST HERDS: RESCUING HORSES AND HORSE PEOPLE IN BLUEGRASS KENTUCKY by Tamar V.S. McKee B.A., Hamilton College, 2000 M.A., University of Colorado, 2004 M.S., University of Colorado, 2005 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2014 © Tamar V.S. McKee, 2014 ii Abstract This dissertation examines the cultural and historical dimensions of why certain communities in the United States are compelled to rescue animals from abuse, neglect, or death. In particular, it engages with the debate over sending “unwanted” horses to slaughter, touching upon not just the history of cultural taboo over the consumption of horsemeat and concerns about the cruelty and food safety of industrialized animal slaughter, but also what happens to such horses when they are rescued from slaughter. As such, this dissertation fundamentally asks: what makes a horse save-able and re-wanted again? What kind of lives do they go on to live and why? And how are the decisions to “rescue” certain horses and provide them with “second chances” distinctly cultural and worthy of anthropological analysis? Based on the emerging field of multispecies ethnography, this dissertation thus examines how and why a certain population of the so-called unwanted horses, Thoroughbred ex-racehorses, are rescued from slaughter and how this practice is made culturally meaningful by the “horse people” in the self-proclaimed “horse capital of world,” the Lexington / Bluegrass region of Kentucky, U.S.A. My analysis stems from ten months of fieldwork in the Bluegrass where I conducted ethnographic research at two specific rescue operations for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses: one an equine re-training and adoption facility based at the Kentucky Horse Park called the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, and the other a vocational horse care program for male inmates at Blackburn Correctional Complex called the Second Chances / Groom Elite program. Based on my research at these two sites as they are situated within a larger, regional culture intently focused on the production and glorification of horses, this dissertation concludes that the practice of animal rescue involves constant re-evaluation of the moral and economic iii worth of human and nonhuman animal lives that were previously marginalized to the point of social and/or mortal death, a concept I have termed “redemptive capital.” Redemptive capital helps measure “who” gets saved and why - and furthermore, how once a life is spared death, what implicit debt is owed one’s redeemers. iv Preface This research was approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board: Certificate Numbers H10-03276 and H10-03346; Principle Investigator, Dr. John Barker Publications arising from this thesis: McKee, Tamar Scoggin (2013) Redemptive Capital: An Ethnographic Look at Human-Horse Relationships. INK Journal 2(2):14-16. I conducted all research and wrote the entire manuscript. v Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ x Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... xi Dedication ................................................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 The Figure of the “Unwanted Horse” ............................................................................ 6 1.2 Point of Entry for this Dissertation ................................................................................ 9 1.3 The Haunting of Horse Slaughter ................................................................................ 12 1.4 Thoroughbred Horseracing: An Introduction ............................................................... 15 1.4.1 Distinctions of “class” ............................................................................................ 19 1.4.2 Distinctions of race and ethnicity ........................................................................... 21 1.4.3 Distinctions of gender ............................................................................................ 24 1.5 The Horse Slaughter Industry: An Introduction ........................................................... 27 1.5.1 Reviving taboos, residual drugs ............................................................................. 28 1.5.2 “The Horsemeat Carousel” .................................................................................... 29 1.6 Accounting for Animals in Anthropology and Human Culture ................................... 30 1.6.1 Of sustenance and symbol ...................................................................................... 32 1.6.2 Of mirrors and windows ........................................................................................ 34 1.6.3 Being multispecies in the anthropocene ................................................................. 36 1.7 Animal Studies: Anthropology’s Messmate ................................................................ 39 1.7.1 One question, many disciplines, many answers ..................................................... 40 1.7.2 An additional question of representation and ethics .............................................. 44 1.7.3 “The world is a knot in motion” ............................................................................. 47 1.8 Situating Horses in Anthropology and Animal Studies ............................................... 49 1.8.1 Horseracing studies ................................................................................................ 51 1.9 Chapter Summary ......................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 2: Methods and Methodology ................................................................................. 58 2.1 From the Grasslands of Tibet to the Bluegrass of Kentucky ....................................... 60 2.2 Growing Up a “Horse Person” ..................................................................................... 63 2.3 “Going Native” in the Bluegrass .................................................................................. 70 2.4 Main Fieldwork Sites ................................................................................................... 74 vi 2.4.1 The Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center .................................................................... 74 2.4.2 Blackburn Correctional Complex .......................................................................... 77 2.4.3 A final note on additional fieldsites ....................................................................... 79 Chapter 3: Becoming the “Horse Capital of the World” .................................................... 82 3.1 Locating the Bluegrass ................................................................................................. 85 3.2 The Bluegrass as America’s First Western Frontier .................................................... 88 3.3 How the Bluegrass Became Thoroughbred Country: pre-Civil War ........................... 90 3.4 The Impact of the Civil War ........................................................................................ 92 3.5 The 20th Century ........................................................................................................... 94 3.5.1 The (ongoing) era of Secretariat: 1973-1989 ......................................................... 96 3.5.2 The (ongoing) era of Secretariat: fieldwork year of 2011 ................................... 104 3.6 Rescuing Horses and Horse People ............................................................................ 108 3.6.1 The Kentucky Horse Park .................................................................................... 113 3.6.2 The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation – and controversy ............................ 119 Chapter 4: Redemptive Capital ........................................................................................... 132 4.1 The Inflection of Bluegrass Christianity .................................................................... 133 4.2 The Legacy of Humanism and Humanocentrism ....................................................... 140 4.2.1 The dividing line of the soul ................................................................................ 143 4.2.2 The dividing line of suffering .............................................................................. 143 4.2.3 Empathy through subjectivity and sentience ....................................................... 145 4.2.4 Equal consideration .............................................................................................. 146 4.3 The Three Levels of Redemptive Capital .................................................................. 147 4.3.1 Level One: Ontological Rupture .......................................................................... 148 4.3.2 Level Two: Assessing Traits ................................................................................ 149 4.3.3 Level Three: Of Redemption and Reincorporation .............................................. 156 Chapter 5: Hippophagy and the (In)humanity .................................................................. 157 5.1 The Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park ........................... 161 5.1.1 Origin story .......................................................................................................... 163 5.1.2 The Secretariat affiliation ..................................................................................... 165 5.1.3 Running the MMSC ............................................................................................. 167 5.2 Ferdy as an Equine Humane Mascot .......................................................................... 170 5.2.1 Beautiful Jim Key ................................................................................................ 173 5.2.2 Snowman .............................................................................................................. 177 5.2.3 “Joey” ................................................................................................................... 182 5.3 Ferdy’s Dad, the “best racer” ..................................................................................... 185 5.3.1 Ferdinand’s birth, first owners, and winning the Kentucky Derby ...................... 186 5.3.2 Ferdinand to Japan, and to his death .................................................................... 190 5.4 Hippophagy and its taboo ........................................................................................... 192 5.4.1 Japan: from uchi to sakura ................................................................................... 194 vii 5.4.2 “The West” ........................................................................................................... 198 5.4.2.1 France and Britain: A debated, nationalist taste for horsemeat ..................... 199 5.5 Being Anti-Slaughter ................................................................................................. 205 5.5.1 The figure of Ferdinand ....................................................................................... 205 5.5.2 The paradox of sentience ..................................................................................... 208 5.5.3 Re-tabooing .......................................................................................................... 210 Chapter 6: Rupturing the Slaughter Pipeline .................................................................... 219 6.1 The Road to Redemption is a Partial Paper Trail ....................................................... 224 6.2 The Politics of Proper Witnessing .............................................................................. 229 6.3 Kill Auctions: Entering the Pipeline .......................................................................... 230 6.3.1 Debating the “kind” of horse that goes to slaughter ............................................ 232 6.4 No Turning Around: On the Road to Slaughter ......................................................... 235 6.4.1 “No water” ........................................................................................................... 236 6.4.2 Transport issues .................................................................................................... 238 6.5 The Act of Slaughter Itself ......................................................................................... 242 6.5.1 In Canada ............................................................................................................. 242 6.5.1.1 The “ideal” way to slaughter a horse ............................................................. 244 6.5.1.2 The multispecies messiness of slaughter ....................................................... 246 6.5.2 Mexico ................................................................................................................. 250 6.5.2.1 Arrival ............................................................................................................ 251 6.5.2.2 Holding Pens ................................................................................................. 253 6.5.2.3 Into the Kill Chute ......................................................................................... 254 6.5.2.4 Differing Conclusions ................................................................................... 256 6.6 Redeemed from Slaughter: Immediate Rescue as the First Step ............................... 257 6.6.1 “Let down” ........................................................................................................... 260 6.6.2 Rescued to re-race ................................................................................................ 261 6.7 The Redemptive Capital of a Redheaded Mare ......................................................... 263 6.8 Moving into a New Field ........................................................................................... 269 Chapter 7: Multispecies Redemption in a Bluegrass Prison ............................................. 276 7.1 Spatial Context of Blackburn and the TRF Farm as My Fieldsite ............................. 279 7.2 Historical Context of Blackburn Correctional Complex ............................................ 285 7.3 The TRF as an Educational Program – for “Offenders” ............................................ 289 7.4 The TRF as an Animal-based Prison Program ........................................................... 294 7.4.1 Redeeming time, segmented space ...................................................................... 299 7.5 The Redemptive Capital of the Blackburn Herd ........................................................ 306 7.5.1 Call Anytime ........................................................................................................ 308 7.5.2 Ivory ..................................................................................................................... 311 7.5.3 Trevor ................................................................................................................... 313 7.6 The Redemptive Capital of Student-Inmates ............................................................. 317 viii 7.6.1 Distancing oneself from imprisonment ................................................................ 319 7.6.2 The ability to become-with horses ....................................................................... 321 7.6.3 Life beyond the fence? ......................................................................................... 329 Chapter 8: The Transformation of the Putnamville Five ................................................. 336 8.1 Horse Scouting Trip to Putnamville Correctional Facility ........................................ 340 8.1.1 Searching for redemptive capital in a winter hardened herd ............................... 342 8.1.2 Selecting horses from the herd ............................................................................. 345 8.1.3 Evaluating the horses that made the cut ............................................................... 349 8.2 The Arrival of the Putnamville Five .......................................................................... 353 8.2.1 A “beauty parlor day” .......................................................................................... 355 8.2.1.1 The condition of the mares ............................................................................ 356 8.2.1.2 The condition of the geldings ........................................................................ 358 8.2.1.3 Debating the marks on horse bodies .............................................................. 362 8.2.1.4 The redemptive capital of mane pulling ........................................................ 365 8.3 Re-Schooling the Putnamville Five ........................................................................... 367 8.3.1 Natural Horsemanship: paradoxes of history, gender, and ethics ........................ 369 8.3.2 Reschooling the mares ......................................................................................... 374 8.3.2.1 The curse and blessing of being a mare ......................................................... 378 8.3.3 Reschooling the geldings ..................................................................................... 381 8.3.3.1 The redemptive capital of bareback jumping ................................................ 383 8.4 A Redeemed Life ....................................................................................................... 387 8.4.1 Halo ...................................................................................................................... 389 8.4.2 Marlin ................................................................................................................... 390 8.4.3 Robin .................................................................................................................... 393 8.4.4 Odie: “Emmanuel” ............................................................................................... 395 Chapter 9: Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 402 9.1 The MMSC and TRF part ways ................................................................................. 405 9.1.1 Reschooling the pasture ornament? ..................................................................... 406 9.1.2 Suing in the name of the horse ............................................................................. 408 9.1.3 Autonomy achieved ............................................................................................. 410 9.2 A Second Chance for the TRF ................................................................................... 413 9.2.1 The redemptive capital of prison programs ......................................................... 413 9.2.2 Fostering and virtual sponsorship ........................................................................ 416 9.3 The Racing World Responds ..................................................................................... 418 9.3.1 Thoroughbred Incentive Program ........................................................................ 419 9.3.2 Thoroughbred Connect ........................................................................................ 420 9.3.3 Aftercare ............................................................................................................... 421 9.3.4 Some Hypotheticals ............................................................................................. 426 9.3.4.1 Pension fund .................................................................................................. 426 ix 9.3.4.2 Re-training as a business ............................................................................... 427 9.3.4.3 Humane euthanasia ........................................................................................ 428 9.4 Further Polishing the Thoroughbred Mirror .............................................................. 430 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 442 x List of Figures Figure 1: Horse and rider from the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Program warming up at the Kentucky Dressage Association show……………………….……………………………………2 Figure 2: Queeda outside our converted barn apartment……………………...…………………72 Figure 3: Horses at the horizon…………………………………………………………………..83 Figure 4: The entire Bluegrass region of Kentucky (Outer and Inner) ………………………….86 Figure 5: Hoof of a horse as shaped like the state of Kentucky…………………………..……118 Figure 6: Non-descript sign at the border of Scott and Fayette counties……………………….118 Figure 7: "Conversion talk" en route to the Kentucky Horse Park……………………………..137 Figure 8: the pensioner statue of Secretariat looks out over the black fences of the MMSC…..166 Figure 9: Ferdy as a school horse at MMSC……………………………………………………171 Figure 10: The diagram drawn after my lesson on (intra-acting with) Ferdy…………………..215 Figure 11: Fly comes into the office to check her email………………………………………..220 Figure 12: Horses in a holding pen at Bouvry Export, Fort Macleod, Alberta………………....224 Figure 13: Melissa and Fly representing MMSC at a Dressage show………………………….268 Figure 14: Lara and Shooby finish up a successful round of show jumping at the Kentucky Horse Park ..…………………………………………………………………………………………...275 Figure 15: TRF barn at Blackburn……………………………………………………………...281 Figure 16: Linda Dyer and Inmate (face obscured for anonymity) with horses………………..327 Figure 17: MMSC representatives scout out horses with Putnamville Farm manager…………342 Figure 18: The first Putnamville horse comes off the trailer at MMSC………………………..353 Figure 19: Marlin……………………………………………………………………………….356 Figure 20: Halo…………………………………………………………………………………357 Figure 21: Robin………………………………………………………………………………..359 Figure 22: Lee / Chase………………………………………………………………………….360 Figure 23: Odie…………………………………………………………………………………361 Figure 24: Odie, now Manny, after his first show…………………….………………………..398 Figure 25: Susanna flipping Gunnar's lip to show his registration tattoo at the Secretariat Festival 2011……………………………………………………………………………………………..405 Figure 26: Ferdy bowing………………………………………………………………………..434 xi Acknowledgements I have imagined this moment of writing these acknowledgements since the first pang of gratitude I felt in terms of making this dissertation really happen. That pang first and foremost goes out to my supervisor, Dr. John Barker, whose support of this project through and through is what finally drove it across the finish line after a grueling race. Thank you for everything, especially when it took juggling me as your square-peg student along with all the other responsibilities and burdens you were shouldering for most of this dissertation’s history. Here’s to a shared sense of great accomplishment and education earned along the way. My committee members, Dr. Alexia Bloch and Dr. Andrew Martindale, are also to be deeply thanked for their endurance and guidance in this project. Your ideas enlivened and emboldened this dissertation when and where it truly needed it. Thank you for reminding me of the core strengths and approaches in anthropology while supporting my exploration of multispecies implications and irritations. I would also like to thank Dr. Gaston Gordillo for substituting on my committee just as this project was about to be approved and launched for fieldwork in the fall 2010, as well as for his “space and place” approach that has inspired so many of us students in the department. And in a full sense of gratitude, I wish to thank all professors in the department whose scholarship has touched this project in some way or another, especially Dr. Bruce Miller, Dr. Michael Blake, Dr. Pat Moore, Dr. William McKellin, and Dr. Jennifer Kramer. Your interest and encouragement in my work is what kept me in the fold when things threatened to unravel. Dr. Tsering Shakya of the Institute of Asian Research must also be acknowledged for his continued support of me as scholar despite my path taking me away from Tibetan research at UBC. You always found time for conversation and guidance whenever I came knocking at your door, and it is still, and always will be, an immense honor and privilege to know you and to support your critical work for Tibetans and the world. One reason why I chose UBC is because this school offered me a “full ride,” which meant not only having the economic beast of graduate school tamed, but also that UBC recognized me as a scholar worthy of flattering investment. Little did I know how untamed the economic beast would turn out to be, but in the end, I know I was extremely fortunate to receive the funding I did for it ultimately helped me graduate with no student loan debt. In this day and age, this is a feat and accomplishment on par with receiving one’s diploma, which is so distracting to the true task at hand and should not stay the norm. That all being said, this dissertation was funded by the University of British Columbia, first through university-wide fellowships, scholarships, and awards like the University Graduate Fellowship and the Four-Year Fellowship, and then through the anthropology department itself with “finishing funds” that took a lot of coordination and effort on everyone’s behalf, and were ultimately well-appreciated and used. This next round of acknowledgements is where the pangs get personal and even more profound. Dr. Molly Malone, you are nonpareil for my time at UBC. You have stood by me in xii every which way, as well as patiently pointed the way out for me after you being there yourself. You have also been such a loving and fun figure in my life and the life of my family, beyond all that “school stuff.” Thank you for everything, including your own important work for Aboriginal waterscapes and self-determination. Dr. Natalie Baloy, Dr. Iain McKechnie, Sara Kormarinsky, and Marlee McGuire, thank you for hearing me out when I needed to triage this dissertation. Knowing that I could reach out to you made writing and thinking less lonely; Iain and Sara, you especially brought fresh perspective and insight when so I needed it. On that note, Dr. Katie Gillespie from the geography department at the University of Washington, thank you for giving this writing your time and input too, as well as for your own critical multispecies, compassionate work, both in school and in life. There are countless other colleagues and friends who are beautifully entangled in the production and product of this dissertation, almost too many to list here with any great effectiveness for conveying how much I recognize that without their intervention… Of those is Dr. Maria-Elena Garcia at the University of Washington – I am so fortunate to have crossed paths with you and to have both the friendship of mothers and multispecies scholarship stick. To Tal Nitsan at UBC for giving me the extra day to write every week in the spring of 2013 when I needed it so. To Ana Vivaldi at UBC for pointing me in a direction she had already been with her first child. To Dr. Janice Peck at the University of Colorado for introducing to me a reflexive and reflective Bourdieu, and for re-charging my theoretical batteries when the life had all but left them. To Dr. Eben Kirksey for introducing me to Dr. Karen Barad in person and in writing, and for bringing me, wide-eyed and wondering, into the roundtable discussion at the 2012 AAAs. So many more, so many more I could thank… But I need to save space for Kentucky folks, like Linda Dyer, Amanda Ellis, Emelie Fojan, and Melissa Recknor. If I could be half the horsewoman that you are, I’d have more than a Ph.D. in horse(wo)manship. You helped me stay afloat, informed, and courageous during the liminal time of fieldwork. I am grateful for all the questions you answered, and still answer, for me. I am forever indebted to Bill Cook at the International Museum of the Horse for giving me work in the archives of Mary Aiken Littauer. As I always joke, “Mary” mentored me from the grave, and it is all because of your matchmaking. And to all the horse people who shared their lives and livelihoods with me during my year in the Bluegrass (again, too many to list here), thank you for showing me your world. I hope the road of insight travels in both directions through this dissertation. Christine Youngblood New - I know this especially rings true for you and I. I am nothing without my family. They fill my heart, challenge my will, and enrich my thoughts. Drs. Charlie and Kirsten Scoggin: as if the gift of your children, Eliza and Charlie E., weren’t enough, your generosity and hospitality sustained me during fieldwork in ways I cannot ever repay. Charline “Nongie” Scoggin, you were the first to teach me about being kind to animals, and this legacy was constantly felt throughout this research. Victoria “Oma” Kareus, those newspaper clippings on all things horse were always a joy to receive in my mailbox at the xiii Georgetown, Kentucky, post office. Dr. Charles and Karen Scoggin – Dad and Mom – there are no words, no words, to convey how much I owe you for this one except those that you will find in this dissertation. Thank you for the redemption and believing always in my own redemptive capital. You gave your kids a life with horses, and look what we did with it. Corry Judd Mielke: if friends are fictive kin, you are the closest one can be; through you, I had a compass by which to navigate the “show horse” world, and the incredible gift of horse(wo)manship it fostered in beautiful, caring people like you. And speaking of such, I have to acknowledge all the creatures who consented (and sometimes not) to carry me on their backs throughout my lifetime so far: Pauly, Burrlito, Ladore, Egypt, George, D-Bar, Oscar, the equines in Kentucky, and especially to Chili – if my life was ever to flash before my eyes, I am glad you were the one to inspire such vision, and lived to tell the tale too. Lastly, there is the family I serendipitously picked up along the way while seeing this dissertation through from start to finish. I never saw them coming, and my life has been unbelievably blessed ever since. To Queeda, the best research assistant in the Bluegrass, and for rescuing me when I needed it too. To Asa, my love, my biggest supporter, my everything. Thank you for traveling out to Kentucky during that year and committing to this project with (and sometimes more than) me. What a life we have before us, and what a life we have already lived. And of the life before us: thank you, Veda, for being the biggest motivation and distraction to finishing this dissertation. Your first words may very well be “horse” or “redemptive capital,” and that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Not at all. xiv Dedication For Veda Avis, may you always be kind to animals 1 Chapter 1: Introduction “Bubba”1 was starting to colic, which meant the elaborate maze of a horse’s intestines was starting to knot up on itself. Bubba, a non-descript, bay Thoroughbred gelding on the shorter side who had once been destined to race, let his discomfort be known by snapping and flicking his tail with the pain, and alternatively trying to kick his belly with one of his hind legs. We had only just arrived at the Kentucky Dressage Association show at Masterson Park that quiet August morning. The sky was a mosaic of silver clouds, providing a buffer from the late summer heat and humidity typical of central Kentucky that year. Bubba had been brought to ride in the show and be shown off as a potentially adoptable horse, but now his early signs of colic brought that plan to an end. Instead, we were now waiting for the horse van to return to Masterson to get Bubba back to the barn where he could receive veterinary care. I was tasked to walk Bubba, for walking a horse in early stages of colic was believed to help keep the intestines from ringing around each other and fatally staunching the flow of digestion. Back and forth we walked, and the repetitive motion brought back memories of my own, of walking one of my mother’s last racehorses as the old mare colicked enough to start stumbling, while I prayed for the vet to make it on time. Soon enough, the van soon showed back up at Masterson and the driver took Bubba from me and led him up the ramp and into one of the shipping stalls. He clamped cross-ties on either side of Bubba’s leather halter and then stepped back and exited the van. As he did so, I caught a glimpse of the horse that sent off another uncontrollable memory – but this time, one that was born of my recent research on shipping horses to slaughter. As Bubba stood in the van’s stall, looking out at me, I was struck by how small and vulnerable, and yet extremely fortunate he was to be there. Seeing him there made me think of the thousands of horses who get loaded – sometimes crammed – into trailers that were the antithesis of the luxury of a shipping van. These horses might be colicking too, or even pregnant, and about to take what might rack up to be a thousand-plus mile journey not to a barn where a veterinarian was waiting for them, but to a feed lot of a slaughterhouse where there may or may not be water and hay waiting for them. Yet instead of this scenario, Bubba was one lone and lucky horse awaiting transport in a van that could have 1 A stable name given to a horse that was previously known by his racing name; also the name of Man O’War’s African American groom, Bubba Graves. 2 A term coined by the American Horse Council and Unwanted Horse Coalition for policy and congressional 2 handled nine more horses. He continued to give me a quizzical look as the driver drew up the loading ramp and closed and secured the door. “See you back at the barn,” I said. And I did. This dissertation examines how and why a certain population of the so-called “unwanted horses”2 in America, Thoroughbred ex-racehorses3, are rescued from slaughter and how this practice is made culturally meaningful by the “horse people” (Cassidy 2007) in the self-proclaimed “horse capital of world,” the Lexington-based, Bluegrass region of Kentucky, U.S.A. 2 A term coined by the American Horse Council and Unwanted Horse Coalition for policy and congressional lobbying purposes. 3 See The Blood-­‐Horse, October 2nd, 2010 for a special report specific to Thoroughbred ex-­‐racehorses, “Unwanted Horses: How the Industry is Dealing with Life After Racing.” Figure 1: Horse and rider from the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Program warming up at the Kentucky Dressage Association show (photo by TVS McKee) 3 My analysis stems from ten months of fieldwork in the Bluegrass where I conducted ethnographic research of one of the largest Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue operations in North America, the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. While in the field, I focused on two specific programs run by the TRF: one a re-training and adoption facility for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses at the Kentucky Horse Park called the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, the other a vocational horse care program for inmates at Blackburn Correctional Complex called the Second Chances / Groom Elite program. As such, when I reference “horse people,” I mean not just the owners, breeders, trainers, and other laborers involved in the production of Thoroughbred racehorses, I also mean, among many others, the rescuers, the benefactors, the adopters, the farm managers, and the incarcerated men who meet these horses on the other side of the track. From my ethnographic engagement at these two field sites, this dissertation considers how the larger, national picture of moral outrage towards horse slaughter and the ethical prescriptions that arise out of this outrage, such as animal rescue, are particularly meaningful (cf. Williams 1977) and complicated (cf. Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) at the local-culture level in the Bluegrass. This local, cultural practice of horse rescue is most profoundly grasped by looking at relationships between horse people and horses. I argue that within these relationships a fundamental re-valuing of Homo and Equus life takes place in relation to how much “death” once threatened them – in a sense as cultural as it is natural (Latour 1992, Haraway 2008). I encapsulate this dynamic within the concept of “redemptive capital,” which throughout this dissertation intends to help measure “who” gets saved and why, and, furthermore, how once a “life” is spared, what implicit debt is owned to one’s “redeemers.” I came up with the analytical concept of redemptive capital because it helps me speak to the complex and entangled nature of rescue as I saw it happening between the humans and horses 4 in my study. Etiologically, I use the word “redemptive” to indicate the relational nature of this concept, as well to capture the local cultural roots and meaning of such as word as I found it circulating in the Bluegrass. This began first with the entanglement of Christianity and horsemanship, and then of secular humanism and animal rights. At the core of this local notion of redemptive is the moral debate particular to the Judeo-Christian West over how humans should treat animals and moreover, what mirror it holds up to human treatment of our species. In terms of “capital,” as much as this concept has been a moving target in anthropology since Marx and Engles, I landed on Bourdieu’s treatment of it, pulling both from the 1986 essay “The Forms of a capital,” and then when he made his own species turn of sorts in the 1992 book An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology he co-created with his student and renown prison ethnographer, Loic Wacquant. I am drawn to Bourdieu’s “species of capital” because it helps analyze how varying species and amounts of capital (not just economic) are used by agents to strategize and struggle in structurally objective relations within a variety of differentiated fields. In this way, we can see the political and moral economy of equine rescue entangled with that of human incarceration, both involving marginalized subjects with questionable agency and ability to speak for themselves. Lastly, in addition to being a relational concept, redemptive capital is also processual and transformative nature. I thus found Arnold Van Gennep’s rites of passage and Victor Turner’s notion of liminality as surprising useful in helping me realize that I was thinking of redemptive capital as three-step phenomenon. As such, redemptive capital starts at “Level One,” when an ontological rupture occurs. In the rites of passage model, this is known as the moment of separation from one’s previous world and social status. But unlike in Van Gennep’s model, this is not a socially pre-ordained and 5 ultimately celebratory shift; it is an ad hoc and destructive breakage to one’s very being-in-the-world (cf. Ingold 2000). But key to this breakage, or rupture, is that it is not complete – death, be it social or mortal, is not final. Instead, in the liminality that ensues, “Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of life appear,” to quote Judith Butler (2009: 14). I argue that this value appears in the traits identified as redemptive capital, that is, that which is considered too important to succumb to complete death – a judgment call that must be understood as profoundly culturally and historically specific. It is the identification of traits and the value they carry that initiates Level Two: first in the immediate rescue of the condemned, and then in the ongoing assessment of traits in the further negotiation of liminality where one is no longer dead but not yet living a livable life. Level two is the heart of redemptive capital: where the growing possession of the various species of redemptive capital, in Bourdieu’s words, “commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions” (1992:119). That is to say, redemptive capital helps the once-condemned strategize their second chance, and both humans and horses can help, and hinder, each other in that jockeying for a new, less liminal position. Of this new position, this is where the third level of redemptive capital comes in, helping us assess and, moreover, to question how feasible claims to redemption and social reincorporation are. This is especially so when there is a disconnect between the legitimacy of capital in one field versus that in another. I will return a more in-depth consideration of redemptive capital in Chapter Four, and in doing so I will also provide a platform from which to launch into the main ethnographic chapters of this dissertation. 6 1.1 The Figure of the “Unwanted Horse” The moral outrage over horse slaughter and the ethical response of rescue as I saw it in the Bluegrass circa 2011 is part of a larger movement of equine-specific animal rescue practices and care facilities within the United States that cater to the some 170,000 horses that go unwanted (and thus many to slaughter) every year (LaMarra 2010:2828). LaMarra additionally points out that while “there have always been problems with unwanted horses – and unwanted animals in general,” between 2006-2009 there was a “strong shift in such a short period of time” in terms of peoples’ concerns about unwanted horses in America. This shift is attributed to “a real change in society’s awareness of how animals should be treated” coupled by “a greater perception that there are some serious problems” when it comes to production of surplus, and so-called unwanted horses (ibid). This time period also leads up to, and falls in the immediate aftermath of a nationwide ban on horse slaughter - the effects of which will be felt and addressed throughout this dissertation. One trope that repeatedly haunted the horse rescue operations in the Bluegrass as I knew them was that of horses left neglected and starving in pastures, because slaughtering them was no longer available and it cost too much money to call in a vet to “put them down.” Who exactly are these “unwanted horses,” and why should it be the concern of an anthropologist? According to the American Horse Council, an unwanted horse has been defined for policy and lobbying purposes as one that is “no longer wanted by their current owner because they are old, injured, sick, unmanageable, unable to meet expectations, or unaffordable by their owner.”4 That is to say, an unwanted horse is distinctly culturally and historically produced and 4 Definition of an unwanted horse by the AHC/UHC; see Lamarra 2010:2828. 7 politicized by deliberate human (in)action and (dis)belief. Furthermore, according to a survey administered by the Unwanted Horse Council in 2009, 74% of the respondents5 indicated that the economy “by far was the biggest contributor” (LaMarra 2010:2828) to the creation of unwanted horses in that people were most likely to off-load their horses when their economic picture took a turn for the worst. The next biggest contributors to the creation of unwanted horses according to the UHC survey were the “closure of processing plants” (48%), “indiscriminate breeding” (40%) and “the high cost of euthanasia and carcass disposal” (23%) (ibid). To care for these “horses no one wants,” it has been estimated that “the equine industry would need about $25 million,” which averages out $2,300 per horse per year (ibid), though it is estimated that care in a “retirement facility” would be more like $1000/horse/year. In response to this problem of unwanted horses, four solutions were deemed “most appealing” to respondents in the UHC survey: “education on responsible ownership; financially supporting rescue and adoption facilities, reopening U.S. processing plants, and providing more resources for humane euthanasia” (ibid). For the horse (rescue) people I came to know during my fieldwork, “humane euthanasia” – that is, a death serum recommended and administered by injection by a veterinarian – was the most ideal, purposeful death that should await horses, but, as I will explore, not without some trepidation over the stigma of death and expendability of life that it suggested. Within this larger picture, this dissertation focuses on the so-called solution of rescue and adoption facilities in the U.S. at a time when slaughter is no longer considered an economic solution but a moral problem of national scale, and the kinds of human-horse relationships that 5 The survey consisted of 23,000 respondents that were “horse owners, industry stakeholders, rescue and adoption facilities, and even non-­‐horse owners” (Lamarra 2010:2828). 8 coalesce there under this dynamic. While the UHC reports that there are an upward of 400 equine care facilities in the U.S., the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) suggests there might be at least 9006 (ibid). Though I studied only one organization in hundreds, the TRF is renown as being one of the largest and oldest organizations dedicated specifically to former Thoroughbred racehorses. By and large, these facilities (including the TRF) are run as non-profit organizations and must compete with each other from a limited fundraising pool such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Thoroughbred Charities of America (TCA), as well as from private, individual donors ranging from wealthy patrons who can establish $5 million endowments to those who mail in but $5/month cheques. In addition to raising monetary capital, these organizations also compete with each other for donations of services and goods ranging from veterinarian care and medicines to transport of horses or the delivery of hay. Many might also seek out sponsorships if they are re-training horses, and as such might get saddles, helmets, leg wraps, and the like donated in exchange for visibility of one’s product in association with a charitable organization. To many in my study, this scramble for money was ironic and problematic given how much money it was perceived the racing industry makes. This issue was laid bare when the TRF itself was accused of neglect of its rescue herd despite receiving millions in charitable donations from racing insiders – a controversy I will get to in a moment. But during my time in the field, I also found that the industry was struggling too, losing money and respect by characteristically 6 As I write this (April 2014) the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, which grew out of the NTRA, is accrediting Thoroughbred-­‐specific facilities. So far, 23 have been accredited. See http://www.thoroughbredaftercare.org/pdf/AftercareCodeofStandardsFinalDraft.pdf for standards of accreditation. 9 groaning under the weight of its own contradictions – such as wanting faster and more famous racehorses, but using debilitating drugs and training methods to try to get there. In terms of the oversight of these organizations and how they spend their money, care for their horses, and generally conduct themselves as an organization is slowly catching up to recent growth in their numbers, with care standards7 set by the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) for rescue and retirement facilities, and further care and financial oversight conducted by organizations like the TCA should facilities be funded by them. “There may be some organizations that may not know how to take care of horses properly,” according to LaMarra (2010:2830). “The TCA and other organizations have a responsibility to make sure these things don’t happen” (ibid). But as I will demonstrate, such “things” still can happen even to the largest, most visible horse rescue for Thoroughbreds in North America. 1.2 Point of Entry for this Dissertation With this larger picture in mind, this dissertation explores the dialectic of how Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue in the Bluegrass is both shaped by (1) the region’s ongoing, intense focus on being the reigning “horse capital of the world ” by particularly glorifying the racing industry and equestrian competition world, and (2) the marginalization of lives – both human and equine – that are partially produced by and yet challenge this celebratory project of local regional heritage and identity. This dynamic of glorification and marginalization will be specifically examined through various human-horse relationships at my two main field sites, the Marker’s Mark Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park and TRF’s Second Chances/Groom Elite program 7 Available here: http://www.unwantedhorsecoalition.org/resources/rescue_retirement_guidelines.pdf 10 at Blackburn Correctional Complex. I will argue that embedded in the relationships between humans and horses at these sites are distinct and ongoing negotiations of difference and power according to what each creature is said to be “worth.” In other words, I am interested in how classificatory ideas and practices can be imposed not just by humans onto humans, but by humans onto non-humans, like horses, and what is reflected back. By demonstrating how equine lives and deaths are impacted by human cultural values, especially as they vacillate between glory and gore, as it were, I am further interested on how this bounces back, or in the words of Donna Haraway (1992), “diffracts” onto how human lives are valued and categorized. If one of the age-old questions to scholars dedicated to the question of “the animal” (Derrida et al. 2003) is how do animals make us human? (cf. Shepard 1994), this dissertation asks how do Thoroughbred ex-racehorses make “us”8 humane? This last question became especially salient during my fieldwork when the TRF came under fire by one of the most influential newspapers in the U.S., The New York Times, for supposedly grossly mismanaging the Thoroughbreds in its organization’s herds. “Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Them,” seared the headline on March 17th, 2011. With this development, my fieldwork situation became just as much about documenting the dynamic of glorification and marginalization in the everyday life of Thoroughbred racehorse rescue operations, as paying witness to a very public, social-media driven controversy that would change the face of the TRF and how horse rescue occurs in the U.S., and even call the horse racing industry and State of New York into response. As this controversy occurred around the same time the state of Kentucky was being warned of an impending crisis in its oversight of 8 As collected by “the figure” (Haraway 2008) of Bluegrass horse people. I will engage further with the concept of the figure in Chapter Five. 11 state-run prisons – which itself ran concurrent to the aftermath of one of the most significant economic downturns the Bluegrass (and the world) had experienced in 2008-2009, an even larger question emerged: what happens when the institutions created to address and manage so-called problem populations, be they unwanted horses or criminalized humans, begin to falter under their undue social and economic burden? The words “who,” “life,” and “redeemers” are key to this dissertation in that they mark the stakes for both humans and horses in the cultural practice and meaning of rescue; furthermore, this dissertation is also a project in not taking species distinctions for granted but exposing them for their cultural constructions, historical situatedness, and political and epistemological salience. Additionally, this dissertation considers horse rescue as a human cultural phenomenon through the emerging genre and practice of “multispecies ethnography,” wherein human animal relations are considered a worthy locus for ethnographic research. This form of ethnographic practice seeks to “[press] into the foreground…the host of organisms whose lives and deaths are linked to human social worlds” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:545). Through this unique and unconventional ethnographic lens, this dissertation considers how both the humans and horses I encountered in my research - and now write about - “shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:545) that are often (and unquestionably) attributed to, and assumed to impact, only humans. In the words of Donna Haraway, “we polish an animal mirror to look for ourselves” (1991:21). This dissertation thus explores not just the marks (cf. Barad 2003) humans make on animals, but what animals can show us about the production of “humanity” and inequity with our own species. 12 1.3 The Haunting of Horse Slaughter In 2011, of the approximately 9.2 million domestic horses in the United States9, 133, 241 were exported to Canada, Mexico, or Japan to be slaughtered for human meat consumption and by-product processing10. Of those exported horses, “an estimated 7,000” are “former racehorses” (Mitchell 2010:2827). Once a business that could thrive in the national borders of the U.S., horse slaughter was provisionally banned in 200711 due to legislative action fundamentally motivated by longstanding cultural taboos against the consumption of horsemeat combined with ever-growing, contemporary concerns over the cruelty of industrialized animal slaughter as well as the health and safety of food production as it enters global flows of distribution and consumption. Yet while controversy and protest over the slaughter of “America’s Horses” (as anti-horse slaughter activists provocatively call horses born in the U.S.A.) halted domestic operations, the business of horse slaughter has by no means ceased but instead become transnational, enabled by international transportation routes, existing slaughter plants outside the U.S., continuing market demand for horsemeat, and the limits to which consumers are morally and ethically concerned about how such meat produced. Yet despite this unintended consequence, American anti-slaughter activists continue to work legislatively to terminally prohibit the export and slaughter of horses beyond U.S. borders12, thinking this will put an end to the tabooed practice of not just eating horses (hippophagy) but the cultural mindset that sanctions 9 This figure comes from a 2005 study of the U.S. horse industry conducted by the American Horse Council (http://www.horsecouncil.org/national-­‐economic-­‐impact-­‐us-­‐horse-­‐industry; accessed September 20th, 2013) 10 Statistic comes from http://www.equinewelfarealliance.org/uploads/00-­‐Slaughter_Statistics.pdf (accessed September 19th, 2013). 11 Despite unsuccessful efforts to restore horse-­‐specific slaughter plants within the nation-­‐state borders and jurisdiction of the U.S. since 2011. 12 The various bills I will discuss in Chapters Five and Six 13 this practice as well. I will return to the issue of horse slaughter, its global reach and local debates throughout this dissertation, especially in Chapters Five and Six. The taboo of horsemeat in the United States, and the social debate and action it inspires between those appalled at the thought of eating horses and those who do not see it any different than eating cows, chickens, and pigs, is not a new topic in anthropology. Back in the 1970s, Marshall Sahlins was motivated to address the issue in relation to the “meteoric inflation of food prices in the spring of 1973” and the “unsavory attempts to substitute horsemeat for beef during the same time” (1976:172). As protests broke out over the sale of horsemeat, Sahlins saw this as evidence of how Americans were especially enculturated to view animals in “degrees of edibility” measured by how differentiated they were “by participation as subject or object in the company of men” (1976:174). As horses (along with dogs) participated “in American society in the capacity of subjects” in that they were given names and conversed with “as we do not talk to pigs and cattle,” they were “thus deemed inedible, for, as the Red Queen said, ‘It isn’t etiquette to cut anybody you’ve been introduced to’” (1976:174). That horses13 were deemed inedible because of how they come to be “known” by humans through personalizing relationships is a point that Sahlins makes that will resonate throughout this dissertation. How does some thing come to be known as some one, and to what consequence? Marvin Harris was not satisfied in the slightest about Sahlins’ suggestion that Americans, supplied food via “a new capital-intensive agribusiness method” (1979:255), saw horsemeat as 13 However, Sahlins goes on to consider the degrees of edibility between horses and dogs and argues that “dogs are closer to men than are horses” because they are “one of the family,” whereas horses “stand in a more menial, working relationship to people” and are thus more like “servants and nonkin” (1976:174). 14 taboo because of the emotionally suggestive ways horses can be named and talked to. 14 Rather, Harris found that in Sahlins’ “pontifications of the structural Marxists against infrastructural causality” he was “mistaken about the etics of horse-meat consumption” (1979:256). Harris was instead fixated on the “practical” advantages and disadvantages of the meat industry, whereby capital is invested in certain meats not because of their “symbolic qualities” but because of how well meat eating can take advantage of certain material circumstances – be they environmental or social in nature (1979:255). When it came to horsemeat, Harris accused Sahlins of being too eager “to dematerialized the United States economy,” overlooking the fact that “people as well as pets eat pet food” (1979:255). Harris further scolds: “One should know something about how much of the pet food industry…is actually supported by the human quest for cheap protein,” with the questing humans being those “who are treated like dogs: old, ill, and desperately poor people” (1979:256). Harris’ point about the mirroring of human class dynamics and social meaning and status ascribed to animals is also an issue that will thread throughout this dissertation, but in a way that seeks to embrace both symbolic and material forces instead of parsing them out. The debate over horsemeat has not gone away in American society, and has become in the 21st century additionally entangled with issues like the cruelty of animal slaughter and its questionable food health and safety standards. Yet one tension demonstrated in Sahlins’ and Harris’ exchange does remain an inflection point: that between understanding why horses come to mean so much to certain people that the thought of consigning them to slaughter is 14 As a further contestation to this, one could site Levi-­‐Strauss’ consideration of how separated racehorses, in particular, are from human society as they are neither “subjects or objects…they are products of human industry and they are born and live as isolated individuals juxtaposed in stud farms devised for their own sake…They constitute the desocialized condition of existence of a private society” (Levi-­‐Strauss 1966 cited in Cassidy 2002:124). 15 unthinkable, while for others they are unquestionably still livestock and therefore considered killable and edible (cf. Agamben 2004). Picking up where Sahlins and Harris left off, this dissertation forms around this ongoing tension of sentience versus sustenance when it comes to the cultural role and power of horses; but instead of continuing to argue about the nature of the American taboo of hippophagy, this dissertation pivots and considers what happens when mounts do not become meat, to paraphrase cultural historian Kari Weil (2007:44), because of the power of the taboo. This dissertation thus asks what becomes of horses when they are spared the condemnation of death and edibility by slaughter? What makes a horse, sometimes referred to as “unwanted” for policy purposes, save-able and re-wanted again? What renewed relationships and multispecies entanglements (Haraway 2008) do they enter into with humans, and how does the mark of their redemption reflect back upon the people who come to care about and for them? In short, how are the decisions to “rescue”15 certain horses and provide them with “second chances” – to use the focal vocabulary of those people involved in rescue practices - distinctly cultural and worthy of anthropological analysis? 1.4 Thoroughbred Horseracing: An Introduction In this next section, I will provide some critical background to what Thoroughbred horseracing is as a cultural practice, sport, and industry, and how within this system both human and equine lives are taxonomized and treated accordingly. In this way, we can better understand how rescue works in tandem, and in tension, with racing. To paraphrase the master narrative of the history of Thoroughbred racing (cf. Cassidy 2002, 2007; Huggins 2008), in 12th century England horses began racing on flat (meaning no 15 I will qualify this term later on in the introduction. 16 jumps or obstacles) courses; then, in the 17th century, stallions from North Africa and the Middle East were imported and bred with English horses, thus creating the “Thoroughbred” horse as it is known today (cf. Landry 2009). This basic combination of flat racing and the creation of the Thoroughbred breed can be considered the two foundational pillars of Thoroughbred horseracing as it is known today across the world. Yet, while they have remained common denominators throughout the history and global spread of Thoroughbred racing, there has been much re-interpretation of and elaboration upon this basic formula according to historical change and cultural appropriation of the sport outside England. Today, Thoroughbred racing takes place in a plethora of countries such as Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America. Some global regulation, oversight, and communication are achieved through the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities16, but mostly the sport is imagined and managed by authorities in-country. For example, in the U.S. there is The Jockey Club of North America (TJC)17 which handles the breeding and registration of Thoroughbreds intended for racing, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA)18 which works to promote the sport as a competition and gambling event, and the Thoroughbred Racing Association (TRA)19 which mediates the legislative needs of the sport. There is also the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association (TOBA)20, whose mission is to “to improve the economics, integrity and pleasure of the sport on behalf of owners and breeders,” indicating its emphasis on the breeding business within the 16 http://www.horseracingintfed.com/aboutDisplay.asp?section=8; Accessed 03/28/14 17 http://www.jockeyclub.com/default.asp?section=About&area=0 18 http://www.ntra.com/ 19 http://www.tra-­‐online.com/about.html 20 https://www.toba.org; accessed 05/25/14 17 larger picture of the racing industry. However, despite the number of racing organizations in the U.S., during my time in the field I repeatedly heard people voice concern over the lack of a unifying voice or the central authority of “a racing czar” in U.S. horseracing (cf. Cassidy 2007 for similar issues in British horseracing). This concern would be especially agitated when issues came up like the safety of racetrack surfaces, the questionable use of performance enhancing drugs for horses, and, of course, slaughter (though it was often cloaked in rhetoric such as “aftercare” and “retirement” for “unwanted” horses). While the production of Thoroughbred horseracing involves great emphasis on the creation, maintenance, and improvement of the two basic pillars of the sport – the race “course” (as it is referred to in British cultural circles) or “track” (which is more American, although Keeneland calls itself a “racecourse” as a way to invoke the high standards and class of racing’s British origins, I would argue), and the racehorse (from breeding, to sales preparation, to race training and competition) – there is a third fundamental pillar to this sport as well: gambling. Even at the origins of racing, when horses raced under the banners of English nobility, giving way to the nickname “sport of kings,” bets were made between kings as to what horse would finish first and winning purses were awarded based on the pooling of money and other forms of wealth (such as commemorative gold plates; cf. Cassidy 2002). However, it must be noted that economic capital in the form of material wealth was as much to be won as social capital in these original races as “racing authority correlated with political power” (Cassidy 2007:12). This interbraiding of economic and social capital was and still is foundational to winning in Thoroughbred horseracing, but differs according to “who” does the winning. In this dissertation, I extend this notion of winning and losing according to what forms and amounts of capital to both humans and horses and the stratification and diversity therein of each. In relation to 18 gambling, while this dissertation focuses on how the wins and losses experienced by owners, breeders, and trainers impact the fate and value of racehorses, it should be noted that the value of horses is also shaped by what capital they can offer gamblers. As mentioned, gambling could be considered ontological to horseracing, but it is also locally specific to each horseracing culture and era. In the U.S., while racing in the foundational, colonial period (16th century onward) “was a means of preserving the continuity of the way of life of the English nobility in the New World” (Cassidy 2007:12) as well as focused around the “improvement of the breed” when Thoroughbred racehorses were introduced (Cassidy 2007:13), by 1727 “it was necessary to legislate against gamesters” as the popularity of racing rose (Cassidy 207:14). Cassidy observes that such legislation “neatly illustrates the dual potential that racing offers any society, to preserve existing inequalities and to vividly express those inequalities in a socially accepted way, and to create upheaval through the unpredictable rewards of gambling” (2007:15). Thus began U.S. racing’s (especially Thoroughbred racing with its elite affiliations and performativity) uneasy but necessary bedfellow of gambling, which brought together those invested in nobility and inherited wealth with those becoming (or looking to become) more wealthy through the burgeoning capitalist system of the American colonies. More on the social stratification entailed in racing after I explain how gambling shapes and is shaped by changes in racing. After the Civil War, horseracing developed in a specific, spatial way so as to increase its popular appeal, and with that the business of gambling. First, racecourses became “the ‘merry go round,’ a circular mile dirt track” seen today in North America, which had the effect of increasing “the number of races that could be held each day and the number of days that racing could be held at any one track during the year” (Cassidy 2007:16). As a result of this spatial and 19 temporal change, “it maximized the volume of betting opportunities and created massive demand for Thoroughbreds capable of providing the kind of racing favored as a gambling medium” (Cassidy 2007:16). Here, we can see how this shift in the practice and spectacle of racing and gambling began to impact the kind of Thoroughbred that eventually emerged from the U.S. Whereas Thoroughbreds in England were bred for distance racing, in the U.S. American breeders “succeeded in producing fast, strong horses” (Cassidy 2007:17-18). Thus, the value of Thoroughbreds in America came to be based on how fast (not just how far) and how often they could run, and this value was something prized by owners, breeders, trainers, fans, and gamblers alike. 1.4.1 Distinctions of “class” As previously mentioned, Thoroughbred racing in the U.S. possess an inherent tension between the originary elites who saw racing as a way to re-invoke the culture of English nobility (hence the use of the term “class” as a way to indicate elite distinction), and those people who got into racing because they wanted to and could afford to do so, the so-called “commercial interests.” As Cassidy puts it: after the Revolutionary War, “the requirement of nobility in importing, breeding, and racing horses was replaced by an ability to pay” (2007:16). Even during my time in the field, I sensed tension between “established” farms and owners, and other farm operations that were created and run by those who had a surfeit of money from other business endeavors (such as natural resources or sports) that they then used to go into horseracing and breeding. While this distinction appears to mainly be made among elite farm owners and operations, if we accept in this dissertation that “class” is not just a measure of socio-economic standing but a descriptive term that indicates an accepted standard of practice or comportment that functions as 20 an inclusion-exclusionary device, then we understand how “class” can pull together unlikely socio-economic stratum while excluding others, while simultaneously effacing socio-economic difference in the name of the greater good; in this case, it is the horse. In this sense, when I talk about “class” I mean two ideas in particular. First, class can be understood in the way that Max Weber (1978; cf. Breen 2001) meant it: a collection of individuals who share similar life chances as dictated by the market in relation to what assets these individuals bring to it. By the “market,” I mean the structural force of production, exchange, commodification, and valuation implicit in the system of capitalism - in which the human and equines lives that I encountered in the field were fully ensconced. In this sense, when I talk about individuals coming from different class backgrounds, or being judged along classist lines, this is in reference to how empowered or not they are given the resources (mainly in terms of money and labor) they possess, as well as have to offer. The second way class is to be understood in this dissertation is an attribute of how well one comports oneself in relation to what is considered most socially acceptable in the given social circle. In this sense, both people and horses are said to have “class” when they perform to the standards held exemplary in the racing world. One major way in which this notion of class presents itself is in reference to horses and how they are cared for. “Putting the horse first,” and practicing good and true “horsemanship” are some of the ways horse people in the Bluegrass talked about the distinctions amongst farms, in particular, and their concern over their lasting way of life. There was a sense that the more “local” farms – those that, if not older and more established, were run by owners that were also present and living on the farms and active in the local community – were more invested in the welfare of horses, putting their needs (and the economic cost to meet those needs) before humanocentric 21 desire for profits and, furthermore, having the standards of their operations be measured in the all-around good quality and care of horses (horsemanship) and not just in how much money the horses earned via racing, sales, or breeding. For such farms, the working belief was that economics were a mere offshoot of quality work and product; the horse still lead the money cart, not vice versa. Also in this way, people in the lower stratums of society (including former prisoners) could efface their class stigma and struggles to a certain degree by subscribing to and practicing such beliefs - by demonstrating they were capable of having “class” too. But as I will detail in the next chapter and further on in Chapter Seven, such belief systems, practice, and desire are hard to uphold when dire economic times ensue and penal stigmas persist. 1.4.2 Distinctions of race and ethnicity Class / “class” distinctions are not the only caustic and problematic arrangements that scaffold the culture and industry of racing. American Thoroughbred racing, particularly in Kentucky, would not be where it is today without the labor and expertise supplied by African Americans, first as slaves, and then as free, but still socially and economically marginalized, workers. One does not have to look further than the biography of Issac Burns Murphy a champion jockey who rode Man O’War to many a victory, to understand how racial prejudice impacted African American participation in racing decades after slavery had been declared unconstitutional in the U.S. (cf. McDaniels III 2013, Wall 2010). “Following the Civil War,” writes historian Maryjean Wall21 (2012), “black jockeys and trainers dominated in numbers at southern race tracks as they had during the antebellum era, and the top riders competed against white jockeys in the North.” 21 http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/januaryfebruary/statement/the-­‐racing-­‐life 22 But then, “Segregation had received U.S. Supreme Court sanction in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896” (Wall 2012). With the legalization of racial separation in public places and the rise of white exclusivity in America, social and labor relations in racing followed in suit, as evidenced by white jockeys forming “a cabal to try to force black riders off the tracks” in New York in 1900 (Wall 2012). The rise of white dominance (if not supremacy) in racing had the effect of effacing African Americans from it, either by arresting the history (McGranahan 2010) of jockeys like Murphy, or by sending others, like Jimmy Winkfield, abroad to countries like Russia and France to continue their careers out from under Jim Crow America (Wall 2012). While Murphy’s and Winkfield’s legacy in racing were eventually reclaimed with the help of pro-racing institutions like the Kentucky Horse Park and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame (which inducted Winkfield in 2004), the damage had been done in terms of what kinds of positions of power and success African Americans could achieve in racing. Refused positions as jockeys or trainers – much less as owners or breeders - men like Winkfield “must have been shocked to discover he could work in horse racing only as a stable hand” (Wall 2012) when he tried to return to American racing in 1941 to escape warfare in Europe.22 This historical change not only produced shock, I would additionally argue, but fear, as relationships between African 22 Attempts have been made to celebrate the unsung role African American stable hands played in supporting the careers of famed racehorses and their human connections, such as Eddie Sweat’s relationship with Secretariat. Sweat was applauded as Secretariat’s groom because of the way he handled a horse who was opposing both physically and in personality (cf. Nack 1990) and turned him into a “pussycat.”22 Sweat’s remarkable relationship with Secretariat has been memorialized on the official website for Secretariat, in the movie “Secretariat,” and through a bronze statue at the Kentucky Horse Park (more on this in the next chapter). But despite the celebration of this man’s relationship with one of the most famous Thoroughbred racehorses of all time, knowing the brief history of diminishment that African Americans faced in racing, one understands how Sweat came to be lauded only as Secretariat’s groom, and not his trainer, Lucien Lauren who was French Canadian, or jockey Ron Turcotte, an Anglo-­‐Canadian from New Brunswick. 23 Americans and Thoroughbreds were reconfigured in response to violently-enforced racial hierarchies. To quote bell hooks to this effect: Separating black folks, especially black jockeys, from the world of Kentucky horse culture went hand in hand with the rise in white supremacist thinking. For us it meant living with a culture of fear where we learned to fear the land, the animals, where we became fearful of the moist munching mouths of horses black jockeys would rarely ride again. This separation from nature and the concomitant fear it produced, fear of nature and fear of whiteness was the trauma shaping black life. (2009:10) In more contemporary times, including the year I spent in the Bluegrass, the presence of African Americans in racing had been supplanted by an influx of Latino migrant labor in what Cassidy has been quoted as calling “one of the most striking changes in the recent history of the racetrack” (Castenada et al. 2010:490; Cassidy 2007:170). From farm workers, to exercise riders, to jockeys, Latinos from countries like Mexico and Guatemala (cf. Castenada et al. 2010) have stepped into the “racetracker” roles African Americans once historically occupied, and consequently have faced their own form of social and economic undervaluing as they “do the dirty work associated with caring for racehorses” (Cassidy 2007:170). As Castenada et al. point out, while the nature of racetrack work is highly specialized, it is highly mobile, contract work that “does not carry high prestige” and, furthermore, “these labor arrangements are unregulated, often dangerous, and characterized by informality” (2010:489). One reason these labor arrangements are so questionable is due to the liminal immigration status of many Latino racetrackers: “many are unauthorized or semi-legal, often having entered the United State without documents, violating the terms of their visas, or without proper work permits” (Castenada et al. 2010:490). 24 The combination of their questionable status in the U.S. along with the racing industry’s culture of “high levels of freelancing, a transient work force, and informal labor contracts” leads many Latino racetrackers to not seek help when they need it, especially in terms of healthcare, as Castenada et al.’s article focuses on (2010: 491). As a consequence, many Latino racetrackers suffer from injury and pain associated with working with horses, poor nutrition brought on by food insecurity, neglected dental health, and substance abuse (Castenada et al. 2010:499). The plight of Latino racetrackers reads as a harbinger for other marginalized populations profiled in this dissertation, such as inmates and the broken-down horses they care for. 1.4.3 Distinctions of gender Castenada et al. also note in their study the larger gender divisions in racing, whereby “horse racing is historically male dominated” and that “fewer women than men [are] employed in the backstretch” (2010:493). Divisions and stratifications based on gender are reflected in both the backstretch and in the grandstand and on the farm. For example, Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, was originally constructed so as to provide an area exclusive to women spectators so that they were spared the site of social vices not fit for “a lady,” such as gambling (Thomas 1995), and for years women were not allowed in breeding sheds so as not to pollute the virility of stallions (or convolute the cultural norm of breeding being the man’s domain). Contrary to this history, Penny Chenery, owner of Secretariat, became a symbol within the racing world – or, more to the point, within the popular cultural representation of racing – as being a woman who broke through many gender barriers in racing in the 1970s, going from housewife to owner of the most famous and valuable racehorse in the 20th century, Secretariat. 25 Yet despite the contrarian figure that Chenery has come to occupy as proof that women can become successful and respected in horse racing, Larsen argues in the context of harness racing23 that “no matter what strategies these women employed to remain visible and viable in harness racing, their efforts did nothing to disrupt existing structures of segregation in this male-dominated industry” (2006:120). In fact, through ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews, Larsen found that “many women ended up ‘erasing’ their gender—in effect, self-identifying with the dominant masculine culture—in order to remain in the industry” (2006:120). Additionally, as with African American and Latino workers, Larsen there is “the virtual absence of women in high-income and high-visibility positions in harness racing” (Larsen 2006:123). Instead, “women are heavily concentrated in the lower ranks of trainers’ wives or grooms” (2006:125). For the women who did work in higher-ranking jobs, they were often passed up for male counterparts when owners of “good, expensive horses” were looking for trainers or drivers because there was a general belief “that women are not up to the task of driving them in races” (Larsen 2006:132). As a result, female trainers and drivers ended up with horses that did not “perform well” (Larsen 2006:132) thus giving the impression that women could not train or drive as well as men; hence Larsen calling this phenomenon “the vicious oval.” In the context of Larsen’s findings for harness racing, some additional light can be shed on the gender dynamics of Thoroughbred racing. In relation to Chenery as a feminist figurehead, 23 “Harness racing is not as well known as thoroughbred racing and warrants some basic description. A visitor to a harness-­‐horse racetrack will see a breed of horse called the standardbred, which is specifically bred to race at a standard distance of one mile. This horse looks very much like a thoroughbred and is indeed related to that breed, although it has a slightly longer body and shorter legs. It wears a harness and is driven by a person seated behind it in a small, two-­‐wheeled cart. Instead of galloping, these horses exhibit one of two gaits, trotting or pacing. Trotting is known as a diagonal gait because the right-­‐ front and left-­‐rear legs move in unison, as do the left-­‐front and right-­‐rear legs. Pacing is a lateral gait that involves the horse’s moving both legs on one side of its body forward together while the legs on the other side are extended back.” (Larsen 2006:123) 26 it must be noted that she effectively inherited Secretariat from her father and, furthermore, was accepted and advised by the (male) friends and racing colleagues of her father’s (Nack 1990). As such, I would suggest that Chenery “self-identified with the dominant masculine culture of racing,” even if she performed her gender while at the same time was lauded by the media as being a woman in a gentleman’s sport. During my time in the field, other female figureheads were represented in racing, such as jockey Rosie Napravnik (who rode her first races starting in 2005 under the name “A.R. Napravnik” to conceal her gender), and racehorses Zenyatta and Rachel Alexandra. For each, be they human or horse, their success was almost always framed as “beating the boys at their own game.” Take Napravnik, for example: “Oh, Rosie's tough. She's battled back from multiple injuries since she became a jockey in 2005 and she's proven herself against the best boys in the business and she just got her first Grade 1 victory in the world's most prestigious race for fillies.”24 And when Zenyatta won one of the most wealthiest races in the world in 2009 while maintaining a perfect winning streak, media outlets cheered: “What a gal! Zenyatta beat the boys in the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic on Saturday, running her record to 14-0 in the most impressive effort of her career.”25 Yet understanding the gender dynamics of Thoroughbred racing through female figureheads alone does not give full treatment to the shifting roles and emerging power relations women are experiencing in racing. For example, the small horse farm I lived on during my fieldwork was run by a woman (who was assisted by three Latino workers). Furthermore, alongside the myriad Latino workers one found at larger farms, training facilities, and in the backstretch of tracks, one also found young women (many enrolled in equine studies programs 24 http://espn.go.com/horse-­‐racing/blog/_/name/novak_claire/id/7892385/rosie-­‐makes-­‐history 25 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/zenyatta-­‐beats-­‐boys-­‐to-­‐win-­‐breeders-­‐cup/ 27 based out of various colleges and universities in the Bluegrass) working alongside them as hotwalkers, grooms, exercise riders, sales prep, and so forth. But perhaps the most outstanding representation of women in the Thoroughbred culture of the Bluegrass I found was, of course, on the rescue side of things. To paraphrase Ortner’s (1972) oft-cited equivocation, racing is to men what rescuing is to women, and this dissertation will go on to explore, however tentatively, how this is. 1.5 The Horse Slaughter Industry: An Introduction With this overall picture of the Thoroughbred racing industry in mind, I will now turn to profile another industry that significantly shapes the lives and deaths of the humans and horses I encountered in the Bluegrass: the horse slaughter industry. As previously mentioned, of the tens of thousands of horses in America that are estimated to go to slaughter every year beyond U.S. borders, approximately 7,000 of them are Thoroughbreds; in contrast, Quarter Horses26 make up the majority of horses going to slaughter. As Chapters Five and Six spell out the historical and contemporary processes by which horses go to slaughter in the U.S., as well as the various protests surrounding such processes, I will not go into detail here about how slaughter actually comes to pass but rather give an overall picture of horse slaughter, particularly as the globalized industry it has now become. 26 It is claimed that 7 out of 10 slaughtered horses are Quarter Horses (http://www.horsefund.org/horse-­‐slaughter-­‐faq.php; accessed 04/10/14). While in the field, the prevalence of Quarter Horses going to slaughter was explained to me as being a result of the breeding practices sanctioned by the American Quarter Horse Society (AQHA). Not only was Artificial Insemination (AI) allowed, where it was not for Thoroughbreds to be registered with The Jockey Club, but the semen of one stallion could be used to impregnate a plethora of mares in order to increase a breeder’s chances of creating the ideal foal; the rest of the foals could be culled through slaughter. Furthermore, AQHA also sanctioned the cloning of horses, and ovaries of mares destined for slaughter were often harvested for this purpose (cf. Vaught 2013; “One Pound of Flesh: The Connection Between Commercial Horse Slaughter and Private Horse Cloning in North America.” Living With Animals/Teaching With Animals/Living With Horses Conference at Eastern Kentucky University. Richmond, KY, March 21-­‐23, 2013.) 28 Such a picture was starkly drawn in the spring of 2013, when it was reported that equine DNA was found in European food products labeled as containing only bovine “beef” ingredients. While many of the products came from more locally recognized and distributed brands – such as Findus’ “Beef” Lasagna, the first product to test positive for horse meat – larger, more globally recognized and connected food corporations were also implicated: Nestle, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Ikea. As news of the controversial and tabooed substitution of bovine for equine meat reached North America, the emblem of the Ikea Swedish Meatball seemed to coalesce peoples’ reactions. Some were outraged, especially the anti-horse slaughter groups that I profile in Chapters Five and Six, while others asked “so what?” citing that horse meat was no different from the sourcing of more commonly accepted cow, pig, or chicken flesh. In this camp, the meat-eaters argued that horse meat should not be tabooed and allowed to go to waste27 – an argument whose historical roots I will explore further in Chapter Five - while vegetarians/vegans used the opportunity to further argue against animal slaughter – particularly in its industrialized form28. 1.5.1 Reviving taboos, residual drugs All in all, this controversy made visible not only the sketchy path by which horsemeat makes its way from North American slaughter plants in Canada and Mexico, but it revived the debate over how tabooed hippophagy – the consumption of horsemeat – remains in the early 21st century, given the deep historical, even prehistorical, practice and debate of eating horses. This 27 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-­‐europe-­‐21559451; accessed 02/23/13 28 http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/03/whats-­‐the-­‐problem-­‐with-­‐horse-­‐meat-­‐stephanie-­‐vessely/; accessed 03/03/13 29 controversy also rendered visible the issue of drugs in horsemeat sold for human consumption – particularly phenylbutazone, or “Bute,” a painkiller that is administered to horses as commonly as Aspirin or Ibuprophen would be to humans. Of those horses, Thoroughbred racehorses would be one of the biggest populations to be administered Bute, especially given the incredible physical demands placed on their bodies for competition (and the lingering aftermath of the competitive life). I will address this crucial issue of medication and food safety in horse meat further in Chapter Five. 1.5.2 “The Horsemeat Carousel” Of further concern are not only the question of human public health safety and drug residues within horsemeat, but also the corrupt corporate practices and negotiations that shaped this substitution in the first place. As we will read in Chapter Five, the substitution of horse for cow meat is not a new dupe, but in this new, 21st century context the distribution – much less substitution – of horsemeat involves a complex tangle of multinational corporations and players that some have called the “Horsemeat Carousel”29. As the carousel details how horsemeat from slaughterhouses in Romania (as opposed to Canada or Mexico) makes it into lasagna, spaghetti, and meatballs products shelved in western Europe, the transnational entanglements (strung together by a now-highly volatile European Union web) become evident: a Belgium company, Draap Trading, with holdings based in the British Virgin Islands and its meat trading subsidiary based out of Cyprus, supplies meat to a southern French supplier, Spanghero, who then delivers the meat to Luxembourg as ordered by Tavola, a subsidiary of the frozen convenience food 29 Readers can access a great graphic that visualizes this here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/bild-­‐885637-­‐462480.html. 30 maker Comigel. From the food processing plant in Luxembourg, Tavola then delivers the products to cold storage facilities in France, Germany, Belgium, and Great Britain. And while horsemeat supplied by Canadian or Mexican plants is not implicated in this carousel, it has been reported that horsemeat from Mexican plants, purchased by overseas companies in Russia and the Netherlands that make human food, is being shipped out of the Port of Houston in Texas by a Texas based distributer30. With the global scales of industrialized horse slaughter implicated, what goes on in an everyday sense for workers in these plants? And what happens to the horses exactly that inspires so much protest and legislation to end the practice of equine slaughter? Chapter Six in particular will address these questions and their inevitably gory and perplexing answers. 1.6 Accounting for Animals in Anthropology and Human Culture Having provided preliminary ethnographic and historical context for my research on Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue facilities in Bluegrass Kentucky, in this next section I will situate this study epistemologically in reference to the theoretical literature and research that informs and inspires my analysis. I will begin with a consideration of how anthropology has historically approached the study of animals in human cultural worlds, then move into a discussion of what animal studies is and how it informs this study, and conclude with a survey of equine-specific cultural studies. In particular, I emphasize how this dissertation is theoretically enlivened by the “companion species turn” Donna Haraway took beginning in 2003 with The Companion Species Manifesto and culminating in her 2008 book, When Species Meet, as well as 30 As reported by Houston’s Channel 2, KPRC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFz9UBwnuk, accessed 02/27/2013. 31 engaged with the ethnographic path Rebecca Cassidy has blazed with her studies on Thoroughbred culture in Newmarket, England (Sport of Kings [2002]) and Lexington, Kentucky (Horse People [2007]) and its emphasis on human-animal and nature-culture relationality. This dissertation is organized around the fundamental idea that nonhuman animals hugely figure into human culture in ways that were previously overlooked in anthropology and that are now emerging in the field. In particular, I draw further inspiration from Kirksey and Helmreich’s essay (2010), “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography,” to provide a way to understand how anthropology has historically approached nonhuman31 animals “as part of the landscape, as food for humans, as symbols” (2010:545). From Boas’ early analysis of animal forms in native Northwest Coast clan crests (cf. Boas and Codere 1975), to Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) interbraiding of political institutions, environment, and modes of livelihood between the Nuer and their cattle, to Rappaport’s Pigs for the Ancestors (1968) ecologically-oriented study of the Tsembaga Maring’s ritual pig sacrifice system, to Harris’ (1975) contestation that India’s cows are made sacred not through religious power but through the economic adaptations they facilitate for human groups – all of these classic studies clearly situate animals’ legacy of landscape, food, and symbols deeply within the ethnographic record. More recently, three key essays anchor anthropology’s historical engagement with human-animal relationships and provide an epistemological and ethnographic framework for this 31 Throughout this dissertation, I will variously refer to “nonhuman animals,” and “animals” as interchangeable terms, as well as “human animals” and “humans” and interchangeable too. This is because by referencing nonhuman/human animals, I wish to acknowledge the epistemological stance – predominantly forwarded by critical approaches to animal studies -­‐ that does not seek to reify human/animal dichotomies but rather keep humans within the realm (as in Linnaean, folk, or other working taxonomies) of Animalia. In doing so, I do not want to take for granted the cultural and historical construction of what is considered “human” in distinction from “animal.” However, for brevity’s sake, from time to time I will simply refer to “human” or “animal” (or “horse,” for that matter) – but with the implicit understanding that these categories are considered ontologically and epistemologically complex, not reified or essentialized. 32 dissertation: Eugenia Shanklin’s 1985 “Sustenance and Symbol: Anthropological Studies of Domesticated Animals,” Molly Mullin’s 1999 “Mirrors and Windows: Sociocultural Studies of Human-Animal Relationships,” and Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich’s aforementioned “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography.” Below, I briefly review the main points made in each essay and how they inform my own approach to the human-animal relationships I encountered in the field. 1.6.1 Of sustenance and symbol Eugenia Shanklin (1985) offers a useful historical overview of “human-animal interaction”32 - especially as it pertains to domesticated animals (375). Shanklin’s essay traces “the function/meaning distinction now current in anthropology” (1985:377) by looking at “some of the old questions” that have haunted anthropology since Boas wondered why “human tales are preferably attached to animals, celestial bodies, and other personified phenomena of nature” (quoted by Shanklin 1985:377). By writing this essay, Shanklin believes “the investigation of human and animal interaction may well be one of the most fruitful endeavors of anthropology” (1985:380) in that it “offers a stimulating and specific view of how humans operate at many levels” (1985:377). Shanklin begins by considering how domestication has been theorized by various schools of functionalist thought that address relationships between culture and environment. Here, Steward is identified for his American approach of cultural ecology, as is Forde for the ecological school that emerged out of British scholarship (1985:382). Harris’s 32 As opposed to the paradigmatic shift Karen Barad proposes in her analytic of “intra-­‐action” in the making of human-­‐animal difference; see Barad 2003, 2007. 33 sacred cow “controversy” is singled out as an example of how fruitful a debate can become - especially when polemical arguments are further nuanced by “increasingly sophisticated data” (1985:383). Shanklin then considers the contributions of Rappaport and his embrace of “systemic ecology” that saw that “animals, like humans, were part of the overall picture” when it came to addressing the relationship between culture and environment (1985:385). Shanklin’s favorable review of Rappaport’s work anticipates her suggestion that anthropology should move towards a more integrated approach, both in terms of how research is conducted and then analyzed, for future human-animal studies. Shanklin next turns to how animals have been approached by the symbolic school of thought. She begins with Leach’s famous essay on the correlation between animal name-based swear words and their indexical relationships to human sexuality and meat consumption (1985:392-393), but then goes on to point out how Leach’s work has been further expanded upon by research that demonstrates how both humans and animals possess “polysemic qualities” (Brandes via Shanklin 1985:394) where there is more fluidity in “semantic space and specification of transformations” (Fernandez via Shanklin 1985:393) than accounted for in Leach’s approach. Shanklin also considers other classic approaches and their contemporary reconsiderations, such as Douglas’ and Levi-Strauss’ arguments for more logical, objective relationships between taboo and taxonomy, and Balmer’s point that taboo might instead be constructed through “taxonomic rationalizations” (1985:395) that do not organize according to universal principles of culture but rather in accordance to local and historical conditions of change. By taking on the functionalist/symbolic divide that defined anthropology at the time of her essay, Shanklin concludes by advocating for an embrace of both the functional and symbolic 34 possibilities of animals in human societies and cultural worldviews. Furthermore, she saw this taking place through enhanced scientific research methods and “analytic holistic ethnography” whereby: What people think about their animals is still something that the ethnographer, armed with a notebook and pencil, must record in much the same way the turn-of-the-century ethnographer did. (1985:379) As such, Shanklin seems to suggest that anthropology was still at a very nascent stage at the time of her article when it came to understanding how animals figure into human culture. 1.6.2 Of mirrors and windows While Shanklin argued for uniting the analytical separation of animals as either sustenance or symbol as apprehended by scientific or interpretive approaches, Molly Mullin (1999) writes in an era that not so much saw a union of these categories but a crossing and blending of many boundaries between analytic categories, global regions and cultures, classes, ethnicities, genders, and so forth. Mullin begins with the observation that with a “renewed interest” and “new sense of urgency,” anthropology has joined the ranks with other disciplines in examining “humans’ relationships with animals” in a particularly new way: one interested in the “cultural and historical diversity of categories” and “the way they are subject to continual redefinition and conflict” (1999:201-202). Mullin goes on to chart a more checkered history of animals in human cultural studies, first through consideration of the rise of science (especially evolution/evolutionism), colonialism, and how the Eurocentric worldview categorized and mobilized animals and nonwestern human populations in (now uneasy) parallel belief and practice systems (203-207): “Darwinism also left 35 unchanged the dichotomies between wild and domestic, savage and civilized[…] Those peoples considered primitive were thus still considered to be more closely related than other humans to animals” (Mullin 1999:206). Perhaps most insightful to the topic of this dissertation, Mullin ponders the “Conflicts and Contradictions” that animals pose to anthropologists, especially when “animals serve all at once as commodities, family members, food, and the embodiment of ‘nature’” (1999:215). Particularly when such categories clash – as they do in the case of the Thoroughbred ex-racehorses in my study – we not only see how and where the boundaries lie but what anxieties they inspire when transgressed. A useful, but relatively ethnographically un-mined site to perceive such categorical clash is the study of animal rights activism. Mullin observes that while “the controversial aspects of human-animal relationships are likely to encourage greater interest in sociocultural analysis of these relationships” those aligned with animal rights activism “are apt to find the relevant anthropological literature and historical studies at least partly unsatisfying” (1999:217). This is because many find anthropology to be too anthropocentric and “failing to consider human-animal relationships from the perspective of the animal” (Noske 1993 as quoted by Mullin 1999). Is it asking too much of anthropology, however, to criticize the discipline for not considering animal perspectives when we have our own unsolved debates over, for example and to paraphrase Spivak (1988), whether or not the subaltern can speak? If we have trouble accounting for “the human”, why further task anthropologists with the even more difficult (and epistemologically problematic) project of accounting for “the animal”? I will rejoin this question in the next section when I consider the field of animal studies and the “ethical turn” there. 36 1.6.3 Being multispecies in the anthropocene Returning to Kirksey and Helmreich’s 2010 article helps shed some light on why anthropology is poised to account for more-than-human subjects and subjectivities. In what follows, I outline key points in this article to helpfully paint a picture of what multispecies ethnography is proposed to be, and thus lay the groundwork for understanding how this dissertation engages with it. It thus begins with a question: what does it mean and, moreover, look like now that “creatures…once confined in anthropological accounts to the realm of zoe or ‘bare life’33– that which is killable – have started to appear alongside humans in the realm of bios, with legibly biographical and political lives” (2010:545)? For Kirksey, Helmreich, and the colleagues who join them in the special edition of the journal Cultural Anthropology of which they were also editors, not only has the category of “animal” in the 21st century anthropological literature been enlarged beyond previous conventional boundaries to include “plants, fungi, and microbes,” but also the term “multispecies” provokes “discussion within contemporary debates about the ‘human,’” as well as “conceptual questions about the definition of ‘culture’ and ‘species’” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:546). Another significant shift has also taken place in regard to the purpose of this kind of research. Instead of only interrogating human/animal divides or beginning “with a celebration of the fact of human/non-human mingling,” Susan Leigh Star suggests that “it is both more analytically interesting and more politically just to begin with the question, cui bono [to whose benefit]?” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:545-546). Donna Haraway’s “species turn” also 33 cf. Agamben 1998 37 indexes this shift, not only in the critique of “the foolishness of human exceptionalism,” but also in the call for researchers to better attend to the ethical implications of when species meet, entangle, and “become with” each other (Haraway 2008 as quoted by Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:546). Furthermore, this attention to the ethical dimensions of studying human-animal relationships is further and even more loudly echoed in the larger, multidisciplinary field of animal studies – a field that I will briefly address after this present consideration of animals in anthropology. Kirksey and Helmreich further situate the emergence of multispecies ethnography within current concerns and debates over “the anthropocene34,” and as such link this emergence back to the ongoing “fault lines” within anthropology over whether or not the discipline is (or should be) more biological than cultural, scientific than interpretive, and so forth (2010:548). As “humans have come widely to be regarded as the primary agents driving climate change, mass extinctions, and the large-scale destruction of ecological communities,” it is proposed that multispecies ethnography should attend to these incredible changes wrought by the anthropocene, “to the remaking of anthropos as well as it companion and stranger species on planet Earth” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:549). As such, Kirksey and Helmreich go on to consider how “new brands of animal anthropology twist the old” especially as “more anthropologists have become curious about the lives of animals in labs, on farms, in agricultural production, as food, in rapidly changing ecosystems” (2010:551). What is more, such anthropologists and their research have 34 Kirksey and Helmreich provide the following explanation of what is the anthropocene: “Atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer coined the term Anthropocene to describe a new epoch in Earth’s history. In their view, a key transformation in the life of the planet began some two hundred years ago, around the time when the steam engine was invented, when human activity ‘gradually grew into a significant geological, morphological force’ (2000:17)” (2010:549). Interestingly, horses have played an ironic role in the rise of the Anthropocene, first helping usher in the technology of the steam engine, only to be supplanted by it as development advanced beyond “horse power” alone. See Greene 2008. 38 “joined established, ongoing conversations in human-animal studies,” whereby the “symbolic concerns” of animals have given way to “material entanglements [that] increasingly require anthropologists to engage with biotic materiality and process, apprehended both through everyday experience and through technoscience” (2010:552). Given these new scales and, moreover, potential new subjectivities in the “non-human”, Kirksey and Helmreich pause to consider how such studies “must all grapple with problems of representation”(2010:554). Where before I referenced this issue via Spivak, the present authors situate this “problem of voice” vis-à-vis Appadurai: “anthropology survives by its claim to capture other places (and voices) through its specific brand of ventriloquism. It is this claim that needs constant examination” (1988:20, as quoted by Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:554). Drawing upon the work of Bruno Latour, multispecies ethnography is able to examine itself reflexively when it comes to humans “speaking for” animals because the boundaries between them - as implicated in the term “nature-culture” - are understood as more democratically mutual and fluid – “blurred” - than hierarchal and sacrosanct (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:555). That is, at least from the human point of view; for in “questioning the ability of nonhumans to hold their representatives accountable, one might ask ‘Can the non-human speak?” – though the authors consider this question “not the right question either” (ibid). As such, Derrida’s quintessential question that troubles every animal studies scholar - “and say the animal responded?” - remains open for consideration for the multispecies ethnographer. As a finale, Kirksey and Helmreich consider some of the terminology they and the other authors in the journal use as a way to demonstrate the fundamental rethinking and undoing of “natural and cultural categories” entailed in multispecies ethnography. Addressing concerns that the “human” might be reinstalled as a “central reference” despite attempts to re-distribute across 39 the non-human, Eduardo Kohn is quoted at length to the effect of reminding us that an over-embrace of “nature” as the Other can have the effect of making it “function like an exotic culture,” where instead we should be forced “to radically rethink these categories of our analysis as they pertain to all beings” (2010:563). That is, the analytical pendulum should not swing too radically towards “human” or “nonhuman” as it did in the traditions of Marx and Linnaeus, but hover in the ethnographic interstices where these categories are practiced and produced, challenged and changed. Much like the term “culture” (c.f. Abu-Lughod 1991; Clifford 1986) has been debated in the general discourse in anthropology, “species” is also specifically problematized by multispecies ethnographers “as a grounding concept for articulating biological difference and similarity” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:563). At stake, then, is not only the epistemological blurring of anthropology, but the reconsideration of profound ontological assumptions about the world where humans have always been “messmates” (Haraway 2008) or “mixmates” (Franklin 2008) and “never only” human (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:565). As such, the authors end by suggesting that multispecies ethnography is poised to help anthropology “participate in more fruitful dialogues with other disciplines and diverse publics” as it asks, “what happens when Homo sapiens and its interspecies, multispecies, and quasi-species familiars, burrow into the biology that animates anthropos?” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:566). 1.7 Animal Studies: Anthropology’s Messmate As Kirksey and Helmreich suggest, anthropology’s embrace of multispecies ethnography potentially offers a useful collaboration with other disciplines. As such, in this dissertation, animal studies – already a highly interdisciplinary endeavor – compliments anthropological and 40 multispecies ethnographic perspectives. However, what exactly is meant by “animal studies?” In this next section, I will present two explanations of what animal studies is, and is becoming. The first explanation will demonstrate animal studies as a multidisciplinary endeavor that approaches human-animal relationships from a wide-variety of epistemologies, research methods and findings. The second explanation considers animal studies as field in its own right, much like women’s studies or ethic studies, but with its own kind of ethical questions and political interventions that form around an essential conundrum: how can humans speak for, or about animals when there is no language, in the human sense, to share or agree upon? 1.7.1 One question, many disciplines, many answers In a keynote address at the 2013 “Living with Animals” conference held at Eastern Kentucky University, Kenneth Shapiro35 outlined what he saw as the history and future of animal studies. He especially noted that since the emergence of animal studies from the discipline of philosophy36 the field has tended toward both fragmentation and unity in diversity – a comment that indexed how varied the paradigms and methods of inquiry are for animal studies scholars, but how undergirded it all is by the question of “the animal.” From philosophy’s foundation engagement, social sciences – particularly psychology – have gone on to engage with animal studies, then the humanities – via geography, literary criticism, women’s studies – and lastly the natural sciences – cognitive ethology and animal welfare science. While some might argue that animals have always already figured prominently in each of these fields and their respective 35 Dr. Shapiro is the co-­‐founder of Animal Studies Institute and Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. 36 European philosophers have been wrangling with the divide between human and animal since Aristotle, and each generation of philosophers have subsequently contributed their own approaches and arguments. See Preece 2004. 41 disciplines, what is new about animal studies is that the “question of the animal” is concerned with troubling (or at the very least investigating instead of taking a priori stances) how human animals have historically and now contemporaneously approach their relationships with and the subjectivity/objectivity of nonhuman animals. In short, the question of the animal is a questioning of the anthropocentric foundations of, in particular, western epistemology. Further unpacking what is meant by “animal studies,” we run immediately into a debate of exacting terminology: is it more apt to call the study of human-animal relationships “human-animal studies” or even “critical animal studies” than just animal studies? Regarding human-animal studies (or HAS), Shapiro has been quoted elsewhere as saying HAS is “as incoherent as saying ‘carrots and vegetables’” (deMello 2012:16), referencing how ironic, and erroneous, it is to separate human from animal when not only are humans “biologically” (ibid) animal but also because, as I argue in conjunction with deMello (2012:17), this project of separation should be a point of foundational criticism and departure for scholars due to its cultural and historical fluidity. In regards to critical animal studies (CAS), the Institute for Critical Animal Studies defines it as “the academic field of study dedicated to the abolition of animal and ecological exploitation, oppression, and domination. CAS is grounded in a broad global emancipatory inclusionary movement for total liberation and freedom.”37 At stake in each concentration is a fundamental assumption about the nature of human relationships with the other-than-human-world (among the various other terms scholars struggle to give to non-human counterparts). Are these relationships among creatures that are arbitrarily segregated, or are these relationships built 37 http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org; accessed 5/17/13 42 upon fundamental exploitation between species? To what degree are the separations between “human” and “animal” taken as natural and for granted, even as humans advocate for better treatment of animals, or animals come to be seen as therapeutic to human well-being? Exactly how aware, and critical of humanocentrism are scholars who would identify under the term “animal studies?” These questions and their implications thread throughout the various disciplines and fields that Shapiro further identified under the term animal studies. Take anthrozoology, for example, which Shapiro identified as formally emerging in 1987. According to The Encyclopedia of Applied Animal Behavior and Welfare (2010), this emergence was signaled by the first publication of the journal Anthrozoös by the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ)38. Anthrozoology further dovetails with other fields, such as animal welfare science39, companion animal studies40 (not to be confused with Haraway’s concept of “companion species,” which I will address shortly), and trans-species psychology. While some attention is paid to the cross-cultural dimensions of exactly how therapeutic animals can be to humans, as well as ethical considerations of deploying animals in AAT programs (see Chandler 2011 and Blazina et al. 2011), Shapiro ultimately characterized studies of companion animal benefits as 38 The formalization of anthrozoology, however, began five years earlier when psychiatrist Boris Levinson outlined four areas of suggested research specialization for anthrozoologists: (1) “the role of companion animals in human cultures from prehistory to the present,” (2) “the effects of socialization with animal companions on the development of personality, attitudes and other traits in humans,” (3) “the therapeutic effects of companion animals,” and (4) “the ethology of human-­‐animal interactions” (Mills et al. 2010:28). 39 Animal welfare science is mainly concerned with the welfare and enrichment of nonhuman animals by questioning the ethics involved in human treatment of animals. 40 Companion animal benefits is “very human centered,” according to Shapiro’s keynote address, because here animals are deployed mainly as techniques of therapy for humans known as Animal Assisted Therapy (or AAT)– from guide dogs for the blind, to comfort animals for victims of tragedy40, to horses ridden or worked with on the ground to promote physical or psychological healing40. 43 not necessarily possessing advocacy for the nonhuman animals involved. Trans-species psychology applies elements of human psychology, such as cognition and emotion, to animals in a neo-Darwinian mode. Based on Darwin’s demonstration of the evolutionary interconnectedness of life, trans-species psychology argues that the psychological capacities often attributed to humans alone – such as suffering, trauma, and passion – should not be foreclosed upon in nonhuman animals, and science must be used to demonstrate shared continuity between human and nonhuman animals. The issue with this field is not the risk of anthropomorphism but rather a reinscription of humanocentrism by using the “human” as that by which to evaluate and elevate the “animal,” instead of pioneering criteria that does not evaluate one species against another. From the objectivist science of anthrozoology and its kind, animal studies also extends to more humanist and heuristic social sciences. For example, ecofeminism makes in-roads for scholars interested in reconfiguring human-animal relationship studies in how it assumes a link between the domination of women and that of the environment. Reminiscent of Ortner’s (1972) classic examination of the nature/female, culture/male binary, some scholars of ecofeminism see both women and the environment (and here we can read an equating of nonhuman animals with the environment) as equal victims of western patriarchal and capitalist dominion, while others critique this as essentialist and reductionist in perspective, pointing out that modes of oppression and liberation are not totalistic but particular to the socio-cultural, socio-economic, and historical conditions of each woman’s struggle (cf. Mies and Shiva 1993). Then there is the study of animality, where scholars such Michael Lundblad (2013) are particularly interested in how specific notions of “the animal” are superimposed on groups of humans to produce representations and identities of them that index how these groups are 44 imagined and targeted by society. There is further nuance to make, however, as Lundblad argues, “I believe we can uncover a history of animality without assuming that even the same word ‘animal’ signifies the same figure or trope at different historical and cultural moments” (2013: online version). Interestingly, Shaipiro also included animism as falling into animal studies. This is not, however, the animism of classical anthropology (cf. Tylor 1920). but rather its re-imagining through the work of scholars such as Graham Harvey, author of the book Animism: Respecting the Living World (2005). Whereas animism was once a lowly (if not romanticized) starting point for measuring socio-cultural progress towards civilization in terms of religious organization and consciousness, the animism that Harvey proffers is defined as “the attempt to live respectfully as members of the diverse community of living persons (only some of whom are human) which we call the world or cosmos”41, calling into comparison the project of ecofeminism. Harvey looks to indigenous or “unpopular” cultures for a model of how to live respectfully within this new animist paradigm, and seems rather celebratory instead of critical of an analytical approach that risks essentializing human cultural diversity in its attempts to account for a diverse community where “person” applies to more than just human animals. 1.7.2 An additional question of representation and ethics As a compliment and necessary extension of the pedagogical overview Shapiro provides for the umbrella term of animal studies, cultural historian Kari Weil42 offers additional insight into the 41 From http://www.animism.org.uk; accessed 5/17/13. 42 Who was also a keynote speaker at the 2013 Living with Animals conference, this time for the plenary on horse studies. 45 interdisciplinary and epistemological foundations of animal studies in her 2010 essay, “A Report on the Animal Turn.” Addressing ongoing, and somewhat heated conversations as to whether or not animal studies could and should become its own field much like women’s studies or ethnic studies did, Weil observes that unlike these latter two fields “those who constitute the objects of animal studies cannot speak for themselves, or at least they cannot speak the languages that the academy recognizes for such self-representation” (2010:2). Honing in on the inherent unequal power dynamics between the researchers and the researched, Weil’s point is not so much about outlining the field of animal studies pedagogically as Shapirio does, as it is about interrogating “to what extent our understanding of rights and protection are adequate for animals” (Weil 2010:2). As such, her essay becomes an exploration in what she considers the three phases of the “animal turn” in academia: the linguistic turn, “a counterlinguistic or affective turn,” and the ethical turn (Weil 2010:4). Thus, for Weil the question raised by multispecies ethnographers – cui bono? – inherently inflects animal studies too. However, Weil makes a point of relativizing what we might mean by animal rights and the ethical considerations researchers of human-animal relationships must make: “one might ask how the notion of ‘animal rights’ might similarly entrench animals within a falsely unifying idea of ‘the animal’” to the point of privileging “a particular group of animals” such as “those who can demonstrate a capacity for so-called rational agency” and disenfranchising others (2010:3). This imbalance of representation and consideration of certain animals over others creates meaningful difference that has academic and beyond-academia consequences. Also much like Kirksey and Helmreich, Weil vexes over the ethical and epistemological implications of researching, representing, and “speaking for” animals. “How does one have 46 access to ‘the animal’?” Weil asks, “whether the animal who has been ‘civilized’ to exist in human society or the animals with whom we share the world?” (2010:4). Interestingly, trauma studies offer an opening, a provisional answer for Weil for [l]ike trauma studies, animal studies thus stretches to the limit questions of language, of epistemology, and of ethics that have been raised in various ways by women’s or postcolonial studies: how to understand and give voice to other or to experiences that seem impervious to our means of understanding how to attend to difference without appropriating or distorting it; how to hear and acknowledge what it may not be possible to say. (2010:4) I conclude this review of animal studies, anthropology’s messmate when it comes to intellectually and ethically reckoning with animals in human societies, with Weil’s insight because it raises an important point I wish to make about the underlying approach I take in this dissertation regarding the representations I make for both horses and humans. As I am fundamentally interested in how Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue is made meaningful according to the cultural logics of the Bluegrass, I am also fundamentally concerned and reflexive about how my analysis of what is meaningful is inflected by my own positionality and meaning-making as an ethnographer and horsewoman (to be addressed more fully in the next chapter). I am thus troubled and have no clear resolution towards how and even if I speak for the horses and humans in this study. That being said, my bias towards wanting to illuminate what I perceive to be uneven and inequitable evaluations of horses and humans and their capacities to flourish (Haraway 2008) will be clear, and also contradictory, from time to time throughout this dissertation, for like Weil wrote at the conclusion of her 2010 essay: “It [being theory] cannot avoid seeing animal suffering around us, but has contradictory foundations on which the judge the good or the right thing to do about it” (20). As such, let this dissertation stand as a report that will possible 47 “enable us to make decisions (for that is our human prerogative and responsibility) that will, to the best of our imperfect and partial knowledge, enhance the lives of all animals, ourselves included (Weil 2010:20). 1.7.3 “The world is a knot in motion” Haraway’s “species turn” also acknowledges the necessary indeterminacy of a new era of reckoning human-animal relations. When thinking about what takes place when species meet, Haraway states: “A great deal is at stake in such meetings, and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no teleological warrant here, no assured happy or unhappy ending, socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace” (2008:15). Significantly concerned with questions of ethical actions and impacts, Haraway offers not just cultural critique but a vision for “peaceful other-globalization” that happens not through the sublimation of previous world orders (as she sees Deluze and Guatarri advocating) but through an embrace of the mundane – “grappling with, rather than generalizing from, the ordinary” (2008:3). As such, she is inquisitive about what it means to “touch” another in ways that are just as biological as they are literary and artistic (2008:4). For example, by touching her dog, Cayenne, “who” is she touching and what kind of response and responsibility is entailed in that connection? The very same question could thus be posed in each human-horse relationship appearing in this dissertation: who is touched, and who is re-made by that mundane, interspecies relationship? Haraway is a master at gathering explanations and implications under evocative terms – a form of communicating one’s ideas and logics that takes place in this dissertation as well. As such, when Haraway talks about “becoming with,” this means not only the co-construction of 48 human and/or animal lives, but in a way that is exceedingly complex and yet usurping of western, teleological norms gathered together under the idea of humanism. To grasp this complexity, and how it departs from the legacy of humanism, Harways offers the idea of “the knot” to cast an image of, and approach to a world that is not the epitome of rationality and reason, as also criticized in Latour’s notion of “The Great Divide,” but rather an always-ongoing entanglement of “encounters,” “dances,” “figures” and “responses” not as singular things or but as processes and relations that defy “the sacred image of the same” (2008); in other writings, Haraway has given a name to this defiance of replicability, “diffraction” (1992). The point here is “not to celebrate complexity but to become worldly and respond “ (2008:42) and as such see how our ordinary, everyday, mundane, prosaic lives are intermeshed with larger issues, processes, histories, and connections; to not deny connectivity but to acknowledge it, not back away from it, and rethink our ethical response and responsibility when we stare into the connections; “there is no resting place in a multiple and partially connected world” (Haraway 2008:42). The idea of “companion species” also helps explain the new approach Haraway advocates as it is “less a category than a pointer to an ongoing ‘becoming with’”(2008:16). As such, what is meant by “companion” is not so much the amiable, companionable relations between species such as humans and horses as would be assumed by anthrozoologists and companion species researchers, but companions are those “messmates” who sup at the dinner table of the world by virtue of the fact that they have been drawn together through larger, taxonomical forces, such as “the discursive tie between the colonized, the enslaved, the noncitizen, and the animal” (2008:18). When such species (which also reek “of race and sex”) meet, “that heritage must be untied and better knots of companion species attempted within and 49 across differences” so that “companion species must instead learn to live intersectionally” (2008:18). For Haraway, species meet most visibly in “contact zones” (2008:4) and it is at such sites where learning to live intersectionally, in peaceful other-world making ways can take place. In this dissertation, the Bluegrass of Kentucky is one such contact zone where species meet and are knotted together over and over again in ways mundane as well as spectacular. I aim to demonstrate how those knots are produced and what exactly they entangle – and suggest what might be untied and re-tied in ways that bring more attention and response to the “always asymmetrical living and dying, and nurturing and killing” (Haraway 2008:42). 1.8 Situating Horses in Anthropology and Animal Studies In this next section, I summarize and situate anthropological and animal studies literature on horses into the lineage of ideas and studies just explored regarding human-animal relationships. I begin with an overview of horse culture ethnography from the U.S. to East Asia, and conclude with an engagement of the literature on Thoroughbred horseracing, focusing especially on Rebecca Cassidy’s comparative ethnography between Newmarket, England, and Lexington, Kentucky, so as to demonstrate how this dissertation builds upon, and departs from her pioneering work. In the U.S., anthropologists have predominantly focused on the role horses played or still play43 in Native American culture. Ewers produced a classic, salvage ethnography, The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture (1955) that actually used rodeos and other reservation-based equine 43 As of March 2014, National Geographic recently ran a story, “People of the Horse,” about the contemporary relationships various native nations in the U.S. have with their horses (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/03/horse-­‐tribes/quammen-­‐text; accessed 4/08/14); and an Irish researcher is currently conducting fieldwork among the Nez Perce in Oregon, researching training and symbolic relationships with their horses. 50 events as proxy to explain his theory of the “Plains Indian horse complex” originating with the introduction44 of the horse via European colonization of the Americas (1955:323). A few decades earlier, Wissler also published anthropological studies on the transformations horses wrought in Plains Indian Culture (1914). In her book Hoofbeats: Studies of Human Horse Interactions (1985) Lawrence45 also considered the indigenization of horses in Native North America by looking at the horse in Crown Indian culture (paraphrased from a chapter title in the book) via oral histories and interviews with tribal members. Looking beyond ethnography conducted in America, Azoy (2003) produced a study of the Afghan sport of buzkashi – where men on horseback wrestle and pass between them a headless goat carcass to score goals - as a way to understand how “play and politics”46 can co-constitute each other. Turning to Tibet, Ekvall produced some of the only in-depth ethnography on the Tibetan-horse relationship prior to Chinese Communist rule. His works range from well-known books such as Fields on the Hoof: Nexus of Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralism (1968) to obscure but rich journal articles such as “The Tibetan Nomad and His Horse” (1974). More currently, Craig has briefly explored Tibetan horse culture via proxy in Mustang, Nepal, in her ethnographic memoir Horses Like Lightning: A Story of Passage Through the Himalayas (2008). There have also been non-anthropological studies of horses in human societies that are nonetheless ethnographically informative. Scholars of East Asia have considered the linguistic evidence behind theories of diffusion or independent origination of horse cultures from Japan to 44 Many – especially wild horse/mustang preservation activists (see Stillman 2009) – have actually referred to the introduction of horses via colonialism to the Americas as the “re-­‐introduction” of horses, as equine ancestors to horses have been found in the fossil record and theorized to either have been hunted to extinction (the controversial “overkill” thesis) or succumbed to climate change. 45 Lawrence also wrote an ethnography on rodeo culture in the United States, Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and the Tame (1984) 46 To quote from the back matter of the book Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan (2003). 51 Central Asia (Janhunen 1998), as well as the effects of socialism on Sakha horse husbandry labor practices in post-Soviet Russia (Takakura 2003). Other scholars have turned to the historical and archaeological record to debate the origins of horse domestication and associated technologies and political conflicts (Dietz 2003, Drews 2004, Littauer archives), while others have considered the enormous cultural and technological shifts that took place when horses were first massively mobilized during the Industrial Revolution and then quickly replaced by machines (Derry 2006, Greene 2008). In addition to these focused studies, two scholars in particular – zooarchaeologist and historian Juliet Clutton-Brock (1992) and Eurasian archaeologist Sandra Olsen (1992) have produced textbook-like tomes on the pre-history and history of horses around the world that take a more universalist approach to understanding how human culture forms around horses. Many of these scholars were profoundly inspired – either as colleagues or critics – by the scholarship of Mary Aiken Littauer. Though her publishing record surprisingly lacks depth (cf. 1979, 1985), I can personally attest to the wealth of knowledge and critical analysis she possessed (particularly evident in her letter correspondence with scholars all over the world) regarding all things equine as I worked in her archives during my fieldwork year. 1.8.1 Horseracing studies In terms of specific studies of horse racing47, once again we find multi-disciplinary resources48. From sociology, to psychology, to folklore, many scholars have gravitated towards issues of risk 47 Here nuance must be acknowledged that by “horse racing” one could mean many variations of the sport according to type of course (flat vs. steeplechase vs. harness) and breed of horse (Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, Standardbred, Arabian, etc). In this dissertation, I specifically mean flat, Thoroughbred racing in North America – unless otherwise specified. 52 and unpredictability within racing as it manifests in North America, and the concurrent construction of insular, hierarchal human social relations around such uncertainty (Case 1991, Harrah-Conforth 1992, Fox 1999, McHale 2003). Though focusing on a sport49 that fundamentally depends on the athletic performance of horses, most of these studies overwhelmingly focus on the human-centered, celebratory tropes associated with racing, with horses appearing merely as part of the landscape or symbols, to recall Kirksey and Helmreich’s observation. Beyond North American studies, two scholars have focused on Thoroughbred racing as it originated in Britain. Historian Mike Huggins has looked at the social and economic dimensions of flat racing50 in Britain from 1790-1914 (2000) as well as the “proto-globalisation” of horseracing as Britain and the U.S. exchanged breeding stock and racing rivalries from 1730-1900 (2009). Anthropologist Rebecca Cassidy has also focused on British horse racing culture and society but in more contemporary society. Her ethnography The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class, and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket (2002) bears the mark of her former advisor’s, Marilyn Strathern 1992, research on the sociocultural naturalization of kinship ties in England, in that it examines how nature and class in British racing society are mirrored in the beliefs and practices that shape the breeding, selling, and racing of Thoroughbred racehorses in the racing epicenter of Newmarket, England. 48 Horseracing has its own kind of journalism and history called “turf writing,” and while this body of literature provides material to work with, it has to be done so critically as there can be implicit bias in this literature that is pro-­‐racing and romanticizing of horses. 49 Gender, class, and divisions of labor have also been analyzed in the context of other equestrian sports. See Coulter, Kendra (2013) “Horse Power: Gender, Work, and Wealth in Canadian Show Jumping.” In Gender and Equestrian Sports, Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik, eds. Dordrecht: Springer International Publishing. 53 After publishing The Sport of Kings, Cassidy went on to write Horse People: Thoroughbred Culture in Lexington and Newmarket, a comparative ethnography that broadens her ideas about nature and class as ordering principles in both human society and Thoroughbred breeding into the example of Lexington, Kentucky. It is these two ethnographies by Cassidy that I am in most conversation with throughout this dissertation. They help assist in explaining the front-end of the racing industry and culture – the breeding, sales, and racing – and they also serve as a point of departure because not only does Cassidy focus only on the production of racehorses (as I previously mentioned) but she also focuses only on the inequities wrought on humans within racing society (particularly as it relates to the conditions of yard lads in Newmarket and backstretch workers in Lexington). In polishing the Thoroughbred racehorse mirror, Cassidy reveals an intriguing and critical look at the human cultural world of racing, but leaves some critical ground untrodden, as it were, when it comes to considering how horses are affected as they enable human relations of inequity. While horses are not treated as only part of the landscape or as food or symbols, Cassidy pulls up short on exploring how they could become actors in the provocative ways that Latour (2005) and Haraway (2008) might respectively suggest. What happens when ethnography accounts for both human and horse struggles and suffering induced by similar circumstances? This dissertation aims to explore this provocative question and its possible answers. As such, in this dissertation Cassidy’s work is treated as an important resource to provide background to understanding the socio-cultural dynamics behind Thoroughbred horse racing and breeding, as well as a platform from which to launch into new territory not addressed in her ethnographic purview: what do horse people do with these horses when they can no longer race or breed, or be sent to slaughter? 54 1.9 Chapter Summary An analysis in terms of field involves three necessary and internally connected moments….First, one must analyze the position of the field vis-à-vis the field of power…Second, one must map out the objective structure of the relationships between the positions occupied by the agents or institutions who compete for legitimate form of specific authority of which this in the site. And third, one must analyze the habitus of agents, the different systems of dispositions they have acquired in internalizing a determinate type of social and economic condition, and which find in a definite trajectory within the field under consideration a more or less favorable opportunity to become actualized. (Bourdieu 1992:104-105) Following Bourdieu’s prescription for how to study a field51, the layout and intention of this dissertation proceeds as such. The first three chapters essentially cover the first two “moments” whereby I give the reader a sense of both the larger picture of my field(site) in the Bluegrass (Chapter Three) as well the relations between the agents and institutions who vie for position here– including myself as a situated ethnographer (Chapters Two and Four). As such, Chapter Two will cover the methods and methodologies I employed during my fieldwork tenure in the Bluegrass, particularly as I was influenced by my own equestrian upbringing, an academic interest in animal studies and multispecies ethnography, and how I came to be placed and perceived in my fieldsite. Chapter Three will provide historical background to the Bluegrass, demonstrating how this region came to call itself and be known as the “horse capital of the world” and how this inflects the meaning ascribed to horses there – especially Thoroughbreds. Here, I will also explain my concept of the “ideal type Thoroughbred” through the figure (Haraway 2008) of one of the most persistently famous Thoroughbred racehorses, Secretariat, in 51 I will demonstrate the influence that his ideas on the three “species of capital” and corollary notions of “the field” in Chapter Four. 55 order to demonstrate how the redemptive capital of Thoroughbred ex-racehorses is sometimes negotiated in relation to such ideal type horses. This chapter will also introduce the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, how and why it was created, and how it functions – and dis-functions – as an organization. This chapter will provide an orientation to the origins of this controversy, and the rest of the dissertation will be uniquely inflected by the fall-out from this controversy, particularly as it relates to the reschooling of a select group of horses in Chapter Eight. Chapter Four is a critical chapter in that it provides introductory framework with which to consider the main argument in this dissertation: that of redemptive capital. Here, the reader will get a sense of how this concept arose through two moral ideologies I encountered in the field, Christianity and animal rights, and then how I theoretically scaffold redemptive capital via the insights of Bourdieu as solicited by his student, Loic Wacquant, Van Gennep’s (1977) ideas on the rites of passage, and Turner’s (1967) further elaboration on these ideas via his notion of liminality.52 By presenting redemptive capital within its own chapter, I hope to give the reader a solid sense of the concept and its analytical dimensions so that I can continue to demonstrate its efficacy throughout the remaining chapters. If the third moment in studying a field is to account for the habitus that is shaped by and shapes the field in question, the next four chapters are driven by the dispositions of horses and humans involved in my research. Furthermore, if there is a legacy of animals acting as “good to think” with in anthropology (both as anthropologists saw them working in their communities of 52 I am indebted to Karen Dalke’s (2008) essay, “At the Threshold of Change: The Inmates and Wild Horses of Canon City, Colorado” for enlightening me to the fact that the three levels I saw as defining redemptive capital were akin to the processes involved in rites of passage and, in particular, the liminal / transition phase as being the field where redemptive capital is at stake the most. 56 study and in how anthropologists theorized human-animal relationships themselves), in Chapters Five and Six I employ the biographies of three horses – Ferdy, Fly, and Shooby – as good to explain with. In Chapter Five, Ferdy’s story helps explain not just further ideas on redemptive capital as they uniquely manifest in his life story and “being-in-the-world” (Ingold 2000; umwelt works here too), but provides the reader crucial orientation to why horse slaughter inspires such protest and polemics to the point of creating the practice of rescue and its ensuring cultural logics (as exemplified vis-à-vis redemptive capital). Chapter Six continues in the same format, taking the biographies of Fly and Shooby to help explain how horses, Thoroughbred racehorses in particular, do or do not go to slaughter, and then of the challenges faced in transitioning these horses from the habitus of a racehorse to one that fulfills different, human-assigned needs that are as emotional as they are still competitive. With an understanding of why horse slaughter is controversial and how it actually happens, Chapters Seven and Eight move us into the phase after which horses are rescued, that is, how they are cared for according to the continuously emerging dynamics of their redemptive capital. Chapter Seven focuses on Blackburn Correctional Complex, and explores the relationships between the student-inmates there and the horses they come to bond and identify with. Within these relationships, we see how redemptive capital is further fomented but also thwarted by larger structural forces unique to the state of human incarceration in the United States. If this chapter shows us the relationships rescued horses have with the incarcerated men who care for them, Chapter Eight demonstrates what happens when horses are pulled from their prison herds, re-schooled, and entered into new kinds of relationships – and social networks – with their eventual adopters. This chapter’s analysis is most distinctly inflected by the TRF controversy and will thus consider how this circumstance, and how it was understood, uniquely 57 shaped the redemptive capital of not just the prison-to-adoption horses (whom I call the “Putnamville Five”), but of the TRF itself. 58 Chapter 2: Methods and Methodology The safety and controlled environment of a schooling ring only goes so far – as I learned very viscerally one day in early June. On this day, I went on a trail ride with the then-working student at MMSC, Shalise. She was majoring in Equine Studies at the University of Kentucky and had first come to MMSC as a volunteer for the World Equestrian Games in 2010. Through her propensity with horses, Shalise had quickly moved into what is called a working-student position, where one work’s under a head trainer by helping with riding the horses under the trainer’s program, while learning the trainer’s methods. Shalise was riding a very large, red bay horse who I will call “Rick,” and I was atop “Tempo,” a beautifully dappled gray horse that had recently been returned the Secretariat Center malnourished and covered in skin lesions because the adoptive owners had grown too afraid of him to provide proper care for him. The reason why Tempo instilled fear into his would-be redeemers was because he was scared himself of anything competition-related, as MMSC found out earlier that spring when they attempted to take him to a Dressage show at the KHP. Now returned, Shalise and I were to take him and Rick out on a trail ride just to give them some mental and physical freedom beyond the ring. That was how we came to encounter a dog show set up in one of the big fields just past the MMSC campus. Whether it was the tall, pointed roofs of the white53 tents in which the show was taking place, the colorful festive flags waving54 in a slight breeze, the amplified sound of a human voice coming from within the tents, or that the horses knew we were coming upon a competitive situation (even if it did not involve their species), Shalise and I soon had a dire situation literally in our hands and underneath us. Rick started prancing and shying to the left, while Shalise fought to maintain forward motion and command of his attention and respect. I’ll never forget how little she looked as Rick swung his big, powerful hindquarters around, the largess of his barrel no match for her legs. Tempo started going back into his place of terror and trauma at the sight of, not just the dog show, but of another member of his “herd” – Rick – panicking. Had Rick stayed “sane” as my research subjects often described a horse that did not panic in 53 Incongruent or out-­‐of-­‐place white colored objects, especially those that have an inflated appearance or movement, more often than not “spook” horses. 54 The movement of a waving object is also a trigger for a horse to spook. 59 seemingly innocuous situations, Tempo might not have panicked. But Tempo did panic – “turning, rearing” as my fieldnotes recalled and - most indicative of the same state he experienced at the first horse show – “freezing.” I sat as calm as possible as Tempo “wouldn’t go left, wouldn’t go forward” and kept whirling further and further away from Kelly and Rick every time I queried him about moving. The traffic from Interstate 75 roared, adding to the chaos, and I knew if Shalise and Rick went out of sight, that would be the final meltdown for Tempo and I would be a lone, and thus extremely vulnerable, rider55. Then, my chance came: Tempo simply turned his head a bit and looked to the left. This look was not only the direction his “buddy,” Rick, was heading (and thus motivated by his desire to not get separated from him), but it was also in the general direction of the “horse eating monster”56 of the dog show. Previous to that moment, Tempo’s aversion to the spatial presence of the dog show felt like a powerful, repelling magnetic force beneath me; I could literally feel how he had slipped into a place of total fear, and the question was how to find and encourage a recovery. Therefore, when he looked left, I seized the opportunity for positive enforcement and praised, praised, praised Tempo. “Good boy, good boy!” I cooed as I ran my hand down the length of his mane from head to withers as I saw every rider in the Bluegrass – from jockey to working student – do. Then very gently, I suggested - with the opening of the left rein, a gentle nudge with my calves and pelvis, and not even daring to literally think “dog show” – that Tempo go in the direction of Rick. And he did. 55 The thought of being alone and thrown off a horse was another experience I had personal, even more recent memory with when my father’s horse threw me into a metal fence two summers before my fieldwork. Again, a battle of egos had taken place, first when the horse resisted my attempts at groundwork in an inappropriate setting with improper gear, and then when I insisted on riding him in the direction toward the arena that – as I later learned – he associated with bears. 56 Many of my research participants would often refer to objects that spooked horses – be it certain jumps to plastic bags – as “horse eating monsters.” This term captures both the absurd (through the term “monster”) panic (as humans see it) with which horses react, as well as implicitly references the horse’s response as instinctually and evolutionary, ie. the horse reacts in such a way because it fundamentally does not want to get eaten by predators. 60 Multispecies ethnography, as previous defined by Kirksey and Helmreich (2010) was a term that had just been coined when I entered the field in Bluegrass Kentucky in January 2011. Nevertheless, from the work of Haraway and Cassidy, as well as research in the field(s) of animal studies, I knew that in general I was committed to exploring what it was like to foreground the horses I would come to work with and study as much as I would the human research participants. For both research populations, I knew I wanted to be vigilant that neither would be relegated to simplistic, bounded consideration and analysis, but I also knew that I also needed to be vigilant about how difference and sameness mattered in my fieldsite, particularly to those who could not only articulate it in our mutual, species-specific language but also through their local systems of power and material culture. 2.1 From the Grasslands of Tibet to the Bluegrass of Kentucky Yet, before I started thinking about how I was to methodologically and theoretically approach new research considerations of human-horse relationships in Kentucky’s Bluegrass, I had originally intended to explore this dynamic in horse-based, nomadic communities in the mountains and grasslands in the eastern region of Tibet know as Kham, which today is aggregated in to the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan (respectively). While attending various horse festivals in the summer of 2005, I became interested in what kind of relationships the Khampa Tibetan riders had with the horses they raced and did “trick” riding on to great bravado for an audience of fellow Tibetans, domestic and international tourists, and the implicit state surveillance by the People’s Republic of China. Within these relationships, I wondered what kind of picture of Tibetan culture, history, and politics would emerge if I polished the festival horse mirror. 61 I never got to pursue this fieldwork, though, as in the summer of 2007 the grievances that Tibetans hold towards Chinese state rule became very explicit at a horse festival in Lithang (Chinese: Litang), a town in western Sichuan province. A nomadic chief by the name of Rungye Adrak commandeered the microphone at the festival’s grandstand and called for the return of the Dalai Lama in Tibet – an intensely forbidden prospect for any Tibetan to vocalize publically. Adrak was immediately seized by security forces and the entire festival grounds went into lockdown (Scoggin 2007). Then in the spring of 2008, protests broke out en mass across all of the Tibetan regions in China as Tibetans took the traditional observance of Uprising Day on March 10th as an opportunity to rise up against China’s hosting of the 2008 summer Olympics and refusal to allow the Dalai Lama back into Tibet57. The combination of these protests and China’s harsh military and bureaucratic58 response effectively made my intended field sites too politically volatile and sensitive to pursue ethnographic fieldwork. Having previously done research with contemporary Tibetan artists working both in Tibet and in exile, I had experience in both diasporic and homeland Tibet. But when Tibet closed off in 2008, I did not adapt my interest in Tibetan-horse relationships via horse festivals to an exilic or other-ethnographic counterpart because I did not want to approximate what was uniquely happening at festivals like Lithang’s through a cognate phenomenon59. Quite simply, while there 57 These are two of the most salient and general reasons; there are also a host of other reasons that get into local politics, conflicts over land resources and state development, and so forth (personal communication with Dr. Tsering Shakya, 2008-­‐2012). 58 As can be evidenced in the on-­‐going disruption of Internet service in Aba, Sichuan Province, one of my intended fieldsites: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115709/chinas-­‐aba-­‐county-­‐where-­‐government-­‐shut-­‐internet 59 Tibet is famously known for how “forbidden” it can be to access – the reasons why, however, fluctuate historically. Environment and politics do play recurring roles, though, making Lithang and 2008 protests contemporary instances of Tibet’s inaccessibility59. As such, many time of the ethnography of Tibet is actually conducted outside the politically salient and culturally fetishized region known as “Tibet”59 because of historical circumstances that have variously made this region “forbidden” – be it because of environmental or political 62 were important memories by elders now living in diaspora about horse festivals in their homeland, there were no such festivals recreated in exile like the monasteries and religious festivals had been (cf. Shicklgruber 1998). I wanted the ethnographic thickness of someone braiding his horse’s mane before a competition while talking to me about the meaning behind such competitions in the past versus present. I wanted to explore how human-horse relationships can reveal dimensions of culture otherwise overlooked when we only focus on human-specific relationships - and I wanted to explore this not just through narrative or cultural approximation, but, to quote Donna Haraway from her introduction to When Species Meet – a book this dissertation is deeply inspired by and in conversation with - “inside the flesh of mortal world-making entanglements that I call contact zones” (2008:4). Thus, while I lost Tibet as a contact zone, I wanted to retain the remaining interest in human-horse relationships because of the alterity this deeply historical connection60 posed to anthropology as a discipline and ethnographic endeavor. As Anna Tsing observed: “our observations of nonhumans present continual challenges to our cultural agendas that require new inflections and transpositions of our cultural sense” (as quoted in Mullin 1999:214). One of these new inflections (and challenges) was the additional call for me to pivot disciplinarily and engage with the research and scholarship emerging out of what can be generally referred to as “animal studies” (the particulars I addressed in the Introduction). With this in mind, a chance extremism and isolation. Therefore, when Tibet itself is not available, many ethnographers have instead conducted studies in surrounding Himalayan areas that are culturally similar because of shared environments or, even more so, religion: Tibetan (Vajrayana) Buddhism. With the advent of the Tibetan diaspora when the current 14th Dalai Lama went into exile in India in 1959, Tibetan culture went global and transnational, and consequently the ethnographic study of Tibet came to encompass (and analyze) this shift. 60 “It” being what some have variously called the specific, anthropological study of human-­‐horse relationships in given cultural contexts as “ethnohippology” or “anthrohippology” (data from discussions on the Human-­‐Horse Relations Group Facebook page circa 2012-­‐2013). 63 visit to Lexington, Kentucky in the summer of 2009 gave me the opportunity to take in the historic and globally-renown horse farms there, thus presenting me with a tempting, “Plan B” field site. As I was interested in how horse racing and other forms of competition (however much for “show’) were used in Tibet to construct and challenge the project of local, cultural heritage, I brought this same curiosity to the Bluegrass and started looking into the Thoroughbred racing industry61 there. Yet while I was looking into the racing culture of the Bluegrass, I kept coming up against a fundamental problem undergirding this production: the controversy over horses being sent to slaughter once their racing careers were finished. Moreover, even if horses were not being sent directly to slaughter, there were still no post-productions plans (as it were) for horses after racing; instead their fates were left up to chance, making the chances for falling into relationships of abuse, neglect, and suffering all the more possible. So, I decided to look at how this problem was being addressed in the Bluegrass, which is what led me to the TRF and its associated programs at MMSC and BCC. 2.2 Growing Up a “Horse Person” I arrived in the field, however, with some personal understanding of what it was like to own and take care of horses, particularly race and/or sport horses, in the midst of other multispecies entanglements and impacts on the land. Inspired by the critiques and insights offered by the feminist perspective on fieldwork and the position of the ethnographer as especially evidenced in 61 I use the term “industry” cautiously (critique of industrialization of animal husbandry and cruelty) but nevertheless as a working term used by insiders/natives of the Bluegrass to encapsulate what is also meant by “racing culture” or “racing world.” 64 Caren Kaplan’s (1994) “The Politics of Location as a Transnationalist Feminist Critical Practice,” as well as Anne Kingsolver’s (2011) point about the importance of “placing” people in the knowledge practices and social relations of communities living in the borders between the Bluegrass and Kentucky’s Appalachia, I will now briefly detail how I came to be placed in the Bluegrass, not just through a turn of events (as I explained in the Introduction) but as how my cultural background and life history is understood by myself and came to resonate with those I encountered in the Bluegrass. A native of Nicholas County, Kingsolver’s ethnography of her own community62 and its struggle to reinvent its identity and industry after the overseas outsourcing of tobacco farming and textile jobs, Tobacco Town Futures (2011), was invaluable in how it helped broaden my understanding of and orientation to the counties in which my field sites were placed (Nicholas County is just on the border where the Bluegrass region ends and the Appalachians begin). As such, by placing myself, I also attend to the local practice of placing oneself. Kingsolver (2011:15) saw placing oneself as a way to “negotiate the belonging, or place, of not just individuals but also groups and ideas, and the fact that being or speaking ‘out of place’ can affect the value and power assigned by other to someone’s identity or ideas. I was born and raised in Colorado to a family that loved and owned63 horses. I grew up attending rodeos at one arena in particular that lay in the shadows of foothills of the central Rocky Mountains and just north of the now decommissioned Rocky Flats Plant64, once a production center for nuclear weapons. My father was a team roper, which meant he and a 62 Kingsolver is also Director of the University of Kentucky’s Appalachian Center & Appalachian Studies Program. 63 To say that one “owns” a horse is complicated and not taken as natural or given in this dissertation, and I will provide criteria as to why in the following chapter. 64 See Iversen 2012. 65 partner would chase and rope steers (castrated male cattle with horns still intact) from horseback first by the horns and then by the heels – my dad was a “heeler.” For her part, my mom barrel raced, which entailed her racing on horseback around three barrels set apart in a triangle shape in the arena. When she was 5 months pregnant with me, she was bucked off one of her barrel horses while going around a barrel. I clearly lived to tell the tale. While our parents competed, my older brother would practice play at roping a plastic steer’s head stuck on a straw bale, while I would brush and braid our horses mane and tails, cuddle any dog and cat around, or sneak onto a horse’s back while he or she stood saddled (where I would often get dumped by a surprised and disgruntled horse). These rodeos were family affairs, and though my family’s ties to those we spent summers with at the area have now faded with time, this formative life experience still remains with me in what Gaston Bachelard might describe as “the land of Motionless Childhood” where through “dreams, the various dwelling places in our lives co-penetrate and retain the treasures of former days” (1958:4) – this in spite of the fact that I now hold a very complicated view on the questionable humane beliefs and practices entailed in rodeos65. My land of Motionless Childhood was further carried on the backs of horses through my family’s subsequent embrace of Quarter Horse racing as owners and breeders – another equestrian sport and part of my cultural heritage by which I have also come to be vexed66. At the time however, I just remember loving having so many horses around, for we had a mix of broodmares and their foals, our trail riding horses, and then some of our racehorses when they were in-between trainings and competitions. In the summers we would trailer our broodmares 65 Cf. Lawrence 1984 for an ethnographic study of rodeos; J. Vaught, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin is also doing great research on the veterinary ethics of rodeos (personal communication). 66 Joe Drape has also written exposes on Quarter Horse racing and the rate of injuries and breakdowns for horses and jockeys alike. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/us/death-­‐and-­‐disarray-­‐at-­‐americas-­‐racetracks.html?_r=0. 66 down to New Mexico to be bred to Thoroughbred stallions – producing a special kind of Quarter Horse called an “Appendix Quarter Horse”67 – and then that following spring I would sleep in the haystack of our barn with my mother, waiting for the telltale sounds of a mare going into labor. To this day, whenever I hear a horse kick the side of a wooden stall I am transported back to these nights and to what Bachelard might also call the “original shell” of phenomenological living, constituted by dreams, imagination, and, in this case, memories (1958:4). Additionally, my mom and I in particular would road trip around the western and central U.S. a lot in support what became her business of racing Quarter Horses. We would visit the horses’ trainer’s farm out on the eastern Colorado Great Plains, or meet her at various racetracks when our horses were running. My mom only had one very successful horse; the rest raced only lightly and then she was tasked to find homes for them. I grew up knowing that if we couldn’t find horses homes, they might end up “at the glue factory” or as “dog food” – so common a solution slaughter was to take care of horses when they had no other place to go or purpose to fulfill. Like most of the horses the reader will meet in this dissertation, it was common practice to try and transition our racehorses into other kinds of riding horses – we just did this privately and counted on the new owners and / or trainers to further facilitate this process (some of whom were family on my dad’s side). Being Quarter Horses, one of the most obvious outlets was to retrain these horses for rodeo competition. My father’s last rodeo horse was one such horse: Burrlito. When my father’s life got too busy to compete anymore (he was a research scientist), I inherited “Burr” at a key pre-adolescent time when I wanted nothing more than to have my own 67 A term to denote a first-­‐generation cross between a registered Thoroughbred and an American Quarter Horse; the registration of such horses goes in the appendix of the American Quarter Horse Association’s studbook – hence the term. 67 horse and compete in shows for ribbons. This desire to have a horse and participate in shows came from a distinctly white, middle-to-upper class, U.S. cultural yearning: I was “that” horse-crazy girl (and still am, just in an ethnohippoloist way now too). Burr became my partner in trying to attain that ideal – sometimes willingly, sometimes not. We had more fun trail riding through our still-rural neighborhood outside Boulder, Colorado, than my fighting him to get his right lead68 in the training ring, much less during an official Dressage test. As I write about the close relationships people (from male inmates to female adopters) form with their horses in this dissertation, this understanding is inflected by my childhood relationship with Burr. Unknowingly, he gave me my first lesson in what is entailed when one wishes to retrain a racehorse into – in our case – a Dressage horse. He also gave me my first understanding as to how much a horse’s life can change when he receives an injury that ends his riding career. When Burr sustained injury to his back legs that made it impossible and inhumane to ever ride him again, he was put out to pasture on a family friend’s expansive property in eastern Colorado where the grass sea of Great Plains of the central U.S. began. He was not passed from owner to owner, each with their own expectations and demands for his physical and mental capacities. He was not sent through an auction and then bewilderingly herded onto a trailer with other strange horses. He was not then trailered 20 miles or 2,000 miles to a slaughter plant to meet his death. Returning to the herd life with other horses, he lived his life out until he passed away after a great blizzard in 2006. We had heard he had been sick before then, and my first impulse was to go with my father to visit him. But then natural forces took care of him before I 68 Because Quarter Horses just run straight in race for ¼ a mile, they mostly learn how to run only their left lead as the rail of the track is to their left. Re-­‐training these horses to pick up their other lead while cantering can thus be a special challenge. 68 could see him again one last time. As he lived out the rest of his days with those of his own kind, I don’t know if he ever thought again about the opinionated, but ultimately adoring young girl who cherished him – there is research out there that supports the notion that horses do remember those who were particularly kind and instructive to them. But that girl grew up into a woman who decided, through many twists to fate, to ultimately write about their story – just in a different place, at a different time, with many different relationships between horses and horse people in mind. As such, when I arrived in the Bluegrass for my fieldwork, I sort of knew how to present myself as a kind of horse person. But as we will read throughout this dissertation, I was still clumsy and ignorant enough to give myself away as only anthropologists can. There were times, however, when I learned how to blend in and go native pretty well. There were a few times visiting the backstretch at Keeneland when I was mistaken for an exercise rider, for in addition to the population of Latino and Irish riders, the other community represented on the backs of horses during morning workouts were the college-age, horse crazy girls who whose blond ponytails poked out of breeder’s caps or riding helmets. Then one day I showed up at MMSC not in my trademark bootcut jeans and scuffed, black cowboy boots, but dressed like the other girls and young women I observed at MMSC and show competitions: polo shirt tucked into breeches, with colorful, knee-high socks pulled up over the calves of my britches. During barn chores I knew to wear comfortable sneakers, and then change into boots (I kept my cowboy boots on while other wore ankle-length, paddock boots) with half-chaps. Tall riding boots were best worn for intense training sessions or shows only. When I showed up dressed like this, the surprised and thrilled response I got from staff and interns alike at MMSC was reminiscent of how I was laughed and 69 fawned over by Tibetans when I donned a chuba dress. In both field sites it seems, nothing was more exotic and hilarious than the anthropologist trying out native dress. Having just provisionally attended to my “place” – be it where I was geographically located or where I stand now as a contributor to the ethnography the Bluegrass Kentucky as well as a multispecies ethnography – I want to make it clear that this section does not serve as the final word or justification for how legitimate or not my research and analysis are. Rather, in the spirit of Hugh Raffles, I do not want to reify the deception of landscapes – be they spatial or analytical – that I encountered and an emplaced within, but instead I am continuously trying to glimpse and describe the “struggles, achievement and accidents” taking place in the “intersecting threads of lives in progress” (1999:324). As such, I understand how my own life became and still is an intersecting thread in the Bluegrass as I first encountered it in 2011; and per my previous discussion on various moral and ethical dimensions human entanglements with nonhuman animals can take, I consider the fieldwork I conducted in the Bluegrass and this present act of writing it up not exempt from moral and ethical examination of how I intra-acted across the human-nonhuman animal divides. So, in addition to fourth-wave feminist calls for situatedness and positionality – along with the local practices and politics of placing oneself in Kentucky’s socio-cultural landscape – my fieldwork (and this present dissertation) was also enabled and constrained as I grappled with how to be morally and ethically responsible/correct/astute not just with human research participants, but a multispecies host of them. 70 2.3 “Going Native” in the Bluegrass I thus began by situating myself in the everyday landscape and life rhythms of Bluegrass Kentucky by taking up residence in a converted barn on a small, but not insignificant, “horse farm”69 in Scott County. Here, I lived with my dog, a then-four year-old, Border Collie-Black Labrador mix named Queeda, and shared the rest of the building with the rabbits and chickens the Latino farm workers kept for food. Located south of Georgetown Pike (a narrow causeway of a road that connected the towns of Paris and Georgetown) and east of Newtown Pike (which was the main connection route between downtown Lexington and the Kentucky Horse Park), the farm on which I lived was also home to the resident broodmare band, and a fluctuating population of foals, weanings, yearlings, and some horses in training. When I arrived in February 2011, I would watch a band of recently turned yearlings70 undulating together like a school of fish over a field just beyond the farm road that ran past the window in front of my desk. In the fields behind my barn apartment, I would visit with the broodmares and their new foals as they arrived throughout the spring, then later on in the year, the same foals as they matured and weaned from their mothers. Though this farm was not one of my fieldsites, nor the other people and horses there participants in my study, living on this farm got me in tune with the daily and seasonal rhythms of how a horse farm was run. Furthermore, the conversations I had with the farm owner (who was also my landlord) were deeply insightful, giving me crucial orientation to what it was like to run a small Thoroughbred farm in the Bluegrass. 69 The common term of “horse farm” is a default way to refer to a Thoroughbred racehorse production farm during my time in the Bluegrass; cf. Wilton 2008. 70 All Thoroughbreds – and horses, for that matter -­‐ turn one year-­‐old on 1 January in the culture of the Bluegrass. 71 My research was also multispecies in the sense that I paid attention to the other companion species and agricultural practices that went on around me. In addition to the horses that constituted my multispecies ethnographic fieldwork and situatedness, my time in the Bluegrass involved encounters with other significant nonhuman others. First and foremost, my own dog, Queeda, joined me in Kentucky. A “rescued” creature herself, Queeda was part-black Labrador, part-Border Collie (I think) that failed at becoming a detection dog: apparently her ability to stop and smell everything did not translate into an obedient-enough skill, as I learned when I visited the facility in Blaine, Washington, where she had been under training she was up for adoption. Having grown up with Labradors, something was incredibly familiar and endearing to me about her just from the very first site; but when the trainer informed me that the female dog before me would go to a shelter that did not have a “no-kill” policy in place if she was not adopted that day, I was further persuaded to “rescue” her. Two years later, Queeda would accompany me to Kentucky and her presence actually augmented my research access. I often heard many sayings during my fieldwork in the Bluegrass, one of which “horse people are dog people.” By bringing my dog with me virtually everywhere (except she could not accompany me to Blackburn but she did join on a return trip to Putnamville Correctional Complex where the inmates delighted in throwing a ball for her over and over again), I not only participated in the local culture of companion species, thereby going “native” in a small but significant way, but Queeda also softened my liminal identity as an anthropologist – someone who wasn’t just an “outsider” but who fit almost too congenially into the local social relations while at the same time studying and objectifying them. Research participants often first gravitated toward Queeda when I arrived, for she did not have the same agenda as I did, and yet her relatability made me more relatable too. 72 As such, I proved myself to be a dog person (amidst all my awkward attempts to learn how to become a horse person again) and happily reciprocated the affection for the dogs “owned” by my research participants. The impact of this reciprocity not only translated into closer interpersonal and research-oriented relationships, it also rubbed off on the dogs: for example, the farm owner’s dog would come visit for company when she had to leave for extending periods of time. Whether on early mornings to the Thoroughbred Training Center on Paris Pike, or up north on Interstate 75 to attend her horses racing at Turfway Park, or hauling mares to be bred at other farms across the Bluegrass, I could always count on an extra visitor showing up whenever her truck or trailer rumbled past my place and out the front gates. Figure 2: Queeda outside our converted barn apartment (photo TVS McKee) 73 In terms of encountering other animals, barn cats and kittens would slink into view or scatter just beyond my peripheral vision at almost every farm I visited. Cattle, another staple livestock in the Bluegrass that some claimed practically subsidized the horse industry there, would soak in algae-filled ponds to cool down in the summer and would join the horses in scuffing at the Bluegrass carpet before heading for their more socially-sanctioned slaughter destiny. And even though the Bluegrass had long since fallen under intense cultivation and domestication systems, it truly was a place where naturalcultural contact zones merged into companionate or contradictory coexistences. What I mean by this is that “wildlife” still existed in the forms of coyote howls at night, the incredible morning chorus of birds that greeted me each morning from nests in the barn, the ubiquity of Canada Geese in the winter, and the various birds of prey that sat sentinel atop fence posts (lest I forget the baffling proliferation of insect life – from the magical appearance of fireflies in early June to the cockroaches and spiders that gravitated into my barn apartment when the weather started turning cold in late October). In addition to the fortune of finding a place to live where I could tap into the “everyday” multispecies encounters of the Bluegrass, I also ended up living quite close71 to both of my primary fieldsites, and my daily commutes to each gave me an even more detailed picture of the “mutual ecologies and coproduced niches” (Kirksey and Helreich 2010:545) evident in my fieldsite. A drive south on Newtown Pike to the Kentucky Horse Park would take me past the banks of the Elkhorn River (which flooded mightily the spring I was there) as well as a colony founded by former slaves – New Zion – and then past many well-known farms such as Walnut Hall, Spy Coast, and Castleton Lyons before I turned onto Ironworks Road to make the final 71 This is relative term in the Bluegrass, for while I lived about 10 miles away from the KHP and 15 from BCC, I had a fairly straight shot to each down a well-­‐developed road. 74 approach to the Horse Park. Driving to Blackburn would take me the same route, but instead of turning off onto Ironworks Pike, I would travel further south where the suburban sprawl of Lexington not only butted up against farmland but literally the perimeter of the correctional complex itself. The routes that I would drive to my field sites became as well known as “the back of my hand,” and as I journeyed through four seasons in this landscape – late winter, spring, summer, fall and back into the beginning of winter – I watched not only how the land changed in response to climatic forces, but how people shaped the land as well: tilling gardens, raking and burning leaves, and extensively decorating their homes and yards for the holidays (of which I wish I had photographic evidence of as some creations were quite fantastic). 2.4 Main Fieldwork Sites 2.4.1 The Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center I began my fieldwork at MMSC in early February. I served there as a basic volunteer would – cleaning stalls, grooming and tacking up horses, helping out with administrative chores and events – and these duties became part of my participant-observation methods. Though I had to work towards proving myself as a competent rider, I eventually began riding the horses in the re-schooling program, starting with the “social workers” as the more docile horses were called, and moving up to the more (but not most) challenging horses. At MMSC I returned to riding in the English style, and at first felt as awkward and ignorant as a teenager again. I also grew up riding a particular breed of horses, Quarter Horses, which are smaller, more muscular, and are (generally) less nervous than Thoroughbreds. Most of our horses, however, were off-track Quarter Horses from my mother’s breeding and racing operation that had then been re-trained for rodeo competition (my mother also barrel raced and my father team roped); hence I was used to 75 a more fractious version of Quarter Horses, but as I soon learned from riding OTTBS (off-track-Thoroughbreds) at MMSC: there was nothing more unnerving than feeling a Thoroughbred quake in fear under the saddle when you were about six feet off the ground on a flat saddle. Luckily, I was never thrown off or had a horse run away with me, but there were a few times where I gladly accepted a change of mounts with a more experienced rider. Making such decisions, however, was not only to benefit my health and well being, but I was constantly aware that my ignorance as a rider could come to harm the horse I was riding. Theories abound about how entrained horses can be to their rider’s emotional / psychological states – and once you start riding you know this to be true. The moment I would feel fear or uncertainty, the Thoroughbred earthquake would start below me; so I diligently practiced being calm and patient, with rewarding results in that horse and rider never came away with injury or trauma during my fieldwork. In my attempt to foreground horses as agentive subjects in my research, as well as attend to the moral and ethical entanglements and responsibilities I held to them, riding was an integral method in exploring – and embodying – these issues. But my intra-actions with my equine research participants did not revolve only around riding. I would also go around and groom horses in the morning so they would be ready to be tacked up at a moment’s notice during reschooling or adoption try-out day. I would slip into their stalls, gently introduce myself by allowing the horse to sniff me all over, and then commence grooming and talking to them. I always took longer than most of the other grooms, but such was the price of spending extra time getting to know horses as something other than part of the landscape, as food, or as a symbol. In addition to participating in everyday operations at the MMSC facility, taking observational notes in various small notebooks that always tucked neatly in the back pocket of 76 my jeans, I also attended and helped out at horse shows. MMSC would take some of the more promising, schooled horses to various shows at the KHP or out at Masterston Station to literally show off the horses they had for adoption and the success of their reschooling program. Horses would be tacked up with saddle pads embroidered with the turquoise and black MMSC logo as visible representation of the program, and riders (often interns or staff) would be prepared to talk about the merits of the specific horse and the program in general. I would be on board to hold horses and run any needed errands – all the while asking questions for informal interviews, writing down notes, and taking extensive photo documentation. Aside from always attempting to be at the right place at the right time – and to be as helpful as possible as horse people tended to look down on people who were less than industrious when it came to chores – I conducted both informal and formal interviews with human research participants whenever I had the chance. Informal interviews happened whenever conversation was possible – turning horses out, driving to shows, mucking out stalls, bathing horses, and so forth – and I recorded quotes and impressions in my field notebooks. Formal interviews took place when I could have a sit down session with key research subjects such as the director of MMSC, the head trainer, the adoptions coordinator, the farm manager, the working student, and interns. Coordinating these interviews with meals was a most effective way to get through the plethora of questions I had, for otherwise everyone was just too busy with their work to give concerted attention and effort to being interviewed. These formal interviews were audio-recorded. Lastly, for my more ephemeral research participants – adopters, attendees at events, and a small sample of female students enrolled in equine sciences programs at the various universities and colleges around the Bluegrass – I conducted questionnaires (completed by either writing or 77 typing out responses) and hosted focus groups (audio recorded). As you will read in Chapter Eight, the questionnaires I administered to adopters of five specific horses helped me gather data so that I could analyze MMSC’s reschooling program from beginning to end. I also administered questionnaires to people who attended MMSC’s demonstration at the 2011 Secretariat Festival in an attempt to gather data that linked their admiration for Secretariat with what they learned from MMSC regarding OTTBs and the threat of slaughter. Lastly, I organized a focus group with approximately six equine sciences students who represented the visible population of young females who variously worked at various farms – racing and show – and owned and competed with OTTBs in the Bluegrass. Data I collected from the last two groups – the festival attendees and college students – appears sporadically in this thesis, either directly cited or in anecdote form. The results I gathered from the adoption questionnaires are more thoroughly analyzed at the end of Chapter Eight. 2.4.2 Blackburn Correctional Complex While I have placed great emphasis on this thesis’ engagement with animal studies and multispecies ethnography, ensconced within this focus is my engagement with another form of specialty ethnography: that of conducting fieldwork at prisons and the politics of “writing up” prison ethnography (cf. Rhodes 2001). Though not a thesis about prison life and culture, this is also not a thesis that seeks to reinscribe any comparison between the incarceration of humans and the captivity of animals; rather, wherever those parallelisms rise up – usually in the interview voices of the inmates themselves – I am interested in understanding why such statements are made and what kind of affects they produce. Moreover, the same attention and concern I pay attention to within the broad scope of animal studies – boundary making and the production of 78 difference, and exploring what moral and ethical beliefs and actions are taking place and at stake – also apply to how I conducted fieldwork (of which I will address here) and subsequently analyze and write about my research at Blackburn Correctional Complex. Receiving ethical clearance from my university to conduct research at BCC was a much more elaborate process than what I had to go through for my work at MMSC. In contrast, my research clearance by BCC went through in one round, with one of the only major stipulations being that I supplied the Department of Corrections with research results if they asked. Of greatest concern from my university ethics review board was how I would negotiate research access with such a vulnerable population: incarcerated human beings. At stake was whether or not my conscripting them as research participants would be voluntary as opposed to coerced, since the prison environment was already so highly coercive, and if my research results would be used against them, further indicting an already punished population. The parameters by which I could then approach inmates and access information from them became very narrow. I was limited to communication via handwritten notes from the inmates, as well as conducting formal interviews only – no observations, no reporting informal conversations, and no photographs (which was also a condition set out by BCC as well). I could, however, audio-record these interviews. In total, ten men out of the eighteen student-inmates in the Second Chances / Groom Elite program participated in my study. They came to participate in my study as voluntarily as possible, first by being made aware that I was going to do research through a flyer announcement in their classroom and then, truth be told, through a little encouragement by the program manager, Linda Dyer to approach me. Once a student-inmate expressed interest in participating in my study, I had him sign a consent form that also doubled as a confidentiality clause. From 79 there, each day I would show up at Blackburn I would conduct an interview or two in the cold classroom or, if the weather was better, at a picnic table just outside the main barn door. In addition to the interviews I obtained from inmates, I also gathered data from the farm manager, the aforementioned Linda Dyer. My research access and parameters with her were much more flexible and inclusive, and it was by shadowing her as she went about her daily routine with the men in the program that I could gain more perspective about the program that I could not obtain via formal interviews alone. In addition to shadowing her, taking down observational notes and recording details from our informal, conversational interviews, I also conducted a formal interview with her that was audio-recorded. Aside from the interviewing and shadowing, I did not participate in any facet of horse care nor in any of the educational instruction given to the men; I was always a liminal observer at best. This was especially pronounced during my first ethnographic engagement with the Second Chances / Groom Elite program. Instead of taking place within the confines of the prison, I actually had the fortunate opportunity to accompany Linda and some of her students on a fieldtrip to the Keeneland Yearling Sale one day in September 2011. As I was ethically bound to only account for Linda as a research participant, I simply tagged behind her and her students as they made the rounds – an experience that I will further recount in Chapter Eight. 2.4.3 A final note on additional fieldsites Though MMSC and BCC were my primary fieldsites, I made it a point to visit other places to understand further not only the local horse culture of the Bluegrass, but how the Thoroughbred ex-racehorse programs at MMSC and BCC fit in (or not) to this culture. As such, I visited Keeneland at various times of the year to witness and/or partake in different kinds of events. In 80 addition to the Commerce Lexington breakfast with the three Keeneland presidents, I also went to the track in the early mornings to watch morning workouts and then eat at the track kitchen afterwards. While I would mostly go out there just to get sense of the past lives might have been like for the ex-racehorses I worked with at MMSC, I did accompany the director and trainer of MMSC one morning as they scouted out potential horses ready for transition from track to off-track reschooling. This experience demonstrated to me that while the term “horse people” is instructive, it is not indicative of the internal diversity therein. Let’s just say wearing riding breeches and high black boots in the midst of racetrackers with their scuffed cowboy boots, fringed chaps, and/or breeding caps does not an unmarked identity make. I also attended both the spring and fall meets held at Keeneland, taking ample notes on the college sorority and fraternity scenes that took place there every weekend, and even once bluffing my way into the paddock and eventually the winners circle (just look like you know what you are doing). As previously mentioned, I also attended the Yearling Sales, and a month later a special symposium on Throughbred racehorse “aftercare” hosted by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (more on that in the Conclusion). Moving beyond Lexington, I even visited Churchill Downs to check out the Kentucky Derby Museum (complete with a bus tour of the backstretch) and to attend the Kentucky Oaks – a meet held the day before the Kentucky Derby that feted the female side of horse racing in a fascinating combination of featuring races run exclusively between fillies and encouraging attendees to dress in pink in support of breast cancer awareness. To also get a sense of the Thoroughbred racing culture of the Bluegrass, I not only lived on a horse farm but visited as many as I could. Given the question of access that Bill Cooke raised in the history of the Kentucky Horse Park, I was able to get on farms either by booking a 81 spot on a tourist van that took us to various farms, or through personal connections with employees on farms. As such, I was able to see on-farm training facilities – where young Thoroughbreds first learned to run - as well as breeding operations – including witnessing some pretty famous stallions “live cover” a mare. And some visits to the farms just involved walking down the picturesque, tree-lined lanes, clucking at fat broodmares with leggy foals by their sides. It was easy to see the idyllic image of these farms when just visiting or existing on the peripheries of their operations; it was only through conversation with those willing to participate and share in my study that the “throwntogetherness,” as Doreen Massey might call it, was revealed behind the “presumption of coherence” (1994:142). Lastly, I made use of the educational and research opportunities available at various public institutions. I spent considerable time in the Mary Aiken Littauer archives at the International Museum of the Horse both as an employed archivist of her extensive research collections and information, but I also took many a turn around the museum’s Mary Jane Gallahar Library and various exhibition halls to drink in the culture surrounding the study and representation of horse culture. I also went to various panels and talks hosted by the University of Kentucky Racing Club, and as such was exposed to the voices and perspectives of well-known, nigh-celebrities within the racing industry such as Jerry and Ann Moss, owners of the famous female racehorse, Zenyatta; John Shirreffs, Zenyatta’s trainer; Chris McCarron, hall of fame jockey; Arthur B. Hancock, owner of Stone Farm (and brother to Seth Hancock, owner of Claiborne Farm); and Bill Casner, former owner of Winstar Farm – just to name a few. 82 Chapter 3: Becoming the “Horse Capital of the World” During one of my morning walks around the horse farm where I lived, I came upon one of the larger, vastly hilly fields in the back of the farm – often called the “Back 40”. There, one misty, late summer morning before the oppressive heat and humidity of the day set in, I saw the familiar figures of the broodmares I often fed peppermints and compliments to grazing in a thick bank of fog. They soon spotted me and began ambling toward me, their bulging bellies from years of giving birth swung side to side with their slow gait. In that moment of cross-species recognition and relation, another mental image came to me related to my research that again juxtaposed the reality before my eyes. As the lives and deaths of horses were constantly on my mind throughout my fieldwork year, in addition to the persistent local lore of ghost stories72, I remember thinking to myself how almost ghostly these mares looked out in the field there. The term “ghost herds” came to me then, to explain how these lively creatures could also be regarded as figurative apparitions of the Thoroughbreds who could slip into anonymity, invisibility, and suffering by the sleight of a human cultural hand. Furthermore, by being broodmares, these horses served as the vessels and conduits by which more horses were brought into the world through exacting human action and intention that sometimes was, sometimes wasn’t, humane. And when the reproductive life of a broodmare came to an end, such as when her much prized womb turned fallow, not all found permanent sanctuary in the Back 40 on the farm where the majority of their reproductive life was consigned, where they were joined each spring by a new, spritely foal. Not 72 Also referred to as “hants” or “haints,” stories about “ghosts” are part of the rich folklore heritage of Kentucky (cf. Montell 1994). These spectres (cf. Gordon 2011) “refer to the spirits of dead people or animals that have a strong urge to return to the land of the living” (Montell 1994:1). On the farm where I lived, there was also an abandoned house by the lake on the farm, made so by a tragic death of one of the owners just a few years before. This only added to the haunting I felt every now and then living in the Bluegrass for my fieldwork year. 83 all of them were given the option to lay down one day and die in peace under the open sky, surrounded by her own kind. Figure 3: Horses at the horizon (photo TVS McKee) This chapter serves a twofold purpose. First, it will orient the reader to my field site by first presenting a history of the Bluegrass region of Kentucky focusing especially on how it became so overwhelmingly focused on Thoroughbred racing and culture, and how Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue came to factor in. I will begin by tracing the geological and environmental characteristics of the region as they are imagined as natural and almost pre-destined niches for Thoroughbred horses. I will then go on to consider how the fraught history of human settlement and social inequality shaped and was shaped by the region’s ever-dynamic equine identity by traversing from pre-contact land use, to the impact of the Civil War and slavery. 84 The human cultural identity of Thoroughbred racing then drastically changed in the post-Civil War decades, not only laying down the roots of the sport of racing as we know it today, but coupling the Bluegrass’ reputation for nigh-mythic Thoroughbred horses with a neo-Southern identity. I then trace how the “golden years” of Thoroughbred racing in Kentucky and the U.S. in the 20th century – as exemplified through the example of Secretariat - witnessed a destructive pursuit of profit starting in the late-1970s when breeding and selling horses became more lucrative than racing. Within this time frame, I also consider the creation of the Kentucky Horse Park and the role it plays in the Bluegrass’ emerging “horse capital of the world” identity. This section then concludes with a specific look at the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, its New York state and Kentucky tensions, and the controversy that both stunned its operations and supporters across the U.S., and significantly impacted the organization as I came to ethnographically engage with it during my fieldwork year. In this historically-oriented mapping “out the objective structure of the relationships between the positions occupied by the agents or institutions who compete for legitimate form of specific authority” (Bourdieu 1992:105) in my fieldsite of Bluegrass Kentucky, I also wish to set the stage in the sense of Avery Gordon’s notion of “haunting” as a way “to understand and write evocatively about some of the ways that modern forms of dispossession, exploitation and repression concretely impact the lives of the people most affected by them and impact our shared conditions of living” (2011:1). As Gordon further explains, “haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over and done with…or when their oppressive nature is continuously denied” (2011:2). In this study, such systems of power variously present 85 themselves, but are no means limited to, as the racing industry, horse slaughter, and human incarceration. Especially as it relates to my term, “ghost herds,” Gordon writes: These specters or ghosts appear when the trouble they represent and symptomize is no longer being contained or repressed or blocked from view…Haunting and the appearance of specters or ghosts is one way…we’re notified that what’s been suppressed or concealed is very much alive and present, messing or interfering precisely with those always incomplete forms of containment and repression ceaselessly directed towards us. (2011:2) The opening parables I have so far shared about Bubba and now the broodmare herd in the morning mist thus speak to the haunting I experienced while in the field and now wish to further impart in this dissertation. 3.1 Locating the Bluegrass Looking at Kentucky on a traditional map of the fifty states of the U.S., you will find it centrally positioned in the eastern half of America so that states in all four directions – north, south, east and west – seem to radiate out from it. Kentucky is a crossroads state, negotiating many U.S. regional influences, but also has a very distinct sense of its own state culture - as particularly evidenced, in this dissertation, through horses. The shape of Kentucky is also a peculiar one. As I often heard the phrase “no hoof, no horse” in the field, I came to think of describing its location as resembling an overgrown horse hoof. To the north, at the top of the “hoof” where the coronary band is located, is the Ohio River and the industrial and shipping belt of the U.S. To the south is the beginning of the Deep South, where the sole of Kentucky’s hoof stomps broadly across the northern border of Tennessee. To the east, the heel area of the hoof, lies the Appalachian Mountains, coal country, and the state of Virginia from which Kentucky was cleaved into statehood. To the west, where the wall of the hoof would extend out like an 86 overgrown flap, marks the beginning of the agricultural Midwest and once the American Frontier. Within the state itself, it is important to specify that my fieldwork took place in a particular region – that of the Inner Bluegrass (“Bluegrass” hereafter), consisting of the counties Franklin, Harrison, Woodford, Fayette, Bourbon, Jessamine, and Scott (in which I lived). While Figure 4: The entire Bluegrass region of Kentucky (Outer and Inner) Coronary band (Industrial Belt) Sole of hoof (Deep South) Wall of hoof (Frontier America) Heel of hoof (Appalachia) Figure 5: Hoof of a horse as shaped like the state of Kentucky 87 the Bluegrass is the epicenter of Kentucky’s equine identity project, it is not indicative of the rest of the state’s cultural and regional diversity. The eastern portion of the state, the heel of Appalachia is incredibly ethnographically rich in studies of language, kinship, labor (cf. Anglin 2002, Scott 1995), whereas in western Kentucky, river currents and prehistoric commerce have uniquely carved that region geographically and archaeologically (cf. Stout and Lewis 1998). All in all, Kentucky consists of 120 counties, each one with their own capital and sense of place (cf. Kingsolver 2011). Returning to the Bluegrass region. Environmentally, it is noted for its limestone base and infusion of Poa pratensis (“bluegrass”) both of which are nearly mythologized as being the foundation of Kentucky’s famed Thoroughbred horses. “Some 460 million years ago,” writes former turf writer, now historian Maryjean Wall, “central Kentucky and Middle Tennessee formed their destiny as horse country” (2010:45). Such a destiny began in the Ordovician Period (approximately 485-443 million years ago) at “a time of major plate collision of the earth’s crust, along with volcanism on what would become North America” (ibid). Mountains rose up in the eastern-central part of what is now the United States, kissed by vast, inland seas that deposited “a precious natural gift, their fossilized shells, which gave rise through the millennia to a particular form of limestone rock, the building block that horsemen have long believed is critical to raising a strong-boned racehorse” (ibid). As the local lore often went, Kentucky Thoroughbreds grew especially strong and notable by both eating the mineral enriched grass and running across the hills that undulated over the limestone foundation. To this effect, one of Rebecca Cassidy’s informants is quoted in Horse People as saying: “You only need to look at this place and see that 88 the bluegrass was meant to be here. When God created the Thoroughbred he had to make a carpet for him to run on, and this is it” (2007:70).73 Today, pavement has become a new kind of defining carpet in the Bluegrass. Around Lexington’s city center there is a ring road called New Circle Road from which roads leading to other towns and counties of the Inner Bluegrass emanate like various hands on the face of a clock. One such road I came to know very well is Georgetown Pike (Route 25) that shoots northwest – just around 11 o’clock. It is so named because it takes one into Georgetown, county seat for Scott County, which is also home to a large Toyota Manufacturing plant. Staying within Fayette County, Route 25 also took me to my two main fieldsites: the Kentucky Horse Park, and Blackburn Correctional Complex. Turning off of Route 25 / Georgetown Pike onto Ironworks Road is not only where the “Jesus Saves / Get Right With God” cross was found, but was also marked by the history and memory of Civil War skirmishes. 3.2 The Bluegrass as America’s First Western Frontier In 1750, the Loyal Land Commission based in Charlottesville, Virginia, secured a land grant of 800,000 in the “district of Kentucke,” sparking first the exploration, and then settlement of Kentucky by “white” settlers that were British, Scotch, Irish, and German in descent (Hollingsworth 1985:12). Early explorers made their way through the mountains via the 73 Furthermore, this “carpet” -­‐ Poa pratensis – is a rhizomatic grass, with leaves that shoot off a branching root system and flowers that bloom blue if left to grow its natural height of 2-­‐3 feet. This innate characteristic of my fieldsite evokes Deluze and Guattari’s analytical notion of the “rhizome”: “a rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (2004:8). 89 Cumberland Gap74, while later on others navigated the Ohio and Kentucky Rivers (Hollingsworth 1985:13). The Cumberland Gap effectively opened up the American colonies for western expansion, thus making Kentucky the first frontier state – a reputation that became hard to shake as the decades went on (cf. Wall 2010). Daniel Boone is an oft-cited, legendary frontier figure in the discovery of and settlement in Kentucky, making his first foray into the region in 1769 via the Cumberland Gap and fighting off Shawnee incursions at the now historic site of Boonesborough Fort. Following Boone, the “second sons” of colonial elite families hailing from Virginia and the Carolinas (Hollingsworth 1985:14) saw the land as divisible into individual ownership “complete with legal documents testifying to that status and in fences that would define their ownership and warn off intruders” (Harrison and Klotter 1997:10), a vision that deeply conflicted with, but ultimately overruled, Shawnee and other native uses of the land. Yet one vision both cultures had in common was the richness of Kentucky – they just had different modes of explaining and exploiting it. “A sight so delightful to our feelings and grateful to our feelings,” effused one early explorer, Dr. Walker, “almost inclined in imitation of Columbus, in transport to kiss the soil of Kentucky, as he hailed and saluted the sand on his first setting foot on the shores of America” (Cassidy 2007:65; c.f. Hollingsworth 1985:12). It was the Bluegrass region, standing in for all of Kentucky, that inspired such a perspective. Yet as one of my research subjects informed me, once white settlers made their way through the Cumberland Gap, the Bluegrass was “decimated” in just thirty years, which I took to mean that the pre-contact features and resources of the region were now forever changed and 74 Named after British Duke of Cumberland who was a famous breeder of Thoroughbreds Herod and Eclipse. 90 conscripted into new, capitalist-oriented system of land management (cf. Buck 2001). In 1775 the town of Lexington was first named. In 1782 the town charter was formed. This all took place before Kentucky gained official statehood from Virginia in 1792; before that the lands of Kentucky were part of the commonwealth of Virginia, one of the original colonies of the United States. In 1797, Lexington was still a minor settlement, “a group of around fifty houses ‘partly frame and hewn logs, with chimneys on the outside’” (Samuel Brown, quoted in Cassidy 2007:65). But by 1816, Lexington had grown into “a large and beautiful town,” where log cabins had been replaced by brick mansions; a culture of “taste and wealth” was evident from finely planted fields ripe with tobacco and hemp, yards so precise and cultivated that the Bluegrass came to be referred to as the “Yorkshire of America,” and, of course, the home of well-bred horses (ibid). 3.3 How the Bluegrass Became Thoroughbred Country: pre-Civil War The first horses in Kentucky, however, were not Thoroughbreds but horses of various breeds that could race, for as historian and turf writer Kent Hollingsworth points out: “in Kentucky, arguments were settled by a horse race” (1985:14). Such races began as one-fourth mile sprints down the streets of towns, and when they evolved into four-mile heat races this apparently “required an upgrading of racing stock” (ibid). The first “blooded75 horse came from England via Virginia” circa 1800 and his name was Blaze (Hollingswoth 1985:17). Around the same time, horse races were becoming much more organized and codified, with the creation of the Kentucky Jockey Club in 1797, which was then replaced by the Lexington Jockey Club in 1809. 75 The term “blooded” or “blood-­‐horse” is another way to refer to a Thoroughbred, particularly of English extraction. 91 Such an upgrade in horse stock and racing was fitting for the white society that had planted and cultivated itself in the Bluegrass, as the pastimes of “country gentlemen” and their female counterparts counted the breeding and racing of fine horses as one of their prized cultural practices and identity markers, along with building and inhabiting luxurious country estates and villas, throwing lavish parties, and appearing in and affecting the latest fashions (Cassidy 2007:66). This elite culture of the Bluegrass emerged from a concerted agrarian as well as industrial development of the land. Such development was made possible not only through the enslaved labor of African-Americans, it also created and benefitted from vastly uneven distributions of wealth among the white population (cf. Buck 2001). As I will indicate throughout the ensuing chapters, the legacy of this historical, structural force of racism and classism was still present and active during my fieldwork in the Bluegrass; only this time, I consider how horses were also inflicted by and reflective of these social hierarchies of power, labor, and violence. Thus, as the Bluegrass developed, horse breeding and racing went from a pastime hobby that helped mark white elite culture (Wall 2010) to dedicated farm operations with their own host of ethnic labor and class configurations. The descendants of Second Sons had now become legendary farm owners and breeders, like A. Keene Richards who, according to Cassidy, was the “first Blue Grass farmer to devote himself to Thoroughbred production” (2007:66), and Robert Aitcheson Alexander who stood the famous Thoroughbred racehorse, Lexington76. Lexington’s racing victories, combined with his breeding prowess, are credited with fomenting the association of Kentucky’s Bluegrass region with Thoroughbred breed dominance (Cassidy 76 So famous that his skeleton stands reassembled and on display at the International Museum of the Horse in the Kentucky Horse Park. 92 2007:67). The horse, Lexington, however, also helps signal another important shift in the history of Thoroughbred racing and breeding in the Bluegrass: the onslaught of the Civil War (1860-1865). As Hollingsworth observed: “He happened to come along at a time when the Civil War destroyed racing, among other things. When Lexington was in his prime as a stallion, many of his progeny went into the cavalry, mares carrying his foals were stolen and lost, and racing opportunities were scant” (1976:32). Lexington’s life thus becomes an index of the profound impact the Civil War had on not just racing in the Bluegrass, but the state of Kentucky itself. 3.4 The Impact of the Civil War If at its inception Kentucky was a crossroads between eastern Colonial America to western Frontier America, during the Civil War it supposedly77 became a border state between the warring Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South. Though officially a neutral, Kentucky was a complexity of north and south. It was slave-owning, state and had pockets of powerful Confederate sympathies78, yet was birthplace of both President of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, and the First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. In spite of northern connections, however according to Maryjean Wall (2010) it was the connections to the Confederate South would come back and play an unexpected but crucial role in the re-building of Kentucky as a state and Thoroughbred racing in the Bluegrass after the Civil War. As mentioned, this war not only had “shaken the foundations of the state” (Harrison and Lowell 1997), but it had totally disrupted the breeding and racing scene in the Bluegrass as just 77 I write “supposedly,” in order to qualify this oft-­‐made claim by other social positions: “For all the talk about Kentucky as a border state, the culture of slavery, of racial apartheid had won the day in the state despite places in the region that had sprouted fierce assertions of civil rights for all” (hooks 2009:23). 78 Kentucky possessed myriad confederate government outposts, and the largest star on Confederate flag represents Kentucky. 93 briefly yet poignantly evidenced through Lexington’s story. With the state and one of its most productive regions so disenfranchised, “the agricultural wealth of Kentuckians simply could not compete with the vast array of industrial wealth in the Northeast” (Wall 2010:2). Consequently, in the post-bellum years the center of Thoroughbred horse racing and breeding shifted north as industrialists there poured their money into new breeding farms and racetracks. Then, northern dominance in Thoroughbred breeding and racing was further consolidated by the purchase of the American Stud Book (which happened to be created in 1868 by Kentuckian Colonel Sanders D. Bruce) by the newly formed American Jockey Club in 1894, led by financier, August Belmont Jr. While all these developments shifted focus away from Kentucky as the homeland of the American Thoroughbred, this era also signaled the “structure of the sport” as Thoroughbred racing is known today, and the “newfound stability created significant commercial opportunities” for those in the racing business (Cassidy 2007:67). Digging deeper into how Kentucky was particularly affected, according to Maryjean Wall, Kentucky did not sit idly by and watch the wealth and prestige gravitate north. She contends that “the money began to flow into Bluegrass Kentucky only after locals and outsiders embraced a popular plantation myth that gave the region a neo-Southern identity” (2010:3). Three decades after the Civil War, nostalgia apparently ran high for the antebellum years “where the horses ran fast, the living seemed ideal, and all African Americans occupied servile positions” (Wall 2010:3); so much so that it fomented and fed off of a literary movement that not only idealized the South on page, but also translated into practicing a newly crafted regional identity for Kentuckians: that of being “Southern.” In addition to Kentucky (particularly the Bluegrass region) capitalizing on the emerging romanticism of the antebellum South, Wall argues that the plantation myth that came with such romanticism also worked to “negate[sic] the 94 region’s notorious reputation for violence and lawlessness” that came with Kentucky’s other regional identity: that of the wild western frontier (ibid.; cf. Aron 1996). As Kentucky’s rough western identity gave way to a genteel neo-Southern one by drawing business back79, Wall points out that this era was also newly marked by the “[exclusion] of African Americans from participation in the new horse industry” (Wall 2010:3; cf. Wall 2012). Such local exclusionary practices were enabled by larger, national Supreme Court rulings such as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation. As covered in the Introduction, the exclusion of African Americans from racing was sea change given how integral they had been not only in the operation of farms and handling of horses, but as victorious jockeys as well. As bell hooks observed of this historical shift and the grip it took, not just on Kentucky, but post- Plessy v. Ferguson America as well: “Throughout our nation the dehumanization of poor people, the destruction of nature for capitalist development, the disenfranchisement of people of color, especially, African-Americans, the resurgence of white supremacy and with plantation culture has become an accepted way of life” (2009:23). 3.5 The 20th Century Thus as the 20th century dawned, Thoroughbred racing had not only started to become the competitive sport as I knew it during my fieldwork, but also “the industry” I refer to throughout this work in terms of being “a government regulated business”80 where “one devoted their entire lives and business endeavors to breeding and racing horses” (Hollingsworth 1985:57). As is now 79 Social reform movements up north, wishing to ban gambling, also played an effect in luring horseracing back to Kentucky. 80 Though, as I came to discover, there was unease with how government regulated the racing industry should be, especially when it came to its culpability in contributing to the population of unwanted horses destined for slaughter. 95 apparent, with such devotion also came the entanglement of racial, class, and species distinctions and inequalities that constituted the sport and business. But such inheritance was constantly re-negotiated in light of new historical circumstances, where Thoroughbred racing had now became a capitalist endeavor like never before, with money to be made not only by winning races, which became especially lucrative with the advent and acceptance of pari-mutual wagering and gambling, but also in the breeding shed as well through stallion fees and yearling sales. Having reclaimed its reputation as the mecca of Thoroughbred racing, the Bluegrass contributed to and benefited from the rise of the sport. In 1875 the Kentucky Derby was founded and went on to become the spectacular, almost-carnivalistic event known today (cf. Harrah-Conforth 1992, Thomas 1995). Monumental farms were established: from the beleaguered Calumet (cf. Hagedorn Auerbach 1994), to the tradition-dominated Claiborne and the palatial Winstar Farm founded and funded by “new money” made in the energy business. Lexington also saw the creation of the astute Keeneland Racecourse in 1936, known for its elite spring and fall race meets, world-class horse auctions where horses were sometimes sold for millions of dollars, and practice of setting itself apart from other racetracks through the measure of “class.” “We want a place where those who love horses can come and picnic with us and thrill to the sport of the Bluegrass,” founder and first president, Hal Price Headley once said. “We are not running a race track to hear the click of the mutuel [gambling] machines. We want them to come out here to enjoy God’s sunshine, fresh air and to watch horses race.”81 Yet despite such rhetoric, there was also – and always – money to be made from gambling on racing. 81 From http://www.keeneland.com/discover/our-­‐founding; accessed 5/7/2013. See also Keeneland: A Thoroughbred Legacy published upon the 75th anniversary of Keeneland in 2010 by Keeneland Association, Inc. and Blood-­‐Horse Publications. 96 Money and, moreover, fame were also to be made in the industry in subtler ways, such as the marketing and publicity of championship racehorses as equines that spoke to an era, such as as Man O’War (cf. Bouyea 2014 [2007]) and Seabiscuit (cf. Hillenbrand 2001) did between the World War I, “Roaring ‘20s,” and the Great Depression eras, and as Secretariat did during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights era of the 1970s. Through a combination of a horse making a lot of money on the track and in the breeding shed, and subsequently being represented as a timely, meaningful champion by eager human fans and “connections”82, the Thoroughbred racing world is constantly iconicizing horses, using the standard, I would argue, of the “ideal type” Thoroughbred racehorse. Each era has a type of horse in mind, therefore “ideal” is a historically-shifting notion. In the case of my fieldwork, though twenty-two years had passed since his death and almost forty since his legendary, championship year in 1973, Secretariat was the most salient “ideal type” Thoroughbred I encountered in the Bluegrass, both in terms of the standards he set for racing and, as I came to find out, for rescuing too. 3.5.1 The (ongoing) era of Secretariat: 1973-1989 Here was one to stir an Emerson: Born for success he seemed, with grace to win, heart to hold, and shining gifts that take all eyes. Highly bred, impressive in appearance, spectacular in performance, Secretariat was the personification of a dream, dreamed by all men who would look upon greatness in a Thoroughbred and say, ah, that he came along in our time. From The Kentucky Thoroughbred by Kent Hollingsworth (1985:152) 82 This is the term used to describe the select group of people who manage the career of a racehorse, such as the owners, breeders, trainers, jockeys, and affiliated staff. 97 An introduction to who Secretariat was, still is, and why it matters to this dissertation can begin in many ways. According to many of my research participants in the Bluegrass, it is meaningful, and somewhat protocol, to begin with a physical description of the horse. Secretariat was an incredibly well-muscled and broad-bodied 16.2 hand chestnut stallion with three white socks and a star between his eyes that shot down into a straight, narrow, delicate blaze. He was a strikingly handsome horse from day one; “He’s too pretty to be good,” Penny Chenery, Secretariat’s owner recalled thinking the first time she saw the colt at her Virginia farm, The Meadow, after his birth in 1970 (Tweedy and Ladin 2010:114). Upon his death in 1989, an autopsy revealed that he had a heart three times larger than the average Thoroughbred, which many thought explained how he could run so fast and with such continuing endurance83. Given how Secretariat was exceptional (if not sublime) in physical form, where does he fall in relation to the general physicality and disposition of the American Thoroughbred? We can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, in fact, based on a May 1974 article appearing in the now-defunct magazine The Saturday Evening Post, where Secretariat himself84 recounted his 1973 Kentucky Derby win. This recounting also gives us a platform from which to contextualize the various (and variations of) Thoroughbreds to be encountered in this thesis: Thoroughbred is a distinct breed of horse…We have a dished or straight profile, a long, slender neck, sloping shoulders, fairly short back. The width of the brisket – the space between our forelegs – is large, making room for the great heart of a Thoroughbred and the powerful lungs. Our muscles are flat and stringy, mane and tail thin and fine, veins violin strings, skin so thin we suffer terribly from flies and hot weather. We are high spirited, but rarely mean or stubborn; ruined by rough treatment and easily gentled as a foal 83 Research has been done on how the “large heart gene” in Thoroughbreds was passed down through the mare, Pocahontas. See Kirsan 2007-­‐2012. 84 This article was “ghost-­‐written” from the perspective of Secretariat by “horse interviewer” Starkey Flythe. 98 by kindness. Courage and quickness, spirit and delicacy mark us – no horse in the world can stay with us on the track; none can outjump us in the field. And we all have the same birthday, January first. (1974: 80) Thoroughbreds are not only a distinct breed of horse as described above, they are also manufactured from three foundational sires bred with English mares: the Byerly Turk (c.1684-1706), the Godolphin Barb (1724-1753), and the Darley Arabian (~1704-?). All stallions were acquired via British colonial agents based in Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria and they not only built a whole new horse breed, but the genetic calculations of making such a breed also inspired and were inspired by human eugenics (Cassidy 2002, 2007; Weil 2007). From such ancestral origins came horses like Secretariat. As the recounting of a Thoroughbred’s more immediate “bloodlines” was common meaning-making practice among people in the Bluegrass, we can also begin to know Secretariat this way. Born March 30th, 1970, he was “by” Bolder Ruler “out of” Something Royal.85 Turf writer William Nack called it “a match of royalty” (1990:2). Bold Ruler’s pedigree was described as one-half “typically American-made, with speed, stoutness, and toughness in about equal amounts” and the other “alternatively, full of flash and class” (Capps 2003:41-42). He proved to be a “speed horse” during his short and checkered racing career (1957-1958), and sired eleven champion racehorses, including Secretariat, after he was retired to breed at Claiborne Farm. Somethingroyal, on the other hand, was a “nonentity as a racehorse” but had parents “who were overacheivers on the racetrack and at stud, horses who earned their acclaim through steady excellence rather than fashionable pedigrees or early brilliance” (Capps 2003:36). 85 I will go on to explain the exacting ways bloodlines are recounted in this way in Chapter Three. 99 Though Bold Ruler and Somethingroyal had produced two previous progeny, Secretariat was their last together as Bold Ruler died of cancer in 1971. Though Secretariat was born good-looking and to prestigious bloodlines, he was an awkward colt and had to grow into his racing legs. He lost his first race as a two year-old, “slammed at the start and finished fourth” as another famous turf writer, Kent Hollingsworth, explained it (1985:152). Other than this loss, however, “there was nothing about Secretariat that prompted doubt of victory” (Hollingsworth 1985:152-153). Hollingsworth was not the only turf writer to glorify the horse in popular writing, William Nack also traced the horse’s career and was, in fact, fortuitously situated to write about it from almost the very beginning. Through his writing, especially his acclaimed book, Secretariat: The Making of a Legend (199086) we get a sense how Secretariat became an ideal type Thoroughbred that remains unmatched today. After Secretariat’s unfortunate first start, he rebounded with a stunning victory at Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, New York, prompting Nack to declare that, “The Secretariat phenomenon, with all the theater and passion that would attend it, had begun” (1990:3). After a record setting two year-old season87 in 1972, the next year started with even higher stakes when it was announced that Secretariat was to be syndicated for an unheard of $8.06 million dollars.88 Thirty-two stocks were eventually purchased by various shareholders for $190,000 each; Nack pointed out that this made “the 1,154-pound horse worth more than three times his weight in gold. (Bullion was selling at the time for $90 an ounce)” (1990:3). Never before had a horse been syndicated for so much money – and still with a three year-old season to prove. So along 86 There have been numerous reprints. 87 It is common practice to begin campaigning Thoroughbred racehorses at the age of two. 88 This deal was arranged by Penny Chenery – then Tweedy – to help save The Meadow. 100 with the unprecedented amount of fame Secretariat accrued just after his first year of racing, came the risk that he might prove it all was in vain come the next year of competition. For Secretariat and his connections, this year involved the famed Kentucky Derby. Secretariat more than qualified89 for the 1973 Kentucky Derby, which was also the first race in the U.S. Triple Crown title, the most elite90 accolade a Thoroughbred racehorse can achieve. In terms of the importance of this race, the Kentucky Derby not only kicks off the Triple Crown competition, it is also an incredible performance of regional identity and invented tradition particular to the Bluegrass. The Derby is something of a ritual, reaffirming the worldwide fame and importance of not only this historic race (it began in 1875), but also the local horse country and culture of the Bluegrass that associates with it. A horse that wins in front of this crowd is thus a participant in one of the most powerful events of equine glorification and regional heritage the Bluegrass - and its global viewing audience – can witness. Held at Churchill Downs racetrack in the middle of a now-dilapidated neighborhood in downtown Louisville on the first Saturday of each May, “the Derby” has quintessential traditions and practices in which fans partake. Though there are many to name (and many emerge and fade away with the times), some of the most iconic of those during my fieldwork year were women dressing up in flamboyant, wide brimmed hats, the imbibing of a specialty alcoholic drink known as a Mint Julep, the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home” before the start of the race. Of the race itself and what it means to the prestige and reputation placed upon the winner of the Derby, let us return to Secretariat’s insights and perspective: 89 Qualifications can change with the times; ie. 2013 horses must now qualify via a point system; http://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-­‐biz/kentucky-­‐derby-­‐2013-­‐field-­‐to-­‐be-­‐determined-­‐by-­‐points-­‐system/; accessed 04/18/13. 90 And difficult to attain, for as of writing no horse has won since a horse called Affirmed in 1978, and only 11 in total have won. 101 It is the ninth race in a day of ten. Post time [when the race starts] is 5:30. And for the moment, Churchill Downs is the center of the universe. For racing? No, not just for racing. For radiance. The horse that wins will wear, not just as long as his head is above the turf – but forever – a crown of glory. A brass name plate on his turn-out bridle. A plaque on his stall door. He will become a living moment in the big and noble hearts of Thoroughbreds. (1974:79) Secretariat not only went on to win the Derby, but he set a new record for the race, running it under 2 minutes at 1:59[2/5] from a dead last start. “I had just witnessed the greatest Kentucky Derby performance of all time,” Nack effused (1990:7). Secretariat then went on to win the next Triple Crown race, the Preakness Stakes. “Secretariat wasn’t just winning,” Nack opined. “He was performing like an original, making it all up as he went along” (ibid). Such success did not go unnoticed, as Secretariat appeared on the cover of Time, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek magazines, and was a daily staple on morning and evening news broadcasts. On the day of the Belmont Stakes, the last of the Triple Crown races, June 9th, 1973, 69,000-plus fans arrived at Belmont Park on Long Island to watch “Secretariat [run] flat into legend” (Nack 1990:8). A famous quote by CBS announcer Chick Anderson is often quoted to illustrate how the horse dominated this race: “He’s moving like a tremendous machine!” The record for the Belmont Stakes was 2:26[3/5]. Secretariat won it in 2:24 flat, an unbelievable 31 lengths (248 feet) in front of his three other opponents, including Sham who had been depicted as Secretariat’s rival and came in second in the previous two races (he came in last in the Belmont, so fatigued by trying to keep up with Secretariat during the first part of the race). Setting records in all three races, Secretariat was awarded the Triple Crown trophy and title at Belmont; but the valorization of his extraordinary racing prowess did not stop there. Not only was the horse lauded as the only nonhuman athlete in the top fifty athletes of the 20th 102 century by Sports Illustrated, he also became a symbol of “solace” according to Kate Chenery Tweedy: One reason why Secretariat moved people was that he brought solace during a dark and shameful era, May and June of 1973. The bitterly resented Vietnam War was still a divisive factor in American life, and the Watergate scandal was slowly ripping into even deeper political waters…So when this marvelous red animal in blue-and-white checks dashed across our TV screens, everyone cheered for him as a symbol of things we feared we had lost: power, character, and triumph. His victories became the nation’s victories, his successes, our successes.” (2010:129) “Secretariat restored our faith in humanity.” “It was as if he were touched by God.” “Horse of the Century.” “Big Red.” These are just a few other oft-circulated quotes and monikers that help us understand how valorized Secretariat had become not just to the unique culture of horseracing but to the U.S. nation at large (Tweedy and Ladin 2010:129). Due to the conditions of his syndication, Secretariat was retired in 1973 after his last run and victory in the Canadian International Championship at Woodbine Racecourse in Toronto. In addition to his unprecedented fame and following, he had earned $1,316,808. As part of an agreement between the Chenery family’s long connection with the Hancocks, Secretariat was sent to the Hancock’s Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, to stand. His first son, Canadian Bound, became the first yearling horse to sell for more than $1 million, the price no doubt reflecting the incredible anticipation that Secretariat would reproduce his greatness. But Canadian Bound would not do so; in fact, most of Secretariat’s first generation foals did not, with the exception of a few major winners, and this apparently drove the value of his offspring down. But unlike another red stallion that also stood at Claiborne Farm, Ferdinand – who we will meet in Chapter Five – Secretariat meant too much, and much more, than a breeding stallion to be decommissioned from the farm’s retinue of stallions. Besides, he would soon prove to be 103 more of a “damsire”: that is, he apparently was more apt to pass along his greatness down to his daughters. Consequently, such famous racehorses as A.P. Indy, Seattle Slew, and Storm Cat were “out of” Secretariat’s daughters such as Weekend Surprise and Teralingua. Secretariat thus lived out his days at Claiborne until his demise from laminitis, a virtually incurable hoof ailment that makes it all but impossible for a horse to walk (“no hoof, no horse”).91 William Nack was there for those last few days of Secretariat’s life in October 1989. In a conversation with Seth Hancock, head of Claiborne Farm, Nack recalls him lamenting: “How do you think I feel?” he said. “Ten thousand people come to this farm every year, and all they want to see is Secretariat. They don’t give a hoot about the other studs. You want to know who Secretariat is in human terms? Just imagine the greatest athlete in the world. The greatest. Now make him six-foot-three, the perfect height. Make him real intelligent and kind. And on top of that, make him the best-lookin’ guy ever to come down the pike. He was all those things as a horse. He isn’t even a horse anymore. He’s a legend. So how do you think I feel?” (1990:9) Secretariat was chemically euthanized at 11:45am on October 4th, 1989. He is buried in the horse cemetery behind the main office at Claiborne, the same cemetery where his father, Bold Ruler, was laid to rest. Demonstrating ultimate respect for Secretariat, the horse was buried whole, not just the hooves and the heart (and the body cremated) as is customarily done for most commemorated horses. 91 See http://www.paulickreport.com/features/three-­‐chimneys-­‐presents-­‐good-­‐news-­‐friday/three-­‐chimneys-­‐presents-­‐good-­‐news-­‐friday-­‐foot-­‐crazy/; accessed 04/19/13. 104 3.5.2 The (ongoing) era of Secretariat: fieldwork year of 2011 Secretariat was one of the most central horse figures that helped the Bluegrass define itself as the horse capital of the world. Although he had passed away more than twenty years before my entrée into the field, his legend was made and re-made every day I spent in the Bluegrass. The evidence presented itself in many salient and tangible forms. For example, when I arrived to work in the Mary Aiken Littauer archives at the International Museum of the Horse, I would walk by Edward Bogucki’s bronze statue92 located just outside the main doors of the Kentucky Horse Park’s visitor center. It depicting Secretariat “on the muscle” being led out for a race by his groom, Eddie Sweat, with jockey, Ron Turcotte, up in the saddle. In the museum itself, a large glass wall case sparkled with the various trophies Secretariat won during his short two-year racing career, including the stark silver, angular Triple Crown trophy. This case also featured the iconic blue-and-white checkered racing silks and blinkers Secretariat raced in, and a bumper sticker modestly placed in the midst of this display that read “Breed More Secretariats.” One day I encountered a woman in the lobby of the museum who emerged sobbing from Secretariat’s exhibit. She explained that she had been at the Belmont Stakes on when Secretariat had won and awarded the Triple Crown trophy she had just seen. Secretariat’s victorious career had touched her so much that to see the material remnants of it ignited the passionate response I was privy to witness. Her teenage daughter only looked on, silent and somewhat embarrassed, perhaps unable to understand how a racehorse could mean so much to her mother, never having such a horse come along in her time. 92 See “Horse Park to Unveil Secretariat Statue July 17” at http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-­‐racing/articles/23041/horse-­‐park-­‐to-­‐unveil-­‐secretariat-­‐statue-­‐july-­‐17#ixzz2q20hN4I0; accessed 01/10/14. 105 Secretariat also figured prominently during my fieldwork year in additional ways. While no horse has gone on to match Secretariat’s fame and persona, his is a template by which all successive championships horses have been measured: from his damsire offspring such as Seattle Slew and A.P. Indy, to more recent valorization of female horses – fillies and mares – such as Rachel Alexandra, Zenyatta, and Black Caviar. Every year, as the Kentucky Derby rolls around, I would argue that the question is not only “will there be a Triple Crown winner this year?” (recall, the last winner was in 1978, so as of writing we are in a 35 year stand-off) but, in more whispered, wistful tones: “will it be won by a horse like Secretariat?” In my experience while in the field, people longed for a Secretariat-like horse for many reasons: to boost the flagging national interest in and reputation of Thoroughbred racing (marred, among other things, by the controversy over horse slaughter), to shift national focus from the turmoils of the day (which, during my fieldwork, included a lingering global economic recession, the emergence of the Arab Spring, the devastation of the Japanese tsumani, and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan), and to simply have a magnificent, unprecedented horse to root for the Triple Crown for the first time in 35 years (though in 2012 one horse came close, I’ll Have Another, winning both the Derby and the Preakness before being sidelined with a career-ending injury). As such, it seemed as though people were returning over and over again to the Secretariat story, retelling it to remind themselves that Thoroughbred racing was still the stuff of legends and national importance. In that light, Disney had just released a film the year before about the horse’s Triple Crown campaign. Based on Nack’s book, Secretariat starred famous actors such as Diane Lane as Penny Chenery, the horse’s owner, and John Malkovich as Lucien Lauren, the horse’s trainer, and a special premiere was held at the old Lexington Theater days before the film’s national release in October 2010. Lane and Chenery were among the celebrities in 106 attendance. This premiere also coincided with Lexington’s hosting of the 2010 World Equestrian Games, and when I entered the field but three months later, everyone was still buzzing about both events – in both critical and commending ways. I also encountered the ongoing production of Secretariat’s legend when I attended the Secretariat Festival at the Bourbon County Fairgrounds in Paris, Kentucky, about a year after the film premiere in September 2011. Being the home of Claiborne Farm where Secretariat stood at stud from 1973 to 1989 and where he is also buried, the city of Paris and the county of Bourbon were fitting hosts to this event. Yet, I attended this festival not only to witness how Secretariat was celebrated – from artworks to souvenirs to autograph signings by Penny Chenery for $20 – but also to see how one of my main communities of study, the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center (MMSC), participated in this reinscription of Secretariat’s Kentucky-specific heritage and commodification. “We are here today because of the horse,” one man shared with me. “They should be treated with respect. People in general are uneducated as to the history of the horse.” Though I will go on to explain in Chapter Five the genesis of the MMSC and why this organization dedicated to the retraining and adoption of Thoroughbred ex-racehorses acquired the association with Secretariat, it is suffice to say here that my ethnographic research with MMSC is the most direct and compelling reason why it is important to understand how much Secretariat matters to the Bluegrass equine identity and what kind of ideal type Thoroughbred he is imagined to be. As this study will attest, Secretariat’s symbolism earned through his racing career was further appropriated by MMSC to argue that off-the-track-Thoroughbreds could still be regarded as champions in their own right. The logic went that even if they could not win at racing, Thoroughbreds could still compete and be successful in other sports such as Eventing, Hunter Jumper, and Dressage. Furthermore, within the context of adoption and care 107 relationships, they could also still be as beloved and respected as Secretariat was. As particularly deployed by MMSC, Secretariat helps lend great symbolic and political weight to the redemptive capital of other off-track-Thoroughbreds facing uncertain post-racing futures. I will go on to demonstrate this more thoroughly throughout the remainder of this dissertation. But while Secretariat is so valorized, this overemphasis on his legendary status can overshadow the more common fate of most Thoroughbred racehorses. Thus the ideal type Thoroughbred that Secretariat models also works in another more every day and subtle way. While attention is focused on finding and valorizing the next equine champion, overlooked are the horses that do not fit the basics of the Secretariat template: that is, born to good bloodlines, victorious in their racing careers, retired with enough success to breed, then pensioned for the rest of their days when their breeding days are over. I won’t go so far as to suggest that the master narrative of the ideal type Thoroughbred is purposefully used to mask the fate of the majority of horses that do not fit into this template, but rather the de facto attention paid to horses that promise to reinscribe the glory of Thoroughbred racing (and those closer to the template of Secretariat the better) minimizes and obscures what I call in this thesis the “ghost herds” of racing. The concept of ghost herds refers to horses that are marginalized because they do not fit a hegemonic standard of the ideal type horse in question; in this dissertation, this means Thoroughbreds that strive towards Secretariat’s caliber in both racing and rescue situations. Such marginalization can result in a spectrum of consequences for horses: from landing into so-called care relationships of abuse and neglect, to not being able to find care relationships at all be it through sales, adoption, fostering or sponsoring - or to the ultimate problem this dissertation 108 addresses: slaughter. The uneven effects of the ideal type Thoroughbred – here just exemplified in Secretariat – will be particularly explored in Chapter Five in the life story of Ferdinand. 3.6 Rescuing Horses and Horse People By the time I reached the Bluegrass in 2011, the “golden years” of the 20th century of racing were over and many who I spoke to and came to know during my fieldwork expressed trepidation in the uncertainty of the 21st century. After Secretariat had made history in the 1970s, big money from across the world got involved in racing more than ever. Horses but a year old (“yearlings”) were being purchased for over a million dollars. Syndicate ownership of promising racehorses formed that made Secretariat’s eight million dollar syndicate look diminutive. Stallion fees could command as much as half-a-million dollars. Multi-million dollar farms and breeding facilities sprung up across the Bluegrass. And many, many horses were bred just to be sold, their worth based on the capital of the bloodlines they embodied and not necessarily on the racing careers they promised. All told, while this new era of wealth had some cultural and historical structure and precedence to build upon – remember the villas, parties, and fashion of Lexington’s foundation years (which were reinvigorated during its neo-South makeover) – it reached a lavishness never before seen. And as in previous eras, in the midst of such growth and change something crucial was effaced and lost in the mix. Before it had been indigenous claims to the land, then it was the apex role African Americans had played in the Bluegrass’ Thoroughbred world. This time, in the rush to breed, race, gamble, syndicate, market, etc., “the horse” itself seemed to no longer come first. Though this may seem like a contradictory statement – for horses, Thoroughbreds in particular, were exactly what was being bred, raced, gambled on, syndicated, marketed, etc. – 109 what this means, particularly to many of my research participants, is that Thoroughbred horseracing had lost a sense of “horsemanship.” Defined by Linda Dyer, manager of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Second Chances / Groom Elite program at Blackburn Correctional Complex, horsemanship meant “taking the absolute best care of your horse that you can possibly take. Keeping up on all the latest research and changes in vet care, and having a happy, healthy horse.” Horsemanship had, quite simply, been replaced by base commodification of horses; and when horses were objectified as such, it became less important to have a “happy, healthy horse” than one that could make as much money in as little time and at little expense as possible. This is not to say that all farms with their collective of owners, breeders, trainers, managers, and so forth failed to “put the horse first” and practice good horsemanship as Linda, a Kentucky (white) native and long time Thoroughbred farm manager, understood it. Rather, she observed that this trend towards effacing the welfare needs of horses was part of a more contemporary phenomenon: “now there are too many owners and farms here, it is not as personal as it used to be. They’re breeding too many horses. It was a lot more fun – everybody knew everybody. They helped each other a lot more than they do now. It’s so big now you lose your personal touch with everybody.” In addition to the impact made on human social relations, the literal body of the horse suffered in the era of equine and monetary overproduction: “Way too many horses, you lose your quality – conformation. Flood the market, and of course that’s why we’re [the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation] here. You have too many [Thoroughbreds] that don’t have homes.” Hence the once-famed Thoroughbred joining the ranks of unwanted horses, as profiled at the beginning of this dissertation. 110 In addition to producing a glut of Thoroughbreds, a catalyst for slaughter that I address further in Chapter Five and whose effects are studied throughout this dissertation, the overbreeding of Thoroughbreds has also dampened the industry through other ongoing controversies involving performance enhancing drugs and the visible breakdown of horses on racetracks, most grotesquely evidenced when the filly Eight Belles collapsed after finishing second in the 2008 Kentucky Derby. She had fractured both her front ankles and was euthanized on-track before the typically festive Derby crowd of thousands. While her trainer claimed she had tripped over her own feet, others decried how physically fragile Thoroughbreds had become through over- and in-breeding to fashionable, high-dollar stallions. History and human intention had taken Thoroughbreds from bones as strong as limestone to “champagne glass ankles” as Sally Jenkins, sportswriter for the Washington Post put it.93 Larger economic forces also played a significant role in the boom-and-bust nature of 20th and 21st century Thoroughbred operations in the Bluegrass. After the inflation of the so-called “Bluegrass Bubble” from approximately 1974-1984 – “a time of excess and unnatural profits” as Cassidy recounts her informants as remembering of the time - a recession hit in the mid-1980s and “it knocked a lot of small horse farms out of business,” recalls Dyer. She went on to explain that by the “middle of the ‘90s it jumped back up there, million dollar horses were selling, everybody was thriving, so there weren’t as many worries as there are now, about the money.” But then September 11th, 2001 happened. To get a further sense of where things stood for racing in the Bluegrass in the aftermath of 9/11, as well as the more recent 2008-2009 economic downturn, I attended a “Good Morning 93 Jenkins, Sally (2008-­‐05-­‐04). "Is Horse Racing Breeding Itself to Death?". The Washington Post. 111 Bluegrass” breakfast event sponsored by Lexington Commerce at Keeneland in late March 2011. As dawn rose over the track and the figures of horses and exercise riders grew more distinguishable from our view above in the grandstand rooms, three former presidents of Keeneland – past presidents Ted Basset and Bill Greely, and then-president Nick Nicolson – shared their memories of their tenures at Keeneland. Nicholson in particular spoke of his experience of being president on the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Keeneland’s famous September Yearling Sales were set to open later on that week. While the sales went on, earnings fell from the previous year (from approximately $291 million in 2000 to $254 million in 2001), the hit the sales took from this event was minor compared to the blow experienced from the 2009 recession. In 2008, the total gross from the September sales was approximately $327 million; in 2009 it was $191 million, only to slightly edge up to $198 million in 2010. By the time I reached the Bluegrass and attended the sales myself in September 2011, the gross had edged up to $223 million, only to fall again in 2012 to $219 million94 - the impact felt by the 2009 worldwide economic downturn still not even reaching the $245 million gross impacted by September 11th. Despite the massive infusions of money from racing and breeding operations worldwide that had poured into the Bluegrass since the 1970s– such as the Maktoum ruling family of Dubai, British businessman Robert Sangster, and various Japanese and Irish farms and bloodstock agents, just to name a few (cf. Cassidy 2007; cf. Hagedorn Auerbach 1994) – the globalized connections of Thoroughbred horse racing, breeding, and selling in the Bluegrass could not scaffold enough the economic decline the region experienced from 2009. For example, whereas in years past the small farms were the first to fold under trying economic times, “now even the 94 Statistics from http://www.keeneland.com/sites/default/files/shared/451/September%20Sale%20History%20and%20Stats.pdf 112 big farms are doing it,” observed Dyer. As I drove around the Bluegrass during my time there, I took note of all the farms for sale and indeed, some of them were impressively large farms. I also paid attention when people bemoaned the economic state of affairs as far as industry support from the state. For many, Kentucky’s state government and tax structure needed to provide better incentives to keep Thoroughbred operations alive and thriving in the state. One way to do this, many said, was to allow gambling beyond just pari-mutuel wagering on races. “We send some $700 million across state borders,” Dyer told me in reference to the racetracks in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania and riverboat cruises that allowed slots and table gambling, “so we might as well keep it in Kentucky instead of driving it across the river.” She also saw the economy rebounding by a retraction of jobs formerly outsourced beyond U.S. borders, as Kentucky’s state economy was particularly hit hard by the era of outsourcing, from tobacco farms to textile factories (cf. Kingsolver 2011). Yet the ups and downs of the Thoroughbred racing industry is not the only way to gauge how the Bluegrass became internationally famous for its horse culture – as the title “Horse Capital of the World” implies. One of my key fieldsites – the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center (MMSC), was located on the grounds of the Kentucky Horse Park (KHP) and in this next section I will consider the history of the Park and the role it played, and still plays today, in shaping and sustaining the region’s horse cultural identity. After this history of the KHP, I will then consider a brief history of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF) which, at the time of my fieldwork, not only administered MMSC but had one-half of its administrative staff based in office located at the KHP. By covering the KHP and the TRF, I will not only conclude this historical overview of the Bluegrass but also provide an orientation to one of my daily fieldsites 113 the Kentucky Horse Park, and the primary Thoroughbred rescue organization I researched, the TRF. 3.6.1 The Kentucky Horse Park When you come upon the main gate of the Kentucky Horse Park along Ironworks Pike after turning off of Georgetown Pike, it is marked by a large sign set in cobble stone featuring the ubiquitous logo of the park – a stylized silhouette of a mare running with her foal by her side – designed with the colors of the park: a shade of blue evocative of bluegrass, and gold that I took as referencing the culture of equestrian championship that is constructed and celebrated at the Park through world-famous competitions such as the Rolex Three-Day Event, the National Horse Show, and the 2010 World Equestrian Games, and that is also museumized via the Park’s various equine heritage attractions. Once past the main gate and inside the Park, two such attractions are immediately present when one approaches the visitor center. To the right is the aforementioned bronze statue of Secretariat. To the left, down a grand entry path, the grave and memorial site of Man O’War tower over myriad fountains and rose bushes encircling a statue of the famous “Big Red” stallion created by Herbert Haseltine. Buried with the horse is his famous son, War Admiral, as well as the African-American jockey that rode him into many a victory, Issac Murphy95. Both Man O’War and Murphy were originally buried elsewhere: the horse at Faraway Farm where he had stood stud until his death in 1947, and the man in an obscure, once-forgotten grave in the African American Cemetery No. 2 in downtown Lexington, though Murphy eventually joined the horse 95 See http://kyhorsepark.com/equine-­‐theme-­‐park/park-­‐memorials-­‐statues/legends-­‐park/isaac-­‐burns-­‐murphy for more information; accessed 02/19/2014. 114 at Faraway as well. Horse and man were then reinterred together in the Park when it was constructed in the late 1970s to not only make it more of an attraction (more on that in a moment), but also to move the graves from Faraway Farm as it had become increasingly vandalized (Cook, personal communication). The Man O’War memorial site was a flagship attraction for the Park when it first opened in 1978, but by no means did it ameliorate the troubled times leading up to the opening of the Park and the first, struggling years after the Park opened. According to Bill Cooke, longtime director of the International Museum of the Horse (another flagship attraction present at the opening of the Park and still operating today) the impetus to develop the KHP came in 1975 when then-President Nixon created a program whereby each U.S. state would pick a project to commemorate the U.S.’s bicentennial celebrations in 1976. As plans had already been in the works since 1972 to create the then-named Thoroughbred State Park, with land already purchased from the historic Walnut Hill Stud, the Park became Kentucky’s bicentennial project, but not without controversy. The idea behind the Park initially stemmed from changes happening on the myriad horse farms of the Bluegrass. According to Cooke, vandalism to the farms was on the rise, and this was coupled with the aforementioned rising value of horses. Whereas before tourists could just drive up to the farms for unscheduled visits, the new insurance policies taken out on the more-valuable-than-ever horses could not and would not handle such impromptu visitations. With the famous horse farms of the Bluegrass increasingly inaccessible, it was envisioned that the Park would fill that void by still making it possible for visitors to come up-close-and-personal with the famed horses of the region, Thoroughbreds in particular. 115 But the exclusive focus on the Thoroughbred as the one and only breed showcased by a state-funded and run park troubled advocates of other breeds – especially the Saddlebred “people” as this gaited breed was considered native, as it were, to Kentucky96. As such, things got “political” according to Cooke, as more and more breeds felt left out. This contention was then coupled with a convoluted planning process to the point where the Park was preliminarily cancelled. But momentum had been built up enough that the state decided to continue with construction of the Park and by 1978 it opened by the name it is now known: the Kentucky Horse Park. Yet even the opening of the Park was marked with difficulty. As money was raised by the state through bond issues (some $35 million when into refurbished roads and interchanges to create ease of access to the Park), an economic impact study was commissioned to see how many visitors, and thus how much money, the Park would attract in its formative years. Cooke remembers the estimates as being quite generous, projecting more than a million visitors per year. When the Park ultimately failed to attract a million visitors in its first few years – a number that went from generous to egregious – many saw the KHP as anachronistic and a failure. “How could it not?” Cooke asked rhetorically, referring to how unrealistic the projections had been in order to justify the spending. “It was a pretty dead place when we first opened!” Cooke remembered, but in the years since the KHP first opened in 1978 its promise and reputation have steadily climbed to its now worldwide status. One way the Park began to rebound was by hosting equestrian competitions, starting most notably with the Rolex Three-Day Event. Rolex came to the Park the same year 96 See http://www.saddlebred.com/ for more information. 116 that it opened in 1978, was broadcast worldwide, and generated $4 million to the local economy. Based on this initial success, Rolex has been held at the Park ever since, and other competitions have followed in suit, most notably the 2010 World Equestrian Games. As the “WEG” had taken place just in September and October 2010, its aftermath was still being felt when I arrived in the Bluegrass about three months later. A kind of Olympics for equestrian sports, competitions ranged from reining to eventing to driving, Lexington was the first U.S. city to host the games since their inception in 1990. The local excitement and anticipated economic demands and impact were equivalent to a city winning the bid for the Olympics. After winning the bid in 2005, Lexington and the surrounding Bluegrass area began preparing for the games. Roads were improved, signs for local attractions went up around town, and in the KHP itself significant infrastructural upgrades were made to the tune of $129 million, most notably the construction of the Alltech Indoor Arena, past which I drove every time I visited the MMSC. But as previously mentioned, the Bluegrass took a big hit from the 2009 economic downturn and many feared for the success of the WEG and the concomitant reputation of the Bluegrass concerning its ability to pull off such an event under these circumstances. While an overarching criticism I heard about the WEG was how under-appreciated and over-priced it was for local Kentuckians (indeed, as Cooke shared with me, the KHP in general is under-appreciated by the Bluegrass public because it seemed to lack a local connection and did not offer the locals a lot of reasons to come back), the WEG managed to have an “economic impact”97 of $20.1 97 http://kyhorsepark.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4563:gov-­‐beshear-­‐announces-­‐alltech-­‐fei-­‐world-­‐equestrian-­‐games-­‐had-­‐economic-­‐impact-­‐of-­‐more-­‐than-­‐201-­‐million&Itemid=880; accessed 5/8/13. What exactly is meant by “economic impact”? A June 27, 2011 press release from the KHP breaks down the $20.1 million impact: $128.2 million went into “direct” spending, including “guest spending at the Horse Park, lodging, restaurants, shopping centers and retail outlets”; $73.3 million went towards “indirect” spending such as “money spent for food and lodging suppliers, construction and other services that were needed to support the influx of 117 million, with an upwards of 419,000 visitors from 63 countries and all 50 states. All told, given the dire economic times in which the WEG took place, while it could have been better, it also could have been much, much worse, and there seemed to be no overwhelming disparagement of the WEG when I asked about it during my fieldwork. Economic statistics and emphasis aside, the WEG seemed to usher in a new era for the Kentucky Horse Park and the Bluegrass as the horse capital of the world. While press releases effused about how the event was – to quote Kentucky First Lady Jane Beshear (who, as a horsewoman, played an integral role in developing the games) – “a unique opportunity to reaffirm our standing as Horse Capital of the World, as well as promote tourism and business in Kentucky,” it was also recognized that there was more than the economic benefit to the state, to Lexington and the Bluegrass, and the KHP. To quote Bill Cooke: “it was a magical sixteen days” that “generated so much goodwill around the world for the Kentucky Horse Park” and put the Park in the “everyday vocabulary” of equestrians worldwide. The WEG also infused the Park with world-class competition facilities, and during the year of my fieldwork I saw the National Horse Show leave its traditional venue at Madison Square Garden in New York City in favor of the Alltech Arena, and first heard the planning discussions to bring “The Road to the Horse” training competition to the Park the following year (which happened). guests”; $55.4 million was spent on consuming the experience of the WEG itself – from tickets to souvenirs – and $39.6 million on lodging for all those involved in the WEG – from competitors to administrators. Lastly, $18.4 million was generated in state taxes, and $4.6 million in local taxes. 118 In addition to its competitive edge, the KHP also rebounded from its dismal early years by attracting horse organizations from across the U.S. to set up their administrative offices there. This formed the “National Horse Center,” and to this day includes such renown national organizations as the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP), United States Equestrian Federation (USEF), and the United States Pony Club (USPC); state organizations such as the Kentucky Horse Council (KHC), Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC), and the foundation wing of the KHP; as well as breed-specific organizations such as the Pyramid Society (Arabian horses), Friesian Horse Association of North America, and, of course, the American Saddlebred Horse Association and Museum. Another ripple effect of the creation National Horse Center was the establishment of the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center facility of which I will go into more detail about in Chapter Five. And with the MMSC also came the Figure 6: Non-descript sign at the border of Scott and Fayette counties (photo by TVS McKee) 119 establishment of the Kentucky-based administrative offices of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, to which I now turn. 3.6.2 The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation – and controversy In this concluding historical background section, I will trace the creation and historical rise of the TRF, and then the crisis and provisional survival of this organization as I witnessed it during my fieldwork in 2011. The purpose of this section is thus two-fold: to provide the reader with some general background knowledge on the TRF, and to introduce how an unforeseen and unprecedented event like the New York Times article (hereafter “NYT article” or “Drape article”) controversy significantly and unexpectedly shifted my expectations of what I thought Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue would look like in the field. Because I was poised at “ground zero” ethnographically to see the impact and fallout of this controversy, it will be apprehended not only here in the introduction, but inflected throughout this dissertation, especially in Eight as I consider the unfolding of this controversy in relation to five horses whose transformation I followed from prison pastures to show rings. The TRF was started by a woman by the name of Monique Koehler in 1983. It was originally based out of Saratoga Springs, New York, but in recent years had moved key administrative offices and positions – such as Chief Executive Officer and related staff – to Kentucky in order to, as one staff member put it, capitalize on the “huge untapped resource in the farms” in the Bluegrass in order to encourage them to support the TRF. This relocation to Kentucky made it possible for me to not only research the core operations of the TRF while exploring the MMSC and BCC programs it administered, but it also serendipitously placed me at the front lines when the NYT article controversy hit the TRF in March 2011. 120 Returning to the origins of the TRF, in the early 1980s, Koehler was running a New York-based marketing agency when she learned about Thoroughbred racehorses going to slaughter and was compelled to stop it. “At the time,” recalls co-founder Diana Pikulski, of when horse slaughter was still legal in the U.S., “hundreds of thousands of horses were going to slaughter in the United States every year.” This was also an era where “people ate more horsemeat back then,” and even the Harvard Club offered horsemeat dishes. Horsemeat also served other very common uses in the U.S., such as for dog food found in everyday grocery stores or for feeding carnivorous animals in zoos. But the “primary market,” Pikulski recalls, was “out of country…before Eastern Europe raised horses for meat [and made a] market out of it.” With her own marketing connections and social capital in the advertising business of New York City, Koehler “just started picking up the phone and making calls to people in the [racing] industry” to help form the backbone of the TRF. It is notable that the TRF was comprised of people involved in the racing industry for this demonstrates how hand-in-hand one of the largest Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue organizations was (and still is) with the racing industry. And those who got involved with the TRF – including Secretariat’s owner, Penny Chenery herself – were not small-time players either, so they brought a lot of power and social capital of their own to the foundation of the TRF. When I asked about why those powerful in the racing industry would back the TRF, Pikulski further painted a picture of the times for me. On the one hand, “back then [circa 1980s] horseracing was more popular.” There were “bigger horses,” such as the ideal type Thoroughbred I spoke of in reference to Secretariat, and more people going to the tracks as part of an “American past time.” But this cultural celebration (and commodification) of horseracing was then met with “horrendous stories” of horses 121 valorized one day and shipped to the killers the next. Slaughter had become a “dirty secret” in the horse business, yet an accepted one. When made public, it created a “dichotomy” greater than perceived today, as Pikulski puts it, between the romantic, public image of horseracing and the dirty secret of slaughter. This dichotomy not only did not sit well with Koehler, but with many others involved in the industry, and beyond – thus spawned not just the TRF but countless other organizations and movements to end horse slaughter. But there was also a lot of opposition to what the TRF stood for – in fact, perhaps a lot more opposition than support, as according to Pikulski, detractors were “mostly people who are invested in the breeding business, and some in the racing business, because it is an almost impossible situation financially to resolve.” What Pikulski references here is the aforementioned historical turn Thoroughbred racing took in the 1970s and 1980s – the Bluegrass Bubble era, if you will – where more money could be made breeding and selling young horses than racing them. Her comment also indexes an opinion I not only heard from my research participants but also echoed by various anti-horse slaughter activists about how slaughter is implicitly endorsed by many horse breeders so that they may breed as many horses as it takes to either create the ideal horse or reap as much profit from breeding fees and horse sales as possible. To keep the market from flooding with too many horses, the argument goes, slaughter helps cull the herd and keep horse prices competitive. My research data can neither confirm nor deny this, but I can report that this argument is strongly felt and circulates widely in the horse rescue world when 122 people bemoan “overbreeding” as a root cause of “unwanted” horses sent to slaughter - and this is not just in relation to Thoroughbreds98. Beyond the foundational support the TRF garnered from the racing industry, Pikulski saw larger social changes – such as the growing support and awareness of animal rights and environmental issues – as drawing “non-horse people” and people outside the racing industry to get involved in the slaughter issue. Then, when the news broke that a well-known Thoroughbred racehorse, Exceller, was slaughtered in Sweden in 1997 when his owner went bankrupt and declared the horse a liability he could not afford99, the news of his slaughter was “the first breakthrough” in terms of fomenting legislation to stop the slaughter of American-bred horses100 (though that did not stop the slaughter of another, even more well-known Thoroughbred racehorse, Ferdinand, six years later, an event I trace in Chapter Five). She also cited other animal rights groups – the Doris Day Animal League and the Animal Welfare Institute – as key in building an anti-slaughter movement beyond the horse world. All these were key historic factors that led to the founding and initial success of the TRF. Organizationally, the TRF was founded as a 501(c)3 non-profit based out of Saratoga Springs, New York, which meant its operations were ultimately determined and sanctioned by a board of directors. As previously emphasized “all the initial board members were people in the industry,” Pikulski explained. Pikulski was also recruited to the board, as she had played a foundational role in the TRF alongside Koehler. Pikulski had met Koehler when she was in high school and teaching riding lessons in New Jersey. Koehler had come to Pikulski looking for 98 For example, the American Quarter Horse Association is often under fire for its overbreeding practices. Jeanette Vaught, personal communication. 99 See for more information: http://www.excellerfund.org/story-­‐of-­‐exceller.html. 100 In 1971, the Wild and Free-­‐Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed to protect these horses from slaughter; it did not cover domestic horses like Thoroughbreds. 123 riding lessons for her son and her, and to learn more about horses. “She knew nothing about horses” pragmatically, Pikulski told me, though Koehler was concerned enough over their slaughter to start a rescue program. Pikulski had started riding when she was five, introduced to horses via her father who was a mounted policeman. By the time she met Koehler and started getting involved in the foundation of the TRF, she was working at a fox hunting and show barn where many of the horses were Thoroughbreds coming off the track at Monmouth Park. Through them, Pikulski not only knew they might otherwise go to slaughter, but by whom, how and why. When Pikulski then went to college and then on to law school, she still worked summers for the TRF. Once out of law school she applied her legal education to formalizing the TRF board of directors, drawing up adoption contracts as well as contracts with correctional facilities to house the TRF herd. Her involvement in the core foundation of the TRF is second only to Koehler. At the time that I interviewed her outside Saratoga Springs in November 2011, Pikulski had taken a lot of fall-out from the impact of this article, such as resigning as CEO and become “head of fundraising,” and was thus answering my questions under these circumstances. The TRF was all volunteer-run until 1997. After that, the TRF was re-structured to have the paid staff positions of Chief Executive Officer (CEO), herd manager, and development manager. What changed the administrative structure - and helped grow the TRF into the largest Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue organization in North America - was the receipt of a $5 million endowment from Paul Mellon, American philanthropist and owner/breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses. A representative of Mellon’s estate was placed on the board of directors and served as manager of the discretionary funds from the endowment when Mellon passed away in 1999. Upon visiting farms, executors of the endowment pledged another $2 124 million. While the TRF cannot spend the $7 million, it earns interest and the organization is allowed to spend 5% of fair market value, usually amounting to $350,000101. Receiving the Mellon Endowment had the effect of making the TRF one of the largest and most well funded horse rescues in North America, but this blessing became a curse when, according to the NYT article, “the estate of the breeder and owner Paul Mellon…in recent years had become concerned about the growth of the foundation’s herd” (Drape 2011, online version). Thus in December 2010, two months before I started my research with TRF operations in the Bluegrass, executors of the Mellon endowment hired Missouri-based veterinarian, Dr. Stacey Huntington, to “evaluate the foundation’s herd.” This herd evaluation was the inciting incident behind the writing of the Drape article and the spark of the controversy that enveloped the TRF during my fieldwork. Traveling to more than a dozen farms and examining over 700 horses, Huntington’s initial reports were anything but favorable regarding the state of the TRF’s herd. According to the NYT article, Huntington had “found many examples of neglect and lack of support from the T.R.F. [sic] in her visits to the farms” (Drape 2011). The article then went on to detail the nature of these examples, the volatile relationships between the TRF and the farms where the 101 Yet the TRF’s annual budget is $3 million, so they have to fundraise to make up the rest every year. One of the ways the TRF does so is through direct mailings (3-­‐4 times a year) to a donor list of 12,000 names. They also host a lot of special events, the most spectacular being their Saratoga gala held every August in conjunction with the race meets at the Saratoga Springs racetrack. The TRF also receives funds from the voluntary “Checkoff Program administered by The Jockey Club of America whereby “Thoroughbred breeders will have the option of selecting one of four graduated amounts ($25, $50, $75, or $100) to be designated for these Thoroughbred aftercare programs or they can fill in the amount of their choice on the Application for Foal Registration form” (http://www.jockeyclub.com/mediaCenter.asp?story=354; accessed 5/13/13). The TRF additionally meets its annual budgetary demands by applying for and receiving grants from well-­‐known animal/equine welfare funding sources such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Thoroughbred Charities of America (TCA), and Blue Horse Charities (http://www.bluehorsecharities.org/who-­‐we-­‐are.html; accessed 5/13/13). 125 organization boarded its horses and how the TRF had become so financially – and morally – set-back in their mission to offer “a humane alternative to the dire possibilities that have long faced a great majority of ex-racehorses - neglect, abuse and slaughter”102. How exactly did the TRF fail in its mission to provide such “humane alternatives?” To elucidate such a crucial question requires a brief explanation of how the TRF operates – not in a board and staff capacity, as I previously addressed – but how it literally accepts and cares for horses on a daily basis. In the beginning, the TRF took in horses that were surrendered to them by owners, trainers, other rescue operations or horses that were identified by TRF staff, usually through personal connections with the racing industry. These horses would then be boarded (as in taken care of at a designated equine facility) at farms in various locations in the eastern U.S. according to availability. Such farms were intended to be an alternative to the otherwise peripatetic and ambiguous lives these horses might lead once retired from racing. These farms fundamentally offered sanctuary to retired Thoroughbreds; giving them definite places where they can go when done racing and not be threatened with slaughter - and where they could stay for the rest of their lives if it comes to it. These farms were – and still are - thus innately politically-thick places because of how their animal sanctuary status and function are defined by spatial and semiotic/symbolic defiance to the threat of slaughter. In the wake of the NYT article controversy, however, the original political meaning and purpose of these farms as fundamentally sanctuary places for horses was greatly undermined to point where it was speculated that “[t]he TRF will not survive this” (Finley 2011). 102 From the TRF’s main page on its website, http://www.trfinc.org; accessed 01/11/2014. 126 Originally, “friends or acquaintances of the TRF” would offer their farms as places to keep horses,” according to a staff member I interviewed in the aftermath of Drape’s NYT article. These start-up farms were owned by “people with money” – most likely from the Thoroughbred racing industry and/or equestrian show society. This arrangement was financially brokered in the following way: it was determined that it would take $5/day to provide basic feed and care for the horses; the TRF would provide $3 a day for each horse if these other farms “could support the rest.” Since these farms were already well established and resourced, it was not a hardship for them to make up the additional $2/day. Then, the TRF began expanding its farm operations, such as the prison farm program, the circumstances behind which I will detail in Chapter Seven. But these farms were not especially identified by Drape as suffering the most from the TRF’s mismanagement, but rather those in the “satellite farm” program where such farms literally came to “depend on the income and depend on the $3/day to care for the horses – and that’s where we are running into problems,” as another staff member shared with me. Despite the fact that horses were supposed to come with a sponsorship by the surrendering party that would cover their care for a year – approximately $1825 – one staff member observed that this was a “big financial commitment especially if you are never going to see a horse again” and, I would add, if one is surrendering a horse to the TRF because of lack of resources to care for it in the first place. With this brief understanding of how the TRF manages its herd through various types of farms and financial arrangements, how did it come about that such an article was written based on Huntington’s findings? Though my research did not uncover – or seek to uncover – the inciting incident that connected the veterinarian inspection reports with a journalist willing to 127 expose them, it can be stated here that Joe Drape, long-time sports and turf103 writer for the NYT, was the author of this article and was apparently made privy to Huntington’s reports before even the TRF was. According to an official response penned by the TRF: “Unfortunately, Dr. Huntington did not provide her reports to the Board of Directions, President or CEO of the TRF when she did her evaluations” (2011:1). Furthermore, the response goes on to detail how Dr. Huntington “singled out one employee at the TRF to work with her directly” and asked this employee to work at home on these “confidential herd evaluations.” Then a day before the Drape Article broke, this employee left the TRF, apparently taking with her “her complete files or correspondence regarding the herd evaluations.” It was only after “several weeks” that this employee eventually provided this documentation. The withholding of these reports only to leak them to the media not only had the effect of blind-siding the TRF with negative publicity, but it also, according to the TRF, prohibited the organization from forming a timely response to the allegations: “the TRF needed the reports so that they could address whatever problems she [Huntington] might have found as quickly as possible and respond to the allegations.” I never dug deep enough in my interviews or examination of the TRF archives to discern why such concerted efforts would be made to bypass the power center of the TRF, to conduct work on the periphery, and to outsource the findings of the herd inspection to a very public source. But it is clear that Dr. Huntington, and whomever else she was working with, did not want to present the inspection reports within the organization confines of the TRF when it came to addressing the state of the TRF herd. 103 As horseracing reporters are called. 128 Instead, Drape got a hold of the reports and, coupled with a few key interviews from the TRF, the Mellon executors, and disgruntled farm owners and managers, implicated the TRF in a series of gross mismanagement steps. He leveled criticism at the core of the TRF in terms of how the board of the directors not only handled funding and the budget, but also subsequently provided care and concerns for the horses, citing then-president George Grayson as remarking that We have dug ourselves a big hole financially, and we’re still behind… It’s been a struggle to keep up with the costs associated with a large and aging horse population, at a time when the economy and giving is down. Everybody on the board takes any allegation seriously, and anything less than positive circumstances for the horses are unacceptable. When we’ve been made aware of issues we have responded quickly, and we will be on this. Thus, in addition to the implications of the veterinary inspection reports, Drape also found in the TRF’s financial disclosure documents that the organization had operated at a $1.2 million deficit in 2009 – recall this is the year when the global economic recession hit, and hit the racing industry particularly hard. But it wasn’t just the lack of money, but also apparently the mismanagement of it due to organizational miscommunication and faltering operations that led to the disconcerting lack of care of the TRF horses. While Drape pondered exactly “how many members of the foundation’s blue-chip board of trustees might have been aware of the deteriorating quality of care the horses were receiving,” in my interviews with staff members responsible for the daily operations of the TRF I was told that, “We’re so large right now,” in terms of the geographical spread of farms and administrative offices, “that the communication between the farms, the TRF, the herd manager, it is just a struggle.” This staff member then went on to say that “getting the vet care, and getting everybody paid in a timely manner – there’s problems. People aren’t getting paid as quickly as they should be.” When I asked about why 129 this was, this person explained that while the board recognized that it needed to be more proactive, there seemed to be a lot of “red tape” associated with running as a non-profit in terms of the process of procuring money, having the board approve expenditures, the treasurer signing off, and so forth. The publication of Drape’s article caused the controversy that it did because it appeared that while the TRF had more than enough money to operate with the Mellon endowment, the organization was incapable of putting that money to proper usage – this at a time when other horse rescues operating as non-profits were struggling to fundraise while the need for such rescues was growing as more and more horses were being transitioned out of racing and into rescue, not slaughter. Most staff members felt the article was malicious and misleading; the official response the TRF released repeatedly called it “inflammatory and misleading” and in an interview a top TRF representative, I was told that “you just couldn’t trust anything she [Huntington] wrote; everything was so skewed and bizarre. And Joe Drape to this day just completely lies about what was in her reports; it’s just impossible to justify any of it.” Yet other TRF representatives did recognize there was some veracity to the article. “It was a little exaggerated and some stuff was false,” one told me, but also recognized that it “came from a true source,” such as Huntington’s reports. Furthermore, “they104 didn’t make up everything in the article. It came from somewhere. There were horses that were missing. Some of them did look starved.” The staff member then concluded, “So there were true points to the article, but it was just inflamed. They just did a negative spin on it.” 104 I take being Drape and Huntington. 130 The negative spin that Drape supposedly put to Huntington’s reports spun even further as the article was received by the wider public and thus sparked the controversy as I refer to it. The TRF controversy especially incensed those invested in rescuing horses from slaughter. “Well, this is a huge fucking embarrassment!” chaffed the headline on the now-defunct blog, Fugly Horse of the Day105 the day after the Drape article broke. Accompanying a photo of a woman in a yellow vest petting two horses where one of which has a visibly protruding rib cage and a grotesquely bent, left front leg that looks like it once fractured and was not set properly and straight to heal, the blog entry starts caustically: “This story makes me absolutely furious, because everyone here is rich and no one here is stupid It’s about greed and laziness and not giving a shit about the animals you are supposed to be protecting. It’s about putting money in your pocket while animals starve, and there is NO excuse for it.106 This opinion stems from Drape quoting one of the Oklahoma farm managers as saying, “They [the TRF] were making their administrative payroll this whole time, but the horses were suffering.” This quote further fomented outrage towards the TRF, and staff members at the TRF offices in the Kentucky Horse Park additionally shared with me the vitriol they fielded on a daily basis. “You’re probably obese because your horses starve. Go feed your fat face,” was one message a staff member shared with me, reflecting the outrage over the starvation allegations. Another touched upon the allegations that the TRF still made payroll even as bills were not being paid on time: “You’re all probably driving around in your sports cars and living in fancy lofts while our horses starve.” The staff members mostly just saw this as “people being mean” and “who really have no idea 105 I cite this source as I was directed to it by TRF staff members when I asked about the nature of some of the criticism they were receiving over Drape’s article. The Fugly Horse of the Day blog once described itself as, “snarky commentary on the breeding of poor quality horses, silly or abusive training practices, and pretty much anything else that annoys us!” (March 18th, 2011; web archive) 106 Bolded and underlined text in the original. 131 what they’re talking about.” But there were others who were “not jumping to the gun thinking we were all mass murderers” and some “called to request everything a non-profit can offer publically” to ascertain for themselves the financial straits of the TRF. 132 Chapter 4: Redemptive Capital “During my tenure here I have committed myself to giving back financially and with my time and energy to two things. Prison ministry and the TRF. I’m not certain my perception [sic] but a heightened awareness to the plight of the thoroughbred racing horse. These horses are bred for an entertainment venue, which is very profitable on the gaming end and can be on the breeding end as well. I am of the opinion that we have a responsibility to provide for these horses’ care and if possible repurpose them after their career on the track.” The above opening passage comes from an inmate’s response to the question I posed him, “When you are finished with this program and released from Blackburn, how are you going to remember this TRF program? How has it changed your perception of horses, particularly Thoroughbred racehorses?” I start this chapter with such a quote so as to introduce the entanglements of economic and moral capital, religion and rescue, education and shifted worldviews and ways of world making, that I see at work in redemptive capital. Furthermore, by using redemptive capital as an analytic throughout this dissertation, I hope to further intrigue readers of its efficacy especially in relation to what it means to “repurpose” in the Anthropocene. Redemptive capital is a notion that was first generated based on my fieldwork location in the Bluegrass. As I will go on to illustrate, Christianity has a pervasive presence in Kentucky, therefore I started thinking about “redemption” because its moral, ethical, and spiritual call was everywhere I went. But I also encountered other, more secular, but nonetheless still powerfully believed forms of redemption based on humanist concerns over the (in)humane treatment of animals. Through these two beliefs systems, I started thinking about how Thoroughbred ex-racehorses were not just rescued or saved from slaughter, but rather these actions stemmed from moral beliefs about good and evil, right and wrong, worthy and unworthy – and then these 133 actions fed back into such belief systems, confirming, changing, and complicating them. At the same time, I also saw that the rescue of these horses was not just a simple matter of believing morally and acting ethically, but relied on strategy, positioning, and resources – that is, rescue was also very worldly-based. Hence, I started thinking about rescue in terms of capital. Exactly what kind of “capital,” given anthropology’s extended engagement with the notion, I will also go on to explain in this chapter. During my fieldwork, while there was overwhelming focus on the good stories surrounding horses and humans involved in rescue, and that it was believed that moral higher ground was gained when a horse excelled in a new home or an inmate went on to get a job as a farrier and did not return to prison, I started wondering beneath all these feel-good stories: what did it cost to rescue horses and horse people in the Bluegrass? And what was left still undone, yet-to-be redeemed once everyone thought the story ended happily ever after? 4.1 The Inflection of Bluegrass Christianity From my location as an American “native”107 in Colorado, I grew up with certain notions about Kentucky and what its state identity might be (having never been there until 2005 when I was 28 years old). From my view from afar, of course horses came first to mind, as I imagined sprawling horse farms with the greenest grass ever, bordered by bright white fences in which famous, revered, and incomparable Thoroughbred racehorses ran, lived, and thrived. The second notion of Kentucky wasn’t as complimentary, but more conflicted: that of it being part of the 107 I qualify the term “native” because I am not aboriginal to Colorado in the sense of being a Native American, and also because there is a non-­‐aboriginal claim to being “native” in the sense of being born in and of Colorado (as bumper stickers around Boulder can attest). “Pioneer” is also a closely related term and identity movement, with the state of Colorado issuing license plates to those who demonstrate 100 years or more of family habitation in Colorado. 134 “Bible Belt” of America, where Christianity held fast and with a lot of power. That the Creation Museum is located in Kentucky, with permanent exhibitions that seek to scientifically prove the Bible in the “Wonders Room,” reinterpret evolution (“Lucy” and “Homology”), or demonstrate what happens when people do not live by the Bible in “Culture and Crisis,”108 brings to mind Harding’s (1987:176) point about how Christian fundamentalism seeks to assimilate “the world” that is not yet-Christian into a Christianized form. As an American doing fieldwork in her own nation, I was also raised Christian109, but it was quite distinct from the evangelical and fundamentalist forms I encountered in Kentucky. In the neighborhood I grew up in, there was a lively Episcopal church we could walk or bike110 to on Sundays, and my brother and I were baptized there on Christmas Day 1990. I knew what it meant to feel sin, to work for it to be forgiven, and pray to Jesus and God to be merciful. But what didn’t take hold of me was outwardly, discursively ascribing everything I did to “Jesus Christ my savior” and “Lord God the Father” like I found with my more orthodox relatives or born-again classmates.111 That is, I did not practice “conversion talk” (Harding 1987:167). In time, my curiosity about religion and the spiritual world grew beyond Christianity and into worlds mainly Buddhist and Hindu, be they in North America, India or China. Coming “back” to live and conduct ethnography in Kentucky profoundly re-located me in a distinctly 108 http://creationmuseum.org/whats-­‐here/exhibits/ 109 Episcopalian109, to be exact, though my mom came from a very conservative German Baptist upbringing. Episcopalianism is my father’s religious background, though he is more thoroughly steeped in hard science and post-­‐World War II, U.S. humanism himself. 110 One of my favorite bridal paths ran by the church too, so I would often ride my horse around it as well. 111 Looking back, I think it was the assumption that the divine was inherently patriarchal bothered me. It was the condemnation of others who didn’t fit into the patriarchal mold, and therefore the exclusivity of “Christians” who were the only ones worthy of saving on Judgment Day or going to Heaven on the rest of the days, that ultimately turned me away from self-­‐identifying solely as a Christian. Kentucky represented to me the patriarchal and unreflexive Christianity I questioned, and being home to like the Creation Museum only further provoked my unresolved relationship with my religious heritage. 135 Christian cultural world. As such, I knew how to look for Christianity in the Bluegrass as a way to account for the religious and cosmological dimensions of local culture there, but I also knew I had my own perspective and bias to wrangle with. It was, in the words of Haraway, an always-ongoing “dance” (2008:4). I knew what to look for based on my similar cultural background, but I did and could not embrace “why” or “so what” with a wholly indigenous familiarity. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you,” so advises Matthew 7:7112. Just as I anticipated that Tibetan Buddhism, in all its specific, local iterations, would have infused my fieldwork questions in Tibet, so too I anticipated that a particular type (or types) Christianity would play a role in my Bluegrass-based research. I wondered how, or if, I would come to find how the practice of Thoroughbred racehorse rescue was inflected by Christian-based cultural affects. I was particularly interested in how Christianity inspired and informed, however dogmatically or not, the moral and ethical claims people made towards the horses they were entangled with. As such, I went looking for the Christian roots and forces in the Bluegrass. And while I met distinct markers of their presence and power, I also found ample pockets of secular humanism, agnosticism, and atheism. As such, when I claim the word “redemptive” in my argument about redemptive capital, it is coming from a genealogy that is personally and ethnographically Christian, as well as inclusive of beyond-Christian notions of what is moral, ethical, and worth redemption. These notions, however, I consider to still be distinctly rooted in western ontological and epistemology (cf. Sahlins 1996), and further indigenized in 21th century Bluegrass Kentucky. 112 American King James Version 136 Redemptive capital was thus first inspired by how I saw and encountered a Kentucky shaped spatially, historically, and politically by Christianity. This is not just a homogenous hegemony of “Christianity,” though, nor is it fully representative of the diversity and complexity of Christianity in Kentucky. Rather, I am about to share specific entry points I encountered in the field that inspire my locally-generated ideas on what “redemptive” can mean. I have already mentioned the Creation Museum and its home and audience being those more inclined toward fundamentalist (ie. Evangelical and Pentacostal, and staunchly anti-Evolutionist) Christianity. Historically, Shakertown at Pleasant Hill, one of the first major religious settlements in Kentucky when it was cleaving from the frontier of Virginia, is another institutionalized version of Christianity that is still locally powerful and meaningful. It was founded by Shakers led by Mother Ann Lee who came from an English Quaker background. While in prison in England (for preaching her version of faith which included radical ideas on gender equality and asexuality), Lee received a vision about the second coming of Jesus and the imperative of forsaking sin. This vision inspired her to create the Shaker religion, named as such for the motions and dance people did while under the power of prayer and vision, and brought it to America in 1774. Shakertown was established from her legacy (she passed away in 1784) and as part of the Second Great Awakening tent rivals that proliferated along the Ohio Valley of Kentucky beginning in the late 1700s. It was run as a socio-economic commune and religious community based on sexual abstinence from 1805 to 1910. Today, it is also called “Shaker Village,” it is now a National Historic Landmark that is a combination of a heritage tourist site, inn, and performance venue.113 113 http://www.shakervillageky.org 137 During my time in the field, I also drove past countless churches as part of my peripatetic fieldwork. Some were small parishes with scripture billboards placed along the roadside that rotated messages every Sunday. Others were warehouse sized, megachurches with parking lots to rival any shopping center. But the spatial mark of Christianity in the Bluegrass didn’t always Figure 7: "Conversion talk" en route to the Kentucky Horse Park (photo by TVS McKee) 138 need a church. Every time I drove to the Kentucky Horse Park to go to the Secretariat Center, I drove past a large white cross out on Ironworks Pike just past Spy Coast Farm114. Going to the Park, one side would read: “Jesus Saves.” Going home, the other side read: “Get Right with God.” If there ever was the blend of how spatially marked the horse industry as well as Christianity was in the Bluegrass, I was reminded of it every time I drove past this cross. One Sunday, early into my fieldwork, I decided to take heed and actually attend church. I planned to start with what was most familiar and go to an Episcopal service in a small town (I also knew there were some key horse people who attended this church). As I was about to enter the building, a group of white women elders opened the doors to exit and thus intercepted me. “Today we are worshipping at the colored church,” one said to me with just a light lilt of a Southern drawl. I guessed her to be old enough to have lived during the Jim Crow era as a young adult female, and therefore used the now-outdated terminology of “colored” to mean “black” or “African American” as ingrained habitus from a bygone time. “We do this every first Sunday in February as a part of good race relations,” I recall her explaining in reference to how February is celebrated as Black History Month in America. So it came to pass that my first church outing in the Bluegrass took place across town at the African Baptist Church as part of a conscious practice (that was both admirable and problematic) to acknowledge, pay respect, and revisit social differences based on race. One could say that such exchanges of faith-practice defined by color lines, even as it proffered to be transgressive of them, sought to be redemptive of inter-racial strife exactly because it was still ongoing (implicitly or explicitly). How “race” 114 “Spy Coast Farm specializes in the breeding and development of top quality performance horses.” From: http://www.spycoastfarm.com; accessed 4/22/14. 139 implicitly circulates in ever-differentiating social fields in the Bluegrass I will return to throughout this dissertation. The infusion of Christianities was also present in the everyday, not-just-Sunday lives of my human research participants, as will come clearer throughout this dissertation as well. There is Lara, the adoptive owner and human significant other of “Shooby” who embroiders “Phillipians 4:13”115 on her saddle pads for visibility during competition, and recites the Lord’s Prayer116 every time she or someone else competes in the dangerous cross-country jumping portion of the sport of Eventing. Then there is her student and client, Christine, who adopted one of the Putnamville horses we will meet in Chapter Eight, and named him “Emmanuel” (which means “God is with us”) because she saw the horse’s journey from pasture prisons to her home as one shaped by God’s mercy. But Christianity wasn’t always a positive, proactive force in the lives of my human research participants. “I still pray for my family and stuff like that,” one inmate shared with me when I asked him if he grew up with any religion. He grew up “mostly Baptist” but was cynical about other men who found Jesus now that they were in jail. “I mean, it’s fine if you really do, but I don’t like those who go right back out and do the same crap.” When I queried another inmate about whether or not his religious upbringing (he too was raised Baptist) led him to treat horses more compassionately, he replied, “Never really thought of it that way. I just look at it ethically as if someone was doing that to me. If I look at it the Christian way, God made us and he made them too, so there’s gotta be something there, right?” 115 “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” American King James Version. 116 “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours. Now and for ever. Amen.” Modern Version 140 4.2 The Legacy of Humanism and Humanocentrism From this perspective, Christianity was not the only moral and ethical force that inspired and shaped peoples’ actions and understandings towards the horses in their care, be they rescued or racing Thoroughbreds. Susanna, director of the Secretariat Center, was extremely passionate about the kind of art, sciences, and equestrianism that arose out of secular humanism starting in the Early Modern Period in Europe (cf. Shannon 2009). For the horses that went through the re-schooling program under her directorship, they were worthy of respect and a realization of beauty on par with how Renaissance masters envisioned the world and sought to empower what was “human” (which was decidedly male, white, wealthy and / or privileged based on race). “Human beings are drawn to beauty,” Susanna told me during an interview one day. “I believe there are certain mathematical relationships that are naturally harmonious that make our aesthetic neurons go ballistic. The soul needs beauty in order to survive.” Susanna’s moral and ethical, if not aesthetic and performative, inclination towards secularism and humanism in the re-schooling of horses at the Secretariat Center was thus also part of another, substantial consciousness and community that also contributes to how “redemptive” (and, for that matter “capital”) can be understood: those concerned with animal welfare, rights, and issues of cruelty towards animals and their subsequent suffering. In the Bluegrass, I found such individuals along a spectrum of outspokenness and orthodoxy in relation to the larger animal rights movement and its basic tenants. As there was general criticism and exasperation aimed at most anyone with animal rights sensibilities in the equine world of the Bluegrass, I found that those more inclined to argue for the welfare (if not liberation) of horses did so either cautiously so as not to devolve their efforts into polemics, or with disregard to the status quo because that was exactly what kept horses in questionable living 141 conditions. These are the people for whom the “humane” impulse is as much a motivation to promote more compassionate treatment of animals as it is a conscious social identity and political claim. The more secular, redemptive dynamic here is aimed at “the animal” as implicitly, inherently, always exploited by humans – yet, at the same time, only human intervention can liberate animals from their oppression. Saving, rescuing, liberating animals out from under violent relationships and exploitative situations with humans is the goal; to redeem them from the depravity humans have subjected them to, be it through racing and breeding them without consent or compassion, or consigning them to slaughter for one last commodification of their already enslaved bodies and lives. This dynamic and the belief system that hold humans apart from animals in a natural state of exploitation is akin to how Sahlins sardonically explained capitalism’s outgrowth from Judeo-Christian notions of human imperfection in his 1994 Sidney W. Mintz Lecture. Having lost Paradise and thus the ability to commune with animals, “Still, God was merciful. He gave us Economics” (1996:397). Humans thus built society out of “original sin,” and as such “congregate in groups and develop social relations either because it is to their respective advantage to do so or because they discover that other men can serve as means to their own ends” (Sahlins 1996:398). Considering the diverse social relations horses have held with humans since domestication began occurring six thousand years ago, it is not a far stretch to suggest they have since been included in such sociability, helping “men” jockey for respective advantage and serving as a means to their end. If Sahlins postulated that sin and society was what divided humans from animals in the western, Judeo-Christian worldview, his contribution was one in a deep (western) history of propositions of what exactly differentiated “human” from “animal.” This history is one that 142 vacillates between Christianity and the rise of science and secularism, between putting animals in their place subordinate to humans (and with that, as Mullin [1999] pointed out, some humans subordinate to others in their own species) and romanticizing animals as the exotic Other who holds the remedy for humanity’s ills117 (cf. Shepard 1994, Ingold 2005). In such distinctions, what is being worked out is not only where one species ends and the other begins on the Great Chain of Being or the tree of phylogeny in what Shannon (2009:143) called the many “border skirmish[s] between bipeds and quadrupeds,” but where moral consideration and ethical action differentiate between what is “human” and what is “animal.” On this note, I will briefly consider the historical fluctuation of the moral and ethical dilemmas animals have posed western human culture and philosophy for the purpose of illustrating from where the secular impulse of redemptive capital stems. Ethologist and philosopher Rod Preece (2004) helpfully describes how the ongoing project of distinguishing between human and animal is a fundamentally a question about how to morally value animal life and suffering. It encourages us [humans] to imagine that other species become worthy, become valuable, become entitled to moral consideration, the more they possess the attributes of human beings, the more they approximate our abilities, our emotions, our rationality. Humans are the standard against which other animals are measured. (2004:38) 117 In his book The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (1994), Shepard’s overarching argument is that humans have distanced themselves from animals throughout history and to our (humans’) species peril. Advancing from an evolutionary perspective, Shepard argues that animals – as game or co-­‐existing ecological species – have inspired human movement, cognition, culture (1994:15-­‐42), culminating in our ability to distinguish Self from Other (1994:71-­‐80). This distinguishing began with domestication, thus signaling this moment of species separation where animals are subsumed and objectified in an increasingly anthropocentric world (1994:167-­‐303). Tim Ingold’s work and perspective is also similarly in line with the historical / evolutionary perspective that Shepard takes, as he too signals domestication as the moment when human-­‐animal relationships went from “trust” between hunter and the hunted to “domination” in an ever-­‐increasing agro-­‐industrial era of domestication (2005). This pre-­‐domestication / domestication binary implicitly assumes that human-­‐animal relations – much less categorizations – went from nonviolent (or at least nonexploitative) to violent and exploitative. 143 But just as humanocentric attributes are granted the ability, through specific cultural belief and action, to encourage more moral consideration to some animals118 over others, they also work to exclude as much as include. What of those creatures that do not measure up to the human standard? 4.2.1 The dividing line of the soul What this standard is exactly has fluctuated greatly over history in response to historical change. In her examination of medieval trials of animals, Cohen (1994) points out that the rulings from such trials revealed two camps of ecclesiastical legal judgment: those who saw animals as a part of God’s creation alongside humans, and therefore should be shown the same kind of mercy (Deuteronomy and Numbers), and, as offered in Genesis 1:26-28 and 9:2-3, those who believed God had created animals and plants for human use and dominion (1994:74). Here, we see continued diversity and conflicting moral and ethical approaches to human relationships with animals within Christianity. Furthermore, the question of whether or not animals have souls (Preece 2004:66; Maehle 1994:86) is also a classic debate over what Ingold (2005:61) might call the “ontological separations” between human and animal life and death. 4.2.2 The dividing line of suffering As science and the secularization of life gained speed with the Renaissance, the question of such separations persisted, this time inflected with questions of sentience and suffering, and 118 And, again, to some humans as well, depending on what kind of “human” is the implicit standard in “humanocentric.” 144 attempts to empirically prove species difference or commonality. Descartes is an oft-cited and reviled figure in promoting the belief that while both humans and animals are nothing more than automatons, the human automaton possessed two important distinctions: speech, and therefore reason, and with it a rational, imperishable soul (Maehle 1994:86). Thus, language, reason, and rationality joined with the soul to further distinguish animals from humans. This then led to the belief that if animals are just automata or la bête machine, then they are incapable of feeling pain (Maehle 1994:87). If animals could not feel pain, the logic continued, then to slaughter or perform vivisection on them did not cause undue suffering or violate any rights otherwise accorded to rational, self-aware creatures. Thus, in addition to the bifurcated worldview Descartes left as a legacy (cf. Ingold 2000), his ideas on animal suffering and sentience (or lack thereof) have also persisted in western cultural contexts in the form of human exceptionalism, and thus became another moral and ethical dimension to trace in my fieldwork. The rise of human exceptionalism, however empowered by scientific thought and method, also continued to be challenged by science and empircism as well – particularly in the burgeoning field of psychology. Contrary to Descartes’ conclusion that animals were nothing more than unfeeling automata, a contrarian movement arose, arguing that animals had sensitive souls, therefore making it unethical and immoral to inflict pain (Maehle 1994:87). Thus while famed anatomists like Galen, Vesalius, and Harvey (cf. Shannon 209) searched to no avail for physical proof of the soul (in both animal and human), psychology provided an alternate forum to explore the existence of something akin to the soul, and its accompanying conflation of sentience and sensitivity. Granting animals a form of subjectivity that could be psychologized, argues Maehle (1994:87), marked the beginning of the “idea of animals’ protection on the basis of animal psychology.” 145 4.2.3 Empathy through subjectivity and sentience According animals subjective interiority, instead of a priori mechanical-like instinct, created a social conscientiousness and perspective that made, for example, the everyday exploitation of animals on the streets of 19th century London increasingly unbearable for many people to the point of creating the first legislation119 aimed at curbing such visible suffering (Ritvo 1994:106). In tandem, a large anti-vivisection movement formed, as much aghast at the cruelty and disregard for animal suffering inherent in the practice as concerned about the rise of science and secularism (ibid). This was also the era where the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals (SPCA) was formed and then given a “Royal” upgrade in 1900. The concern over animal welfare was thus highly socially marked as well, championed as a social movement by the rich, eventually appropriated by monarchial power, and all the while oftentimes unquestionably targeting the animal keeping practices of the lower class, from cab drivers and their horses to labeling certain breeds of dogs as public health nuisances. This 19th century rise of animal protectionism had its correlation in North America, and I specifically pinpoint examples via the story of Beautiful Jim Key in Chapter Five. Here, the overwhelming message was to treat animals with kindness, and watch them respond with a level of unexpected sentience and respect. But the future of such movements were subsequently complicated by “the combined effects of two world wars, and an intervening bout of economic recession” effectively helping “douse the more radical flames of the animal protection movement (Serpell and Paul 1994: 127). It must also be noted at this time, however, that horses in 119 Though Parliament at first considered animal legislation beneath their dignity, by 1822 Martin’s Bill was passed for the protection of cattle (although bulls were still exempted) and became the first piece of legislation recognizing that animals had a legally enforceable welfare rights (Ritvo 1994:108). 146 particular had come in demand more than ever, from military service to industrial labor to mass transit (Derry 2006; Greene 2008), and yet the spectacle of horses serving in one last hurrah for the purpose of “man” was heightened by this growing concern over their welfare and sentience. 4.2.4 Equal consideration Come the 1960s and 1970s, a “substantial revival of interest in animal welfare and animal rights” took place in England (Serpell and Paul 1994:128) and was echoed in North American. In particular, this revival eventually brought about the foundation of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, something I will explain in the next chapter. Perhaps most seminally, in 1975 Australian bioethologist Peter Singer published Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, and much like Black Beauty became the tome of the American Humane Association, Animal Liberation became the text that defined the organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Here we now see the aforementioned historical shift from the debate of moral consideration towards animals to that of enforceable – by self, state, or society - ethical treatment. Building off the momentum seen with the rise of women’s and civil rights, Singer argued that the world was equally rife with speciesism, where animals fell under the unquestionable dominion – and thus cruelty – of man (1975:192-260). He thus advocated for animal liberation on the basis of a particular form of equality: “The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights” (Singer 1975:3). Thus, instead of holding up the measuring stick of humanity by which to judge moral consideration and ethical action, Singer advocated for an autonomous assessment of animal needs and rights. In the long history of various attributes used to measure human moral and 147 ethical responsibility to animals, Singer’s suggestion that being an “animal” was enough to be worthy of rights, was an enormous paradigm shift. It settled well with those people who believed in the complete liberation of animals, and troubled those whose livelihoods and worldviews were based on now-questionable relationships with animals. In this historical purview, the question has gone from whether or not animals have souls to be redeemed, to how the better treatment (if not liberation) of animals can be redemptive of a post-colonial world agonizing under the violation of human rights, much less those of animals – in short, the Anthropocene. Furthermore, what becomes redemptive about animals in this era, such as Thoroughbred ex-racehorses, is that they did not succumb to the machinations of their exploitation, they were not permanent victims of human aggressors – they demonstrated that there is a part of their uniquely and exquisitely animal (as in Other) self that can endure such hardships and, when given a chance to develop out from under these conditions, become more realized and successful than ever anticipated. The dialectic here is that given how much a rescued animal, like a Thoroughbred racehorse, can thrive when given a second chance, the sure death or destruction that once awaited them looks even more immoral and unethical. Doing the right thing becomes even more “right” when an animal appears to drastically improve in his or her new life conditions; and the “wrong,” the “sin,” the “bad thing” that an animal was rescued from is further confirmed and condemned. 4.3 The Three Levels of Redemptive Capital There is one more element to what I mean by “redemptive” in redemptive capital. This one is less genealogical than it is epistemological, and will therefore serve as a springboard into considering both the ethnographic inspiration behind “capital” as well as its theoretical 148 underpinnings. Consequently, I thus begin spelling out the analytic structure of redemptive capital as a useful concept to flush out and interrogate the valuing of horse and human life in the chapters to come. I will explain how redemptive capital has three stages of consideration, and how Bourdieu’s ideas on “capital” as well as “the field” in particular provide further structure and applicability of this concept. Redemptive, while it has “truck” in my community of study of Bluegrass Kentucky in both sacred and secular ways, is also a way to think relationally about a specific kind of larger processes and patterns that affect the contemporary world as it is particularly impacted by the Anthropocene. Unlike “redemption,” which implies a fixed, if not final, outcome in the process of reciprocity and salvation – “to pay off” / “to receive something in exchange” / “to set free; rescue” / “to save from sinfulness”120 – redemptive helps us think of these processes as relational, rooted in ongoing, ever-unfolding practices and actions that are heavily discursively and materially mediated. Barad’s (2003: 817) theory of intra-activity helps grasp what kind of relationality I am invested in here: “The world is a dynamic process of intra-activity in the ongoing reconfiguration of locally determinant boundaries, properties, meanings, patterns of marks on bodies.” 4.3.1 Level One: Ontological Rupture As such, while redemptive has salience at the local cultural level, it can also have “truck” (Haraway 2008) in relationships based on larger notions of indebtedness, exchange, and emancipation beyond the Bluegrass. As such, level one of understanding redemptive capital on a 120 American Heritage Dictionary 1992:691. 149 more theoretically applicable level is to accept that it applies to a specific kind of relational notion of “redemptive”: at the moment of crisis, when something is being threatened with demise, has been second-guessed, has something to prove in the face of loss; at the moment of “the Fall” (Harding 1987, cf. Sahlins 1996), when all is not utterly lost (but at the critical point of “almost”) and what is at stake, either success (redemption) or failure (condemnation), could go either way. At such moments, secular and spiritual, is where we find the redemptive dynamic. Redemptive capital thus begins at the moment of ontological rupture121 when the status and liveliness of something (horse, human, habitat, artifact, even intangible heritage) is undercut by imminent death, demise, destruction if no intervention (reincorporation) is made. The nature of level one of redemptive capital also correlates with the first of Van Gennep’s rites, separation, in that the subject (be it human or horse in this dissertation) is cast out from one’s “usual environment” (1977:82) or “previous world” (1977:175). In essence, redemptive capital becomes a possibility at the moment of ontological rupture, and as I will go on to explain, it will become the substance and force by which someone navigates the liminal phase of transition, what I call level two, in an effort to reach the postliminal, reincorporation phase (level three). 4.3.2 Level Two: Assessing Traits In the specific case study of this dissertation, capital is not just cash or financial and / or economic value (what Bourdieu would call “economicism” [1992:118]), it is what people use and chose to invest with such as labor and time, and as I would also argue in the context of this 121 But not complete separation, as Ingold suggests and Latour contests never fully happened. 150 study, emotional energy. Further following Bourdieu’s ideas on capital, capital is as economic as it is cultural and social (1986, 1992). While I get into the details of these three “species of capital” (Bourdieu 1992:119) shortly, I want to make the connection between the action of intervening on imminent death and capital as investment. The concept of redemptive capital is fundamentally about teasing out not just how and what things are threatened with their end and why, but how it is decided they are worth saving in the first place, that is, why someone (whom I call a “redeemer” in this dissertation) would intervene to stop the slide into loss and oblivion triggered by an ontological rupture. This is the second stage of redemptive capital: identifying the traits possessed by the almost-condemned, be they an ex-racehorse or an inmate, that a redeemer considers valuable enough to invest one’s time, money, emotional energy and physical labor into to save. As we will see, a redeemer is not simply saving some “one,” but what that “one” represents to the redeemer. First, about what I mean by “traits.” Traits are a way to index the various species and amounts of capital possessed by the almost-condemned that the redeemer wishes to save and further invest in, as well as capital the redeemed can realize and deploy for their own salvation. This last nuance, however, is varied across the research participants and subjects in this dissertation for reasons I will address in each subsequent chapter. Needless to say, the question of how consciously and deliberately a “creature” (to borrow the term from Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) can wield his or her redemptive capital is based on issues of species differentiation and questions of agency and intent. What is key to the type of capital indicated in “redemptive capital” is that it is inextricable from the redemptive relational processes that 151 produce and consume it. For example122: while the “redemptive capital” of a horse being held in a kill pen awaiting slaughter might be attributes valued123 in horses even if they were not in such a precarious place (such as his or her breed identity as a Thoroughbred), these attributes become especially charged and inflected in relation to the additional value a redeemer ascribes to them as this person fights to save horses and /or end horse slaughter. It is not just that a horse must be saved because he or she is still a sound, healthy Thoroughbred, but because this horse possesses capital (value) that must be redeemed from the blight of slaughter on moral and ethical grounds. To sacrifice the valued traits of a specific kind of horse would not only be a form of discounting their worth (and showing how arbitrarily constructed they are), but also of allowing this demystification process happen at the hands of that which is perceived wrong and evil (ie. slaughter). Bourdieu’s ideas about “species of capital” and “the field” based on insights gleaned from An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (1992), which is essentially a book-length published interview between Bourdieu and his student, Loic Wacquant124, are especially informative and inspiring here. Rather than a solo-treatise on some of his more influential ideas, Bourdieu revisits these key ideas through the prompting of Wacquant. The benefit of pulling theoretically from this book as opposed to more oft-cited, classic tomes (ie. Forms of Capital [1983], Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste [1984], Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action [1988]) is that Wacquant pushes his mentor to address some of the misconceptions wrought by mis- or partial readings of his previous work. Thus, when I consider the 122 While I only provide a brief example of traits as they apply to the redemptive capital of horses here, consideration of this element will be amply extended to human research participants in Chapter Four. 123 Always within a specific cultural and historical context for how horses are valued fluctuates in time, space, and community. 124 Who himself is a prison ethnographer and whose work I pull from in Chapter Four. 152 contributions Bourdieu’s ideas help make to my formulation of “capital” and “field” in particular, these ideas are coming straight from “the horse’s mouth”125 so to speak, and after years of his ruminating on them and their mis-appropriation. Fundamental to redemptive capital’s relational dynamic is the identification of a redeemer and the redeemed (who I also have been calling the “almost-condemned” as a term for the status one holds before rescue happens and redemptive capital is identified and assessed). The relationship between the redeemer and the redeemed is laden with unequal power relations as well as attempts at mutuality, cutting across but also calling upon practices of differentiation that involve issues of class, race, gender, nationality, and species distinction. As such, these relations between agents have objective properties and structures to them to point of being called “positions” because they come from being part of “a field” that is charged with power, profits, domination and subordination. According to Bourdieu, “a field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions” (1992:97). Furthermore These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents, or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field,as well as by their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc). (1992:97) To ethnographically ground Bourdieu’s notion of the field and the positions within it that are generative of redemptive capital, the “field” in this dissertation is that of “rescue” where positions are held by horses and horse people alike – though with varying degrees of ability and 125 I will state here, though, that I do not exempt my reading of Bourdieu’s ideas from mis-­‐appropriation that comes from partial reading. Rather, I have done some specific selecting from his conversations with Wacquant to help generate how I see capital at work in redemptive capital. I only hope to redeem my appropriation and citation of Bourdieu by acknowledging some of the more nuanced language and application of his fruitful ideas. 153 agency to play the “game” Bourdieu argues is implicit in the logic of the field. While “a field is not the product of a deliberate act of creation” that follows explicit and codified rules and regulations as a game does, like a game players are in competition with each other for certain stakes and, furthermore, hold “cards” that they can play to give them the edge they need. In short, such cards are capital whose worth is relative: “just as the relative value of cards changes with each game, the hierarchy of the different species of capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) varies across the fields (Bourdieu 1992:98). One way in particular that the value of cards / capital shifts in the field of rescue, I argue, has to do with Haraway’s notion of “trans-species encounter value”: Trans-species encounter value is about relationships among a motley array of lively beings, in which commerce and consciousness, evolution and bioengineering, and ethics and utilities are all in play. (2008:46) As this dissertation will demonstrate, as humans and horses encounter each other and entangle in relationships based on the field of rescue, each species being affects the value (redemptive capital) of the other, while affecting and being affected by the shifting values of the other species of capital that Bourdieu identifies as economic, cultural, social, and symbolic. It is to these species of capital I will now turn in order to clarify exactly what they are and how they contribute to the notion of redemptive capital. For Bourdieu, “the value of a species of capital” could be something like “knowledge of Greek or of integral calculus” because of how such knowledge and skills could be used to demonstrate “competency” in a field that was already set-up to value them: “a species of capital is what is efficacious in a given field, both as a weapon and as a stake of struggle, that which allows its possessors to wield a power, an influence, and thus to exist in the field under 154 consideration, instead of being considered a negligible quantity” (1992:98). As such, the traits that I previous identified as being points of crisis intervention and the beginning of redemption are what lend value and are valued within a species of capital. Furthermore, “two individuals endowed with an equivalent overall capital can differ, in their position as well as their stances” because of the kind and amount of capital they possess, “in that one holds a lot of economic capital and little cultural capital, while the other has little economic capital and large cultural assets” – though such fortune, as it were, can change over time and in relation to one’s “social trajectory” and “dispositions (habitus)” within “a definite distribution of objective chances” (Bourdieu 1992:99). Inherent in this kind of jockeying for position, capital, and more efficacious use of both, is struggle: “as a space of potential and active forces, the field is also a field of struggles” (Bourdieu 1992:101). What does it mean to have more economic capital than cultural, and struggle over their distribution and possession? For Bourdieu, economic capital is “the root of all the other kinds of capital” and yet is not just the “deliberate search for the maximization of monetary profit” (1986). Rather, as I previously suggested, economic capital is better understood as the “labor-time” it takes to convert one type of capital into another. Of these other capitals, cultural capital can be understood as that which communicates one’s position and stakes within a given field, and exists in three levels (or subspecies, if you will): embodied, objectified, and institutionalized. At the embodied level, we find cultural capital at its most “fundamental state” whereby the “labor of inculcation and assimilation” has produced a “habitus” that masquerades as “natural competence” when it is actually “appropriately accumulated” capital (1986). At the objective level, cultural capital is accepted, appropriate competence in “pictures, books, machines, etc.” whereby one doesn’t just possess these items as forms of conspicuous consumption, but actually 155 can display ability to use them as well. As such, “agents wield strength and obtain profits proportionate to their [embodied] mastery of this objectified capital” (1986). After objectified capital comes the final stage of cultural capital – institutionalized – and for this Bourdieu gives the example of academic qualifications. They work to separate “the last successful candidate from the first successful one” and as such establish “the value of the holder of a given qualification” (1986). Once this level of cultural capital has been attained, the question of social capital finally comes into play. Bourdieu understood this third fundamental species of capital as a “durable network of members with the backing of collectively-owned capital” (1986). To be a part of this network is to be an active and privileged player in the field, but one with expected responsibilities as well. Social capital is only profitable for an agent “unless one invests in it a specific competence…and disposition to acquire and maintain this competence” (Bourdieu 1986). That is to say, each member of the social network possessing a certain kind of social capital is also responsible for upholding the network and being “a custodian” of the inclusions and exclusions of this network. The pay-off for such duty is such that “the possessors of an inherited social capital…are able to transform all circumstantial relationships into lasting connections” (1986). Like looks out for like, so the saying goes, and such is the reward for playing the field to one’s advantage. But as Bourdieu argues, due to the effect of symbolic capital, agents do not consciously realize that they playing such a game because built into each species of capital is a “logic” that works to “misrecognize” or mystify “the arbitrariness of its possession and accumulation” (Bourdieu 1992:119). That is to say, one believes one must play the game according to the rules and regulations (however much one can also strategize and adapt 156 such rules in unconventional ways) because one subscribes unquestionably to, if not struggles futilely against, its fundamentally arbitrary nature. 4.3.3 Level Three: Of Redemption and Reincorporation Into this heavily determinist model of social (im)mobility that Bourdieu offers, I must bring Haraway back in order to conclude this theoretical consideration of redemptive capital and supply the third and final stage of redemptive capital. Once ontological rupture has occurred, and the species of capital worth saving have been identified, stage three signals the beginning of possible redemption, when a horse has been rescued from a precarious future, or a man has had his first breakthrough day at the TRF program at Blackburn. I qualify stage three as signaling “possible” redemption because unlike the totalistic, if not sublime view Bourdieu takes on human society, I am instead interested in Haraway’s embrace of a more open-ended, mundane world. As such, once a horse and human in this study comes under the network of the Thoroughbred Retirement Program, I wish to remain curious (and yet still concerned) about what happens to the lives of these creatures once they have been spared from death. What forms of redemptive capital continue to foment and enable them as they enter into “second careers”? How might the valued species of capital that saved them in the first place come back to constrain their future possibilities, their second chance? Is death ultimately conquered, or do the fields that harbored its presence and threat remain unchanged and still powerful? Or is the struggle for a better position in life – a greener pasture, a better paying job – simply rendered a little less futile? Such questions will be explored, partially answered, and inspire additional inquiry throughout the remainder of this dissertation. 157 Chapter 5: Hippophagy and the (In)humanity The stall door rumbled and cut the morning silence as I rolled it open to begin my volunteer grooming duties for the day at the Secretariat Center. Upon entering his stall, Ferdy, a 16 year-old chestnut gelding with a white blaze down his face turned to me and harmlessly pinned his ears back at me a bit. I wrote enthusiastically in my field notes: He liked rubbing his forehead on me, and would curl his front legs up... When I asked about this, M told me that his former adopter clicker trained him to do that. This is an example of how human culture shapes the lives and intentions of these horses. Ferdy just wanted me to give him a treat! Such was my first introduction to Ferdinand’s Star, a son of a chestnut stallion, Ferdinand, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1986, the Breeder’s Cup Classic in 1987 and was awarded the 1987 Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year. These three accolades are the highest a horse can receive in North American Thoroughbred racing. Then, fifteen years after becoming such a champion, Ferdy’s father “died sometime in 2002, most likely in a slaughterhouse in Japan” (Bayer 2003). I really liked knowing how to say Hello to a horse, especially Ferdy and Fly. I am so sorry that Ferdy’s dad the best racer got slaughtered. I really wanted to see Ferdy and his dad together. Thank you for informing us about the history and how to say hello. ~excerpt from a “Thank You” letter written by a Harrison Elementary School student to MMSC Little did I know that February 2011 morning when Ferdy first bowed to me at the start of a grooming session, that his life had not only been spared but rendered symbolic because of his father’s death in a Japanese slaughterhouse and all that it came to mean for the Thoroughbred racing industry, horse slaughter industry, animal welfare activists and anti-hippophagists126 I introduce in this chapter. Hence, our first glimpse at Ferdy’s redemptive capital reveals the strongest trait he possesses to keep him from slipping into fatal liminality is by being the son of Ferdinand. What little knowledge I did know about “Ferdy’s dad, as stated above by one 126 Hippophagy is the act of eating horseflesh. 158 elementary school student who met Ferdy as part of a school visit, was what led me to Kentucky in the first place: how Ferdinand’s death contributed to the more recent development of Thoroughbred-specific horse rescues, retraining centers, and retirement sanctuaries on an unprecedented scale. To be sure, there were horse rescues in place well before Ferdinand’s time, such as the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, but I focus on Ferdinand’s death as an originary point because it not only re-motivated the practice of horse rescue by those more inclined toward animal rights and humane movement sympathies, but also got the racing industry re-involved (and anxious) as well. This is why I chose Kentucky: as a worldwide, famous center of Thoroughbred horse racing, I also wanted to see how intertwined, antagonistic, and cooperative the practice of “rescue” was in such a context. To this backdrop, this chapter is concerned with analyzing the first of three equine mascots that represented the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center during my fieldwork: Ferdinand’s Star, aka “Ferdy.” Through Ferdy’s life story, this chapter traces the emergence, particularly in the U.S., of an appreciation of horses as sentient beings deserving of redemption (encapsulated in the practice and political claim of “rescue”) and, as we will see in later chapters, offering redemption in their own right. There is further merit in analyzing Ferdy as a mascot because within the story of his life as told by the Secretariat Center, we can unpack crucial historical background and contemporary debates surrounding horse slaughter and humane movements aimed against it. This unpacking not only gives an orientation as to why there is so much protest about Thoroughbred ex-racehorses in particular going to slaughter, but it also addresses how and why horses have a history in the U.S. of being heavily symbolic for advocating more humane action towards animals by humans. As such, I argue that Ferdy serves as a “figure” in the sense that Haraway defines it: “Figures collect the people through their invitation to inhabit the 159 corporeal story told in their lineaments. Figures are not representations or didactic illustrations, but rather material-semiotic nodes or knots in which diverse bodies and meanings coshape one another” (2008:4). Yet just as the figure of Ferdy’s mascot representation is used to speak critically against horse slaughter, I argue that we must simultaneously be critical of what Ferdy represents because the symbolic burden that he carries is bias and, furthermore, not exactly of his own doing – embodying what Mary Midgley calls the “unsuitable symbolic values” animals take on, particularly in Western culture (Baker 2001:223). The unsuitability and unevenness of Ferdy’s symbolic values will show themselves in this chapter not only through a more nuanced, second-look at what histories and issues he represents, but also straight from the horse’s mouth – that is, from understanding Ferdy as a very much alive and lively creature in my fieldwork research, what Ingold (2000) would call a “being-in-the-world.” I argue that for all the explanatory power Ferdy’s mascot biography gives, it is also a select and problematic version of the story. By demonstrating how “unstable as a sign” Ferdy actually is, it “[becomes] clearer what culture has invested in the animal” beyond controlled, hegemonic representation (Baker 2001:223). Through this chapter’s construction of Ferdy’s meaning, I demonstrate how a horse’s biography can be “read into” both textually and phenomenologically and how it doing so reveals the multiple ways a horse might experience “redemption.” Thus, by troubling the mascot master narrative of Ferdy, I also start laying the ground for developing my concept of redemptive capital for how it speaks to the always-already political dimensions of moral and ethical negotiations invested in the practice of horse rescue - especially in the case of retired Thoroughbred racehorses. In the midst of the myriad symbolic values attributed to Ferdy, I argue that redemptive capital can help us see how the more overtly 160 represented values associated with these horses (such as their representational power as anti-slaughter advocates) work with the more subtly invested ones (such as how their representation works to sustain non-profit organizations) to determine what lives are worth saving and why. Given all this, I will first start by locating Ferdy at MMSC both symbolically and spatially, which will provide an orientation to the specific kind of Bluegrass equestrian culture that invests in him as a mascot there. I will then go on to link the practice of making Ferdy a mascot in a cultural history of other equine mascots that have been deployed as symbols and advocates for the humane treatment of horses in the U.S. since the Civil War. Locating Ferdy in such a historical continuum will set the stage for unpacking the contemporaneous particulars of his redemptive capital as an anti-horse slaughter mascot for the TRF and MMSC in particular as nonprofit organizations and programs dedicated to rescuing, retraining, and / or providing permanent sanctuary for retired Thoroughbred racehorses who might otherwise be sent to slaughter. Once I locate Ferdy’s symbolic value as a contemporary humane-oriented mascot in a history of similar equine mascots, I will turn to a more direct genealogy of Ferdy’s redemptive capital by recounting the biography of his sire, Ferdinand, to address the fate of horses after they are finished with their racing careers. Understanding Ferdinand’s life and legacy will help us understand why Ferdy was kept alive and subsequently deployed as an MMSC mascot to represent his father’s fate. I then unpack the history of the outrage over Ferdinand’s death, covering the cultural dimensions and historical fluctuations of the taboo of horsemeat from Japan to Europe to North America. As Steve Baker observes in his book Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation, “any effective cultural strategies on behalf of animals must be based on an understanding of contemporary cultural practice” (2001:5). As such, I suggest that by the 161 21st century, the tabooing of horsemeat shifted historically from the abomination of consumption, to the abomination of slaughter and its implications for animal cruelty and transnational, industrialized slaughter. Concurrent to this analysis, I also address historical and contemporary pro-horse slaughter positions, suggesting that this stance too has undergone a shift: from advocating the medicinal and nationalistic consumption of horsemeat (hippophagy) to encouraging the re-institution of horse slaughter in the U.S. for “humane” end-of-life options for old or sick horses. To round out this chapter, I return to Ferdy and my fieldwork research with him at MMSC. Here, I am inspired by the work of Viciane Despret and her analysis of the so-called Clever Hans127 hoax. Seeing beyond the supposed hoax, Despret instead argues that the Orlov Trotter horse “could do something more interesting...he could make human bodies be moved and affected” (2004: 113) and suggests Clever Hans “embodied the chance to explore other ways which humans and nonhuman bodies become more sensitive to each other” (2004: 114). As such, my final analysis of Ferdy as a mascot considers how by riding and “becoming with” him (Despret 2004: 122; cf. Haraway 2008) as fieldwork method might reveal a horse momentarily unburdened from a heavy symbolic load. 5.1 The Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park In order to locate Ferdy at the Secretariat Center, more explanation about the Center and its location and history is needed. The MMSC I experienced during 2011 was an incredibly dynamic and complicated facility and organization. Housed on KHP grounds, MMSC was 127 Clever Hans was a horse trained by a German mathematician at the turn of the 19th century to spell, count, and do math; and whose supposed extraordinary abilities were discounted because it was concluded that he merely read and responded to the unintentional clues given to him by human inquisitors. 162 tucked away towards the back of the Park, sandwiched between still-private farmland, the Central Kentucky Riding for Hope therapeutic riding center, and the dumping grounds128 for the Park. As I drove to MMSC day after day, I always marveled at how tucked away the facility was as no one in the park could reach it except by driving there, and how much more isolated it must have been before KHP built the AllTech Indoor Arena for the World Equestrian Games in 2010 down the road from MMSC. But at the same time, MMSC did have twenty-two acres of its own, as well as the acres and acres of backfields of the park extending to always-roaring Interstate 75 to ride around in. This was coveted property for any equine facility in the Bluegrass, much less for a non-profit, Thoroughbred ex-racehorse retraining center. In the Bluegrass, it is said that historically a farm was judged by the color of its fencing. White indicated the more wealthy farms, while black was characteristic of the more common farm129. Additionally, intriguing old130 stone fences encircle many farms around the Bluegrass; originally claimed to have been constructed by slaves before the Civil Way, they were actually built by Irish stonemasons who came to the Bluegrass in the 19th century (Murray-Wooley and Raitz 1992). On my daily drive to KHP from the small horse farm I lived on off Carrick Pike in Scott County, I even drove past a farm (Castleton Lyons) that had acre after acre of beige fences and a stone tower spectacularly lit up by spotlights at night. In relation to all of this, MMSC’s twenty two acres were defined by a stitching of black creosote fences. 128 During one of the few interviews I could nail down with the over-­‐burdened, under-­‐organized director of MMSC, she stopped the interview and the car she was driving in mid-­‐sentence, got out and proceeded to pick up some of the more visible trash that had blown against the fences of MMSC’s front paddocks. 129 This no longer really holds true, as Claiborne Farm is covered in black fences. 130 Or also made to look “old,” or refurbished from older stone fences. Of the cultural import of stone fences and how they define the famous horse farms there, there is a documentary mini-­‐series produced by a local Lexington television station called, “Beyond the Stone Fences,” that I was repeatedly advised to watch during my fieldwork (one can watch the series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9E288E9B7177A7DE). 163 Farms in the Bluegrass also define themselves by stable colors, which usually consist of two colors – here, turquoise and black for the MMSC – and serve as “identity markers” that are “stylistic resources people use to manipulate identities” when trying to stand out as a stable in a community of other horse operations (McHale 2003). The director of MMSC, Susanna Thomas, claimed responsibility for establishing MMSC’s official “silks”131 of sorts, citing that when MMSC horses went trail riding around the park and every rider was wearing either turquoise or black t-shirts with MMSC’s telltale logo, name, and slogan (“Reschooling Adoptable Racehorses”), it would be easier to identify, and thus visit and possibly adopt, horses from MMSC’s program. So how did the Secretariat Center come to be located, much less so visible as an organization, at the Kentucky Horse Park? 5.1.1 Origin story In November 2011, when I sat down with Diana Pikulski for an interview, I asked her to tell the origin story of MMSC. As previously explained, while the TRF was established in Saratoga Springs, New York (circa 1983), its main operations came to be based out of the Kentucky Horse Park, and its CEO (a revolving position during my fieldwork tenure there), herd manager, and development and accounting database manager came to share an office building, the “Castleton Lyons” office building, with MMSC staff such as the director, adoptions / volunteer coordinator, and farm manager (whose “office” was actually based out in the barn area named after famous Thoroughbred horsewoman Marylou Whitney). This arrangement came about, according to Pikulski, when the TRF was contacted by the KHP Foundation in 1999-2000 “because a few of 131 The specific name given to stable colors used by racing stables after the silk shirts jockeys wear; for example, Ron Turcotte wore blue and white-­‐checkered silks to race Secretariat in the name of The Meadow. 164 the board members were Thoroughbred racing people and they wanted some aspect of the horse park132 have retired racehorses.” From another, less elite perspective, a staff member shared with me that some of the motivation behind this move was to make more of the “huge untapped resource in the farms” of the Bluegrass133. Though the first efforts to establish an MMSC-type facility were not successful, “enough talk” had been made that the idea was “in peoples’ minds.” Pikulski then connected this remark with the fundraising campaign that effectively established MMSC. “Every year, Maker’s Mark,” a Kentucky-based bourbon distillery with worldwide distribution and reputation134, “does special bottles for fundraising,” she explained. A member from the Keeneland Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Keeneland Racecourse, worked “hand in hand with Maker’s Mark for the PR [public relations] and fundraising” to arrange for the money to be raised that year from sales was to go for retired Thoroughbreds. Maker’s Mark issued three bottles - Secretariat, Affirmed, and Seattle Slew - and each bottle series raised $200,000. At the same time, the Kentucky Horse Park had purchase more land, and suddenly “there was space to do this. All of it came together in that way.” 132 Pikulski went on to note that the “horse park looked nothing like it does now” and did not have the space for showcasing retired Thoroughbreds -­‐ “the polo people did not want to give up their polo fields” she commented, demonstrating that the encompassing term “horse people” does not begin to indicate how identities are further divided according to breed and sports preference. 133 It was also noted that that the TRF wanted to use the office space available at MMSC. I also learned that the TRF did not pay rent on this office space. Therefore the space was made use of because it was available and with the additional benefit of being rent-­‐free. At a time when the organization was struggling with its budget, not paying rent on office space could be seen as an economizing measure – one that eventually came under fire when MMSC started breaking away from the TRF, which I address in the Conclusion. 134 The importance of bourbon to Kentucky’s economy and identity, especially in the Bluegrass, cannot be underscored enough. As an agricultural crop and product to export, it brings economic wealth and industry to the state; as a cultural icon it becomes a figure the state can promote for tourists and competitors, much like Thoroughbreds. 165 The TRF’s Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center thus opened in June 2004 at the Kentucky Horse Park. It was backed by notable members of the Thoroughbred racing industry such as Reiley McDonald, “co-owner of Eaton Sales, one of the largest consignors of Thoroughbred yearlings, weanlings...and broodmares to public auctions in America,” and “Keeneland Association, Thoroughbred owner-breeder Marylou Whitney, and Dr. Tony Ryan” (Heller 2005: 42). The original idea for MMSC, according to Bill Heller, author of the book After the Finish Line: Racing to End Horse Slaughter in America (whose cover features Ferdinand winning the Kentucky Derby), was to “accommodate as many as twenty horses on its twenty-two acres and showcase adoptable horses to an equine-friendly audience” (ibid). While managed by the TRF, MMSC was to be “open to horses from all equine retirement programs” (ibid), an arrangement that had significantly shifted during my fieldwork tenure. 5.1.2 The Secretariat affiliation When I asked about the origins of the “Secretariat” in MMSC’s name, Pikulski said that the first bottle issued by Maker’s Mark was the Secretariat one. Secretariat’s owner, Penny Chenery, was approached for the rights to use that name as she is known to be very protective of her horse’s legacy (“she wants to make sure there is no toilet paper with Secretariat’s likeness on it” as one research participant at MMSC jokingly explained to me). The name “Secretariat” was chosen specifically “because more people outside industry could recognize” the facility that way. But Pikulski went on to suggest that might have been a mistake. “A good number of people who come up there [to the facility] want to see Secretariat’s grave” just like they can visit Man O’War’s grave (or countless other horses’ graves, famous to various breed-specific communities) at the Horse Park. Alternatively, visitors also think it is a museum specifically dedicated to 166 Secretariat, not realizing one can instead view his famous racing silks and Triple Crown trophy at the International Museum of The Horse closer to the entrance of the KHP. In addition to the name recognition, Secretariat was also represented at MMSC by a statue that stood sentry in front of the main entrance of the Castleton Lyons office building. This gray-blue bronze statue depicted Secretariat as a pensioner, long retired from the track. His thick, crested neck characteristic of a breeding stallion arched out of the slightly rotund, but still well-muscled body of a well-blooded horse, and his sculpted eyes watched over the paddocks of horses being redeemed in his name. When I inquired about the statue, the director of MMSC, Susanna Thomas, explained how an older version of Secretariat helps remind visitors to the Figure 8: the pensioner statue of Secretariat looks out over the black fences of the MMSC (photo by TVS McKee) 167 Center that this is a place dedicated to horses “beyond the track” and their racehorse-fit days. As a further mimetic twist, by acknowledging a version of Secretariat that is retired from racing, the implicit message is that while even champion horses retire from racing, they still have much to offer. This fetishization of Secretariat as a retired champion, however, still gains representational purchase from his days as an outstanding racehorse and athlete. For even as the site of his retired, but still aesthetically-pleasing breeding body is a reminder that horses have valued lives after racing, MMSC also calls upon the athletic prowess he exemplified during his competitive career as being something to additionally value in all Thoroughbreds, racing or off-track. It is the fetishization of Secretariat’s athleticism and his manifestation as the ideal-type Thoroughbred in both conformation and career that MMSC appropriates in order to market their re-trained, adoptable horses in such light. 5.1.3 Running the MMSC This kind of meaning-making and re-symbolization of Secretariat was especially crafted and promoted by the director of MMSC. Susanna was (and still is) a visionary director who was unfortunately often spread too thin administratively and interpersonally when it came to applying a lot of her ideas. But the ones that took did so with great intention and forethought. Born in New York City to parents who were “smitten with learning” and were accomplished writers, Susanna spent her adolescent years in France before her ancestors began “calling her back to Kentucky” through her love of horses. While her mother was Swiss and Russian, it was her father who provided her with the Kentucky connection as his side of the family hailed from there. After college and a stint as an editor at Random House, in 1983 Susanna made her way out to the Bluegrass and sent her resume to every farm she could think of. On that resume 168 contained her volunteer experience as a mounted police officer in Central park as well as her background as a writer of horse shows. She also had show competition experience, but she saw herself as someone more interested in horses not to win ribbons but “just to be around horses” for their own sake. When I encountered Susanna during my fieldwork at MMSC, she was in her early 50s and considered aging an “exquisite and marvelous process.” Standing at a strongly-built 5’4” with sandy blond hair that brushed her shoulders and one gray-blue eye cast askew from a riding-related brain injury, Susanna told me one day during a formal interview in her office that while she “can’t do as much with horses physically” anymore she knew a lot more now and saw her role as the director of MMSC to share her wisdom with young riders. She also saw her role as an “advocate and voice” of horses, and in her administration of the non-profit side of MMSC as well as her contribution to the reschooling of the horses on campus, she was dedicated to “interspecies communication.” For her, it was important that Thoroughbreds in particular should be better understood: “It’s really tragic that an animal of this caliber is being written off as crazy, stupid or useless; they just don’t speak our language, understand our culture.” She went on to rhetorically query how these horses were ontologically “raised in the culture of racing, why expect them to understand the culture of pleasure horse?” For Susanna, such expectations of off-track-Thoroughbreds were akin to evaluating the social status of someone from New Jersey based on the hierarchy held by a Serengeti tribe: neither translated fairly or coherently in her multispecies model of cross-cultural comparison. This re-enculturation, as it were, of Thoroughbred ex-racehorses happened in large part on the “campus” of the Secretariat Center. To conclude this section on locating the Secretariat Center at the Horse Park, I will describe the campus. When not out trail riding and gaining 169 visitor visibility135 at the Park, horses at MMSC (called “candidates”) were kept in paddocks and fields that were constantly monitored and debated over for grass quality and growth. Horses were only “brought up” to the barn from the paddocks when they were to be worked with for the day according to MMSC’s trademarked “Horse-Centered Re-schooling Program,” which I will explain in more detail in Chapter Eight. Like all image-conscientious training barns in the Bluegrass (be it for showing or racing horses) the MMSC barn was impeccably built and maintained. It had a high, peaked roof capped with a vented cupola so as to induce healthy ventilation, and sliding doors at either end to block the incredibly cold winds that would rush through the corridors in the winter. On one side of the barn, a wash stall was bookended with the feed room and two stalls to the left, and the tack room and two additional stalls on the right. On the other side of the barn was the main entrance to the barn from the back office door; it fed into the main tacking-up area, which was then bookended on each side with three stalls. During my fieldwork at MMSC, two stalls at northern end of the barn closest to the doors leading out the schooling ring were dedicated to the two resident mascots at MMSC: Fly (who I will talk more about in the next chapter) and Ferdy. Whenever visitors came to MMSC and were given a tour, a common stop was in front of these stalls where the history and meaning of each horse was recounted. Just as Ferdy would invariably bow, signaling his desire to receive a treat for his demonstration, Fly would extend her neck and head as far as her black and turquoise nylon stall guard would also “looking for a cookie” as her owner, the adoptions coordinator at MMSC, would explain. When meeting Ferdy, MMSC visitors would be informed, as I was, that 135 An ongoing strife between MMSC and KHP was how to best market the program without inviting the ire and marketing-­‐overload of the many other programs located at the park. 170 he was taught to bow by a former owner whom had clicker trained him. As I will explain below, this bow became an opening to understand the further message Ferdy carried as a mascot. Outside, beyond Ferdy and Fly’s stalls, was the main training ground for MMSC re-schooling candidates. Exiting the barn, to the right was a round pen136 where horses could be worked with at liberty137. To the left was a larger schooling ring with sand footing and ringed with black fencing was where the majority of the re-schooling took place like flat riding, jumping, and de-sensitization groundwork. I spent many hours observing activities in this ring from a set of bleachers placed alongside it, and even participated in some flat riding and groundwork as my fieldwork progressed. In fact, one of the first horses I worked with and rode was Ferdy. 5.2 Ferdy as an Equine Humane Mascot In addition to the more discursive forms of his mascot representation, what that is exactly I will go on to explain in this section, another way people could encounter Ferdy’s message was to ride or take a lesson on him as he was the resident “school horse”138 at MMSC. This meant that arrangements could be made for people to ride Ferdy because he was the calmest, easiest horse to ride on campus - and also because through riding him, people could come in contact, literally, with the meaning and power of his story. In this way, Ferdy acted as a “device,” in the words of Vincaine Despret, that “enabled humans to learn more about their bodies and their affects” (2004: 114). This entailed not only learning how to ride, but also about the importance of 136 A round enclosure where horses are trained. 137 Without tack and from the ground instead of mounted. 138 A school horse is a horse at a riding facility that is used to give lessons when the rider does not own her/his own horse. 171 humane treatment of horses (of which slaughter was the antithesis) as solidified the embodied experience of riding and relating to Ferdy. As such, Ferdy had redemptive capital as a symbol and a ride-able horse in terms of how he was contextualized and deployed by the MMSC. Figure 9: Ferdy as a school horse at MMSC (photo by TVS McKee) In addition to encountering him in the space of the Secretariat Center, along with Fly, Ferdy was also brought139 to various local venues, such as elementary schools and racetracks, to represent MMSC and its mission “to herald the value and athleticism of the off track 139 These programs would often be led either by MMSC’s director or the adoptions coordinator, and accompanied by local college interns or eager volunteers -­‐ all of whom would participate (and help tell the story of “Ferdy’s dad”) in terms of handling the horses per MMSC’s horse-­‐handling protocols and imparting information as constructed by and conducive to MMSC’s self-­‐representation. 172 Thoroughbred through education and outreach programs.”140 Here, participants, like the elementary school student whose thank you letter to the Center I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, learn about the political mission of the MMSC in tandem with other horse related factoids such how to say “hello” to a horse by blowing gently and safely into a horse’s nostrils and have them smell you first before petting them. To paraphrase Haraway’s notion, such encounters had further value as they were presented in conjunction with more detailed, politically driven information about Thoroughbred horse slaughter and rescue. Recall that the student wrote: “I am so sorry that Ferdy’s dad the best racer got slaughtered. I really wanted to see Ferdy and his dad together.” This indicates not just what this child remembered from meeting Ferdy, but the emotional resonance that went with it too. In addition to such interpersonal encounters, Ferdy’s resonance as a mascot was also communicated more discursively in “Meet the MMSC Mascots” rhetoric found in brochures, flyers, and websites. A deeper look into a paper flyer I collected during my fieldwork at MMSC further illustrates the logic of Ferdy’s representation as an anti-equine slaughter mascot via his sire, Ferdinand: “Ferdy” was born March 2, 1995, raced 10 times and only saw the winners circle once. Lucky for him, he was not going to see the same unfortunate fate as his father, Ferdinand... The flyer goes on to parenthetically recount Ferdinand’s racing career and slaughter, but with no mention that it happened in Japan (I, however, will go on to cover this amply in the next section). The flyer then picks up again at Ferdy’s biography, explaining that he “found his way” to new 140 From MMSC’s Facebook page, accessed 6/12/12. 173 owners141 that “had him in dressage training for several years but when he started to show his age, they permanently endowed him to the TRF.” The biographical blurb concludes with an appeal to Ferdy’s personality and useful role at MMSC, constructing his subjectivity as an accessible horse for visitors at any level of horse knowledge and practice: Ferdy loves to jump and show off in the dressage arena but he truly believes he is meant to be groomed and played with all day. He would stand on the cross ties for hours if you would just brush him! Framing Ferdy in such a way not only helps the MMSC’s mission, it also uncannily indexes a historical practice in the U.S. of using horses as mascots to encourage the humane treatment of animals. Thus, in the following section, I will examine three historic examples of other horse mascots in order to contextualize Ferdy’s representation both in the history of horses in the U.S. as well as the growth of humane movements and consciousness as it pertains to animal cruelty and horse slaughter. Through each of these mascots, Beautiful Jim Key, Snowman, and “Joey,” we see a trend of valuing such horses for how performative, person-able (both in terms of relating to people and approximately human traits), and political they can be. 5.2.1 Beautiful Jim Key Set in the aftermath of the Civil War, Mim Eichler Rivas’ book, Beautiful Jim Key: The Lost History of A Horse and A Man Who Changed the World, claims that the partnership between a former slave-turned-self-taught veterinarian, William “Doc” Key from Shelbyville, Tennessee, and “Beautiful” Jim Key, an Arabian-Hambeltonian horse bred by Doc, “helped spur a 141 In the writing of this dissertation I came into email correspondence with Ferdy’s first adopter, the one who clicker trained him. Because I do not have ethical clearance to include any of our conversation, what I have learned about this part of Ferdy’s life cannot be included in here. These were also the owners who clicker trained Ferdy to bow. 174 significant shift in human consciousness” by launching a “worldwide animal rights movement through an international network of humane societies” (2005: xiii)142. As such, the story of Beautiful Jim Key is a good starting point for understanding the link between horses and humane movements in the U.S. The partnership between Doc Key and “Jim” was performance-based, starting humbly at local medicine shows in Tennessee promoting Doc’s “Keystone Liniment” - whereby Jim would feign the symptoms the liniment claimed to cure and act out the recovery - and culminated in appearances on Broadway in New York City to the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in 1904. What was it about their performances that spurred such shifts in consciousness and contributed to a worldwide movement of animal rights? An excerpt from Rivas’ depiction of Beautiful Jim Key’s breakthrough performance before then-president McKinley at the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in 1897 helps illustrate the uncanny ability of the horse: The President was said to be utterly transfixed throughout the demonstration, which continued to be performed in response to random questions from the audience. Bringing letters to his spelling rack, Jim spelled a couple of first names of cabinet members with no problems, and then, after a volunteer came up to the alphabet rack and rearranged the order of the remaining letters, he was asked to spell his own name in full - J-I-M K-E-Y -which he did successfully after a thorough search of the rack. (2005:114) 142 What is further noteworthy, but not exactly hashed out in Rivas’ book, is how Doc Key fared as an African-­‐American man in a rapidly racially segregating, post-­‐bellum U.S. as I discussed in the Introduction. That Doc and Jim performed mostly in the north and Midwest kept issues of race and public spectacle possibly at bay is one factor, but Rivas also suggests that the performance between man and horse was so astonishing that when they finally made it to the south, audiences in cities like Atlanta were too captivated by the feats of the horse to be bothered by Doc (this could also be because Doc was on-­‐stage and thus in an accepted, distanced context; he did not challenge spatial segregation in an everyday sense). 175 How did a horse become capable of such feats143? Doc Key always provided a simple answer: the horse was taught by kindness and patience.144 In fact, “He Was Taught by Kindness,” became the slogan wherever Beautiful Jim Key’s story was told, be it in performances, graphic novels, or a promotional pamphlet crafted by promoter by Albert R. Rogers who wished to “touch a public nerve” as Anna Sewell’s book Black Beauty: Autobiography of a Horse had done previously in both Britain and the U.S. (Rivas 2005:127). Inspired by their performance at the 1897 Tennessee Exposition, Rogers was the one who came to connect Doc and Jim’s performances and message with the then-burgeoning humane society movement in the U.S. This began when word of their Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition performance in 1897 caught the attention of promoter of Albert R. Rogers. At the 143 In addition to spelling, Jim opened up the performance by taking a bell out of steamer trunk and ringing it. He then followed with a spelling demonstration, filing mail “under the proper letter of the alphabet...at the instruction of different members of the audience” (Rivas 2005:114). He also solved arithmetic problems, though “he was stumped when it came to the question of 17 minus 18, negative numbers having not yet been covered in his curriculum...instead shook his head no at Dr. Key, twisting his mouth and squinting his eyes to suggest that someone was trying to trick him” (ibid). Jim’s performance’s also had him playing cashier, writing his name on the blackboard, “retrieving a silver dollar from the bottom of a glass barrel full of water,” bowing to the Republican president and insisting he was “a good Democratic horse” by shaking his head “no” when McKinley asked him “now aren’t you a good Republican?” (Rivas 2005:114-­‐115). 144 Jim was always meant to be an extraordinary horse, but not in the way he turned out. Doc bred him from a broken-­‐down Arabian mare he rescued and rehabilitated from a circus in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1885 (Rivas 2005: 21-­‐24), and a Hambletonian trotting stallion Doc singled out after a day of races at Doc’s Keystone racing track in Shelbyville (Rivas 2005: 28-­‐32). Doc was looking for an intelligent, able-­‐bodied horse he could race, ride, and stand at a good profit; instead he got a colt that “was a misshapen and bony as any sickly foal could be” (Rivas 2005: 35). After weeks of barely being able to stand, grooms begged Doc to shoot the colt and put him out of his misery (a sentiment / solution I will discuss further in this thesis). Doc ignored the suggestion, named the horse “Jim” after the town drunk, and put so much care into the horse that “he had created a primal connection” (Rivas 2005: 38) -­‐ especially after the mare had died and left the doctor as Jim’s primary social referent. Jim’s “strange intelligence” soon appeared, first learning how to fetch like Doc’s dog, then how to say “yes” and “no” without any violent methods of literally poking or prodding as other trainers did (Rivas 2005: 39-­‐45). According to Rivas, this was not mere imitation on the horse’s part, but rather “Jim watched and listened” to everything Doc did (2005: 39). Doc, who ever since a boy noticed “all the animals, big and small, recognize me as a friend” (Rivas 2005: 49), took note of Jim’s intelligence, willingness, and responsiveness to him and began training him, using sugar, kindness and patience to become the extraordinary performers they were for President McKinley that day in 1897. 176 height of Jim’s fame, around one million children and adults signed the Jim Key pledge “I promise always to be kind to animals.” This connection between Beautiful Jim Key and children had precedent in Sewell’s Black Beauty and its reception in American society. Written from the first-person perspective of Black Beauty, a horse first foaled and trained by a kind master who then went on to serve as an abused cab horse in London before being bought and pastured to retirement, the book was initially intended for an audience of “late adolescent and adult male grooms and drivers of horses” (Pearson 2011:43). George Thorndike Angell, founder of the American Humane Association, proclaimed Black Beauty to be the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the horse” and distributed 100,000 free copies “to any individual involved in working with horses” (Rivas 2005:161). But then Black Beauty’s story became marketed as a children’s novel because humane campaigners like Agnell “assumed that children and animals were naturally sympathetic to each other” (Pearson 2011:43). Given how Black Beauty forged the cultural investment in the empathetic equivocation between horse and child, Doc and Jim were strategically booked by Rogers to perform and visit orphanages and schools in order to win the attention of Angell. We can now see how this strategy of taking the message of humane treatment of animals to children via the embodied symbol of a charismatic horse was also at work when Ferdy visited Harrison Elementary School in Lexington, Kentucky in 2011. In 1909, Doc Key passed away and Jim’s mourning was apparently very profound: “he went into a steep decline, his rheumatism becoming more acute, now with pain, swelling and fever” and he even “developed a kind of amnesia, as if he couldn’t recall anything Dr. Key had ever taught him” when he was asked by Doc’s wife and his vet assistant (Rivas 2005:257-258). But given how much Jim had meant not only to the American public and humane movement, but 177 to his people back in Shelbyville “everything that love, kindness and money could do to end Jim’s life with every comfort” was done. In proportion to the contributions his life made, through hundreds of performances watched, thousands of pamphlets read, and scores of honorary memberships in human organizations like the AHA and ASPCA, when Beautiful Jim Key passed away three years after Doc, he was memorialized with a large stone marker inscribed with the words: “Famous Arabian Hambletonian Educated Horse: Beautiful Jim Key 1889-1912,” “Be Kind to Animals,” and “Kindness, Justice, and Mercy to All Creatures.” 5.2.2 Snowman If Beautiful Jim Key demonstrated the zeigeist of animal humane movements in post-Civil War, turn-of-the-19th century U.S., our next mascot, Snowman, indexes where horses were in post-World War II U.S. culture, society, and economics. At this time, the predominance of horses in U.S. daily life was almost totally eclipsed by other forms of technology, transportation, and humanocentric ideologies and, furthermore, by the fact that horses were now anachronistic in warfare (Derry 2006, Greene 2008). However, this did not signal a complete fading away of horses, but rather a re-channeling of them into more companionate roles, which subsequently had the effect of an overall better treatment and regard of horses (Letts 2011:28), though this happened not without distinct class and even nationalistic disclaimers. One way this happened was through show jumping competitions, as they were still held as elite cultural identity practices by upper class New Englanders (Letts 2011:122, 133), as well as between nations still hashing out war rivalries - particularly between the U.S. and Germany (Letts 2011:228). Furthermore, as horses faded from everyday prominence, one way this was facilitated was through slaughter. Though I will go into more detail about the history and practice of 178 slaughter later on in this chapter and the next, at the time Snowman rose to notoriety, the demand for remounts (horses used for riding-based warfare) during World War II had created and renewed myriad breeding programs across the U.S. (Letts 2011:26); but when the war was over, these programs had a surplus of horses. Sending such horses, along with others displaced by changes of the times such as those used for transport and farming, to slaughter became a well-known solution. In Elizabeth Letts’ words, the author of Snowman’s biography, The Eighty Dollar Champion (2011): “The rendering plant was a necessary and economically vital part of the horse economy” in post-war U.S. (2011:29). Such was how a horse like Snowman ended up at an auction known for channeling horses to slaughter in 1956. As such, Snowman’s story begins when a man, Harry de Leyer, purchases him for eighty dollars off a “killer van” bound for a horse slaughter plant in New York (2011:6). de Leyer came to the (in)famous New Holland horse auction in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, looking for a “quiet lesson horse” for the riding program he directed at a girl’s school on Long Island, New York (Letts 2011:4). Arriving late to the auction, his only option was to scan the selection of horses bound for slaughter. Letts’ description of the first contact man and horse make speaks once again to the phenomenon of touch when it comes to Haraway’s (2008) sense of multispecies worldmaking: “Between the slats [of the trailer], Harry saw large dark brown eyes. When he reached out his palm, the horse stuck his nose toward him. Harry saw one eye looking at him. Asking” (2011: 6). This passage also introduces the emphasis many horse people in the Bluegrass placed on the significance of the horse’s “eye” - as if the eye was an uncanny-yet-reliable portal providing human understanding of equine consciousness and intent. When de Leyer pulled Snowman from the trailer, he witnessed a horse that had been severely neglected: “His coat, the dull white color that horsemen call gray, we matted and caked 179 with mud... The marks across his chest showed that he’d pulled a heavy harness” (2011: 6). Despite this appearance, de Leyer still saw evidence of something worth saving in the horse’s eye and bearing: Despite his sorry condition, a spark of life lit up the gray’s eyes. He had a strong body that would fill out with proper care. Any Horseman can recognize an animal whose spirit has been broken, from the listless head and dull eyes, the slack lips and shuffling gait. But this horse was not broken - he had an air of self-possession. (Letts 2011: 7) This passage also helps introduce the concept of a “broken down” horse and some of its physical / phenomenological characteristics; and the harbinger of the broken horse will be a phenomenon I will return to and analyze in abundance during this thesis. But perhaps most important to tease out from this initial encounter between de Leyer and Snowman is the example of redemptive capital it indicates: beneath the mud-caked, scarred coat, lay a dormant strong, capable body and a “spark” in the eye. When de Leyer saw these attributes, he was seeing Snowman’s redemptive capital in a highly embodied and still-emergent form. This ability to see potential in horses who might otherwise be dismissed as useless was also something I saw people at the Secretariat Center in possession of, but what exactly each “horseman” saw in certain horses was as much a systematic evaluation born of industry standards as it was a subjective preference too. Letts’ book also touches on another important characteristic to understand when considering “rescued” horses: “Snowman had no story except the one inscribed on his body” (2011: 24). It was commonly emphasized during my fieldwork that because animals cannot “speak for” themselves, human rescuers and advocates must do it for them. However, I was also struck by how some riders, trainers, and “horsemen” did pay attention to other modes of equine communication, such as the stories inscribed on bodies and through behavior. This calls to mind 180 Weil’s aforementioned point in the Introduction about how trauma studies can offer a gateway to further account for nonhuman animal existence: “how to understand and give voice to other or to experiences that seem impervious to our means of understanding how to attend to difference without appropriating or distorting it; how to hear and acknowledge what it may not be possible to say” (2010:4). Yet despite his initially sorry state as former plow horse (surmised from the harness marks across his chest), Snowman took to being ridden without any fight or difficultly so much so that just weeks into his new habitus, de Leyer’s children were riding him. That Snowman took so quickly and quietly to riding helped encourage his redemptive capital further, by demonstrating he was not just person-able, but children-able, as it were. But Snowman did not stay a simple schooling horse for long. Through a string of extraordinary feats, he came to demonstrate to de Leyer that he possessed a stupendous ability to jump despite his almost becoming as one journalist came to refer to him, a “refugee from the cannery” (Letts 2011:156). Snowman’s rise to fame began by winning all the great competitions on the New England show circuit; from there he went on to the National Horse Show in New York City, one of the most prestigious show jumping competitions in the world. When he then won the 1958 National Horse Show, much like Secretariat did fifteen years later, Snowman became the “hero” the U.S. needed at the time (Letts 2011:137). Snowman was considered a hero because he had come so close to death; as such his redemption story, from kill truck to show trophies, was told over and over again in newspaper stories, cartoons, and even in an appearance on the Tonight Show (Letts 2011:231). “Doomed Horse Leaps from Kill Pen to Fame” proffered the Chicago Tribune; and “the Schenectady News crowed that the horse had 181 been ‘saved from execution’” (Letts 2011:240). But the overwhelming title attached to Snowman conjured up another, more human-oriented comparison: “the Cinderella Horse.” When Snowman retired, he did so officially in a ceremony at the National Horse Show’s Madison Square Garden venue in 1969. “Snowy,” as he affectionately came to be known by de Leyer and his family, paraded around the arena where he had previously won jump-offs over obstacles higher than six feet, this time, however, draped in flowers and wearing a blanket that read “Cinderella Horse.” Further into his retirement, like Ferdy and Beautiful Jim Key, Snowman’s popularity extended to children. Two children’s books145 were written about it him, and Snowy would show up for exhibitions and book signings, while alternatively children would visit him at de Leyer’s Hollandia farm after reading the books that “were in constant circulation at the local library” (Letts 2011:269). Snowman passed away in 1974. Unlike Beautiful Jim Key, no elaborate memorial marks this horse’s grave, but rather his significant human other buried him under the tree where the horse had liked to rest146. 145 During my fieldwork, an intern at MMSC had also drafted a children’s book of Ferdy as part of her final internship project; I have a copy of it. 146 Speaking of memorialization, de Leyer did create a personal room devoted to Snowman, where he hung paintings, photos, and “Snowman’s show bridle, with the soft rubber snaffle bit, still cleaned and oiled, hanging in a place of honor” (Letts 2011:279). Snowman’s impact as an equine device for human/e transformation was given a contemporary update when The PetSmart Charities commissioned a model Breyer horse in Snowman’s image where “proceeds would go toward the care of rescued horses” (ibid). The model became an immediate collectors item, and Letts notes: “Completed, it managed to capture the characteristic that Snowman was so known for: the look in his eye” (2011: 279-­‐280). And Letts’ book itself continues to reinscribe Snowman as the “Cinderella Horse” in its description of how the Breyer model of Snowman was packaged: The back of the box featured a picture of Harry [de Leyer] and Snowman clearing an enormous white fence, seeming to soar into the clouds. But the model itself shows Snowman galloping free, the horse who came home to Harry with no saddled and no bridle, with nothing but his heart and the force of his will. (2011: 280) 182 5.2.3 “Joey” To introduce the third equine humane mascot, I put the name of “Joey” in quotation marks to first mark this horse as a fictional character in the novella War Horse, written by Michael Morpurgo (1982). War Horse is a story about a boy, Albert, from the English countryside who befriends a horse, Joey, that his father impulsively purchases, and then follows the horse into World War I when his father sells Joey to the military. Similarly to Sewell’s Black Beauty, Morpurgo’s book is often classified for young adult readers, and both authors tell their stories through the first-person perspective of a horse. In the case of War Horse, Joey is a Thoroughbred-cross colt sold as a remount just as Great Britain enters World War I. Like the relationship between Beautiful Jim Key and Doc, Joey has a significant human other, an adolescent-turned-soldier boy, Albert, by whom he was trained and deeply bonded with. While Jim only ever had Doc as his primary other, however, Beauty’s, Snowman’s, and Joey’s stories illustrate the phenomenon of horses being passed among as many humans as demands and expectations for them. In 2007, Joey went from a main character in a book to that of a play when War Horse was adapted for the stage by the Royal National Theater of Great Britain. The play presented the story of Joey and Albert’s war-torn relationship through puppetry-depiction of the horses so masterful that audiences often remarked how they forgot they were watching puppets operated by humans (Hoppert 2011). One audience member even commented to me that people got so invested in the horse characters that they verbally protested and cried when horses were killed in battle. War Horse the play was then brought to the Lincoln Center in New York City where it won the Tony award “best play” (among five other awards) in 2011. War Horse’s success with 183 New York audiences is reminiscent of Beautiful Jim Key’s sold-out performances on Broadway at the Star Theater more than one hundred years prior (Rivas 2005:196) - as well as Snowman’s at Madison Square Garden in the 1950s. Just as Albert Rogers was attracted to Beautiful Jim Key’s performances in order to promote them for the cause of humane education, so too did War Horse’s play performances catch the eye of famous promoter of social justice entertainment, filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who remarked “this story of the last war that used the horse and abused the horse was so strong I thought it would translate wonderfully into a film with real horses” (Jacobs 2011:158). As such, in Spielberg’s film War Horse, Joey was depicted in a third and final medium: in the flesh.147 This representative transformation of Joey - from a figure of the horse (Haraway 2008) constructed of prose and imagination, to a puppet transcendent of human affect, to “a real horse” in a Hollywood film - is where I suggest we locate “Joey” as a horse symbolic enough to be constructively considered a mascot. Of all the fourteen different horses that played Joey in the film War Horse, one horse in particular, Finder’s Key, was especially noticed as he was a Thoroughbred ex-racehorse who previously “accounted for only torn-up mutuel tickets at Los Alamitos Race Course” in Orange County, California (Christine 2012: B17). Finder’s Key’s redemption story was first featured in 147 In further congruence with Ferdy and Snowman, the character “Joey” is threatened with the fate of slaughter after the war is over and horses sent over from Britain are not allowed back due to quarantine issues, and are instead put to a local auction where French butchers go to buy horses. Joey is eyed by the greediest butcher there, but the butcher is ultimately outbid by the grandfather of a little girl who fell in love with Joey while the horse was living with them as part of his war wanderings. The girl died in the war, so the grandfather was compelled to rescue Joey in memory of her life and love of this horse (and perhaps to redeem the pain of her death). In a further testament to his wanting to honor his granddaughter’s connection to the horse, he ultimately passes Joey back to AlbertL and horse and boy are finally reunited and Joey is allowed to return back to Britain now that someone can advocate for him. Like all the mascot horses, Joey too was saved and sustained by a human significant other, if not a crucial network of them, whose emotional connection could be enabled by economic investment. 184 an e-newsletter I received from Off-track Thoroughbreds.com on January 6th, 2012. The headline ran, “OTTB Finders Key lights up War Horse” and the blog emphasized the common OTTB “moral of the story” particular to the parable of Finder’s Key as “Joey”: “Not only did the little horse help tell the story of World War I and the fate of War Horses, but the one-time track failure demonstrates to the world that ex-racehorses can be winners in second careers.” Given his failure to win money as a racehorse, Finder’s Key found redemption when master horse trainer Bobby Lovgren bought him from his race trainer, Curly Ortiz, despite Ortiz’s reservations: “I have trouble even getting him to go to the track to train” (Christine 2012: B17). “I had him for approximately two or three months and really got to spend a lot of time with him,” Lovgren explained of his training success with Finder’s Key148. “He wasn’t the easiest horse to work with. But I liked his personality. He would get an expression on his face that was different than many horses, and great for close-ups” (Christine 2012: B17). Finder’s Key thus gives us a first introduction to the main “arc” of the post-racing lifespan for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses: horse races, horse fails, horse faces unknown future as “unwanted hose” with inevitable threat of slaughter, horse identified as “something special”, horse rescued, horse goes on to a second-chance life with a human significant other that understands and loves horse more than any other in the world. By exemplifying the ideal arc of an off-track-Thoroughbred’s new life entangled with the character of Joey, Finder’s Key serves like a mascot who illustrated that redemptive capital can lie dormant in such horses sometimes in the most unusual, practically cinematic ways. 148 From Off-­‐trackThoroughbreds.com, 1/6/2012. 185 Now with an understanding of the various ways horses have been used to serve as mascots for raising humane consciousness and action from post-Civil to contemporary America, I now turn back to Ferdy as a figure who knots together his own collection of people, protests, historical circumstances, moral and ethical valences. It begins first by conjuring the ghost of his father, Ferdinand. 5.3 Ferdy’s Dad, the “best racer” In the horse racing culture as I experienced it in the Bluegrass, there is enormous emphasis on how (or to what degree) great racehorses pass on their talents to their offspring – recall my discussion of Secretariat’s lineage in Chapter Three. As Rebecca Cassidy, in conjunction with the scholarship of Harriet Ritvo, helpfully explains this cultural logic and its codification through breeding registries as it appeared in her Thoroughbred racing fieldsite of Newmarket, England149: By recording thoroughbred pedigrees, breeders had created a new form of wealth; as Ritvo states, “these catalogues concretised a rather abstract component of the value of animals listed within them” (1995:421), the ability of some horses to reproduce their most valued traits in their offspring. Pedigrees thus became a means by which value was elicited from animals by their human keepers. (2002:142) Through this established cultural and historical association, we can understand how Ferdy became valuable because of his father, Ferdinand; but instead of just passing down his “most valued traits” in terms of racing prowess (which really did not happen for Ferdy, as we shall see), in the age of rescuing horses from slaughter Ferdinand also passed down the story of his 149 As Cassidy traced the shared cultural traits between Newmarket and Lexington in a subsequent book (2007), she illustrated how the belief that horses could transmit their racing prowess via biological inheritance was held by both racing communities; I also experienced this belief during my fieldwork in the Bluegrass. 186 unfortunate demise. In this next section, I will illustrate Ferdinand’s life and how he became a famed racehorse of the Bluegrass, as well as how his death came to pass in a slaughterhouse far away in Japan. 5.3.1 Ferdinand’s birth, first owners, and winning the Kentucky Derby Of Ferdinand’s embodiment of the talents of his ancestors, it was written that, “Ferdinand from the beginning had the look of a special horse. He is a big, handsome and elegant specimen, son of an English Triple Crown winner [Ninjinsky II] and foaled from the dam [Banja Luka] of five other stakes winners” (Bowen 1986:3327). Ferdinand was born in 1983 at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, one of the most famous horse farms in the world and home, of course, to Secretariat. Ferdinand was “bred by California oilman Howard Keck,” (Heller 2005:18) and was conjointly named after a children’s story of a bull named Ferdinand and a soapstone carving of a bull the Kecks brought back from travels in Africa. In particular, he “raced in Keck’s wife’s name,” which means Mrs. Keck was listed his the owner in all records of his racing career, including those that noted when he won “eight of twenty-nine starts” (ibid). One of those wins was the famed Kentucky Derby race, the importance of which I spelled out in Chapter Three through the ghostwritten voice of Secretariat. Of Ferdinand’s performance in that race, it was written that “[t]here was no need to scratch for evidence of class here” (Stone 1986: 3350). In the Thoroughbred horse racing world, I often heard people use the term “class” to not only provide a respectful compliment to a horse or human who demonstrated poise and dignity as understood by upper-class members of society from Anglo-Saxon cultural backgrounds, but also to draw a line of demarcation between those who had and those who did not have class, human or horse. 187 A racehorse is also judged by his/her human interlocutors, most notably his or her “connections - the trainer, jockey, and owner, and, to a lesser extent the grooms, exercise riders and hot walkers. In the write-up of Ferdinand’s Derby victory in The Blood-Horse, the penultimate trade magazine of Thoroughbred horse racing that has been publishing since 1916, a horse’s performance in a race is thusly accounted for through a multispecies mix of equine and human talent and agency. When I first found the article detailing Ferdinand’s Derby win in the collection of Blood-Horse magazines in the Mary J. Gallahar archives at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington, I found it haunting that the title given to the piece by Edward L. Bowen was called “One Shoe in Heaven,” knowing what fate Ferdinand succumbed to sixteen years later. Reading the article, one comes to understand that Bowen titled his report of the race as such so as to give credit to Ferdinand’s rider, Bill Shoemaker. A now-famous hall of fame jockey, it was a nickname of Shoemaker’s (“Shoe”) that inspired the title, along with the elation someone of Christian cultural background might feel (as if being “in heaven”) upon winning the most vaunted race in the world. As history would reveal, Ferdinand would also be the last horse upon which Shoe would win the Kentucky Derby. Ferdinand also gave his trainer, Charlie Whittingham his first Derby win. “This has to be a good horse, if I’m ever going to get one,” said Whittingham when asked about the horse’s potential in the Derby (Bowen 1986:3327)150. Shoemaker also observed about Whittingham’s training style: “Charlie didn’t rush him... When he [Ferdinand] ran disappointing races early, he 150 Ferdinand apparently did not run well in previous races in southern California but “matured well at Churchill Downs” during morning exercise in preparation for the Derby. All horses that run the Derby are three years’ old, and must mature quickly enough, or at least win enough races and money in order to qualify and compete for this competition. During my fieldwork, I was often told that many a two year-­‐old horse has been over-­‐raced so that it’s owner could possibly say they had a horse run in the Kentucky Derby. That is why Whittingham’s training approach to Ferdinand, as offered by Bowen’s perspective, is notable in its contrarian nature: “Whittingham rushes for no man or horse. If he [Ferdinand] developed in time, fine; if not fine” (Bowen 1986:3327). 188 didn’t put blinkers on him like a lot of people would” (Bowen 1986:3325). Many trainers - whether under pressure from impatient owners or limited financial resources, and what many of my research participants would call “good horsemanship” - will resort to myriad techniques to get horses to run more competitively. It must be re-emphasized here that Ferdinand’s Kentucky Derby victory was presented as evidencing even more class because of the dignified (if not more humane) methods Whittingham was purported to have employed. Drawing the number 1 post in the 1986 Kentucky Derby, Ferdinand had one of the most difficult starting positions on the track in that he would emerge (“break”) from the starting gate with the inside rail almost cutting into his path. As such, he was at first pinched in right out of the gate, and then dropped to last place as the crowd of horses stampeded around the dangerous first turn in the Derby. But as the horses rounded into the backstretch - the patch of track furthest away from the stands - Ferdinand “began to pick up horses on his own,” meaning he started passing horses without the jockey guiding him to, and “tracking Bold Arrangement,” which means he had picked a horse he could follow and keep pace with to pull himself up from last place (Bowen 1986:3331). But Ferdinand’s difficulties were not yet over, apparently, for as the racers turned for home he was “behind a wall of horses” (ibid). This is when Shoemaker “decided to go inside” - a risky move for many reasons: a horse must run more ground going at a diagonal instead of straight path, a horse can get pinched against other horses and the rail without room to maneuver away, and, most dangerously and tragically, a horse can clip hooves or be clipped by other horses by such dramatic movement. But such risk-taking is also the stuff of horse racing strategy and victory, and by the eighth pole - which the second-to-last pole marker before “the wire” (the finish line) - “Ferdinand had dead aim on the lead” (ibid). 189 Of this move, Bowen (1986:3335) remarked: “Despite Ferdinand’s size and relative lack of experience [neither jock or trainer] expressed surprise that he was agile and responsive enough to drop sharply to his left from the outside on a turn without interrupting momentum. Patience in the trainer was paying off.” When Ferdinand crossed the wire to win the 1986 Kentucky Derby, he was 2 1/4 lengths (one length roughly correlates to the length of one horse body) in front of Bold Arrangement.151 As I gave a sense of in Chapter Three, whenever a horse wins the Kentucky Derby, hope is sparked that they will go on to win the two subsequent races - the Preakness in Maryland and the Belmont in New York - to capture the Triple Crown. While Ferdinand did not go on to win the Triple Crown in 1986, in 1987 he won the Breeder’s Cup Classic (one of the richest races in the world) and was named horse of the year. He would retire in 1989 as the then fifth-leading earner in Thoroughbred racing with $3,777,978, in addition to his previously mentioned accolades. He then “went to stud,” that is, to breed at Claiborne Farm, commanding $30,000 per each “live cover,” as mating is referred to as in the Thoroughbred industry. When Ferdinand retired to stud after wining more than 3 million dollars, “he achieved little success as a stallion from his first crop of runners” (Paulick 2003). Despite the talent he showed in competition, Ferdinand was unable to redeem it as a breeding stallion to the degree of what was expected of him: his children proved to be unsuccessful lineage holders. When a stallion cannot perform to the expectations required of a certain horse farm (not just Claiborne alone) the usual next move is to sell him off and give him another chance to redeem his potential elsewhere. Secretariat was exceptional in that not only did his daughters go on to produce champions, he 151 For a $1 dollar bet, Ferdinand paid out $37.40 to those who wagered he would win, meaning his odds of winning going into the race were roughly 17-­‐1. 190 was just simply too important of a horse culturally to re-enter the bloodstock sales pool and was instead kept at Claiborne as much as a breeding stallion as a cultural icon for people to visit. 5.3.2 Ferdinand to Japan, and to his death “I want to get angry about what happened to him... It’s just heartless, too heartless.” Toshiharu Watanabe Groom for Ferdinand at Arrow Stud, Hokkaido, Japan When Ferdinand was retired from Claiborne stud duty in 1994, he was sold to Japanese bloodstock interests at “a time when Japanese breeding farms were aggressively pursuing American and European breeding stock” (Paulick 2003). Ferdinand went on to stand at Arrow Stud from 1995-2000 and is described as “initially popular with local breeders (he was mated with 77 mares his first year)” but then “was bred to just 10 mares in his final year at Arrow” (Bayer 2003:3920). Toshiharu Kaibazawa, Ferdinand’s groom when he went on to stand at Arrow Stud in Hokkaido, Japan, called the stallion “the gentlest horse you could imagine. He’d just come over when I called to him the pasture. And anyone could have led him with just a halter on him” (Bayer 2003:3923). And just like his son, Ferdy, did the first morning I stepped into his stall to start grooming him for the day ahead, Kaibazawa recalled how Ferdinand would “come over to me and press his head up against me. He was so sweet” (ibid). Unable to command stallion fees that justified keeping him at stud, Ferdinand was decommissioned from Arrow Stud and seemed to just disappear from the records. In July 26th, 2003, however, an article written by Barbara Bayer and printed in The Blood-Horse (the same magazine that celebrated Ferdinand’s Kentucky Derby win almost twenty year earlier) titled “Roses to Ruin” broke the story of Ferdinand’s disappearance and eventual death in a Japanese 191 slaughterhouse but one year after the horse had already been killed in 2002. It is through her reporting that we can trace not only the slippery slope that lead to Ferdinand’s death, but how it also involved the late-20th and early-21st century culture of horseracing in Japan152. Anti-horse slaughter activists in the United States and Canada call it “the slaughter pipeline,” when a horse falls into the hands of a human owner who possesses the connections and intentions to ultimately send a horse to slaughter. In the case of Ferdinand, as it is with many horses (unless they have an especially dedicated owner or fan-activist watching their every career move), it is unclear when exactly he was literally shipped to slaughter. Instead, with many of these horses, one can only follow the choice words of possible witnesses to the horse’s last days, or any paper trail that might have been created in the form of vet reports or, as in the case of Ferdinand, “records” that show he was “bred to six mares in 2001 and then two in 2002” (Paulick 2003). He apparently spent time at another farm, Goshima Farm near Niikappu, “where a former handler at Arrow Stud had seen him” (ibid). From there, as Bayer put it: “An aged, imported stallion hallway around the world from home, with no sentimental owner or breeder, no nostalgic fans to watch over him, has virtually no chance at sanctuary” (2003:3920). Instead, his fate was determined by the logic of the bloodstock market at the time, where “[t]he most important thing considered is whether the horse can make money or not” (Bayer 2003:3922), and by the subterfuge of one bloodstock agent in particular, Watanabe. As Bayer quoted one anonymous source regarding the fate of horses that 152 While it may seem at first that I am demonizing Japan’s Thoroughbred horseracing industry via Bayer’s perspective, it is important to remember the history of horse racing in Kentucky that I outline in the previous chapter, as well as to keep in mind forthcoming problematizing of horseracing in the U.S. 192 “have nowhere to go” – “When you turn a horse over to these types you’re more or less washing your hands of whatever may happen” (ibid). When Bayer inquired about Ferdinand’s status to Watanabe, he told her that he had been “given to a friend.” Then, when she pressed for more information, the story changed and Watanabe told her that Ferdinand “was gelded and I think he’s at a riding club far away from here.” When Bayer then asked Watanabe to personally see Ferdinand, the final truth came out: “Actually, he isn’t around anymore... He was disposed of late last year.” Bayer went on to write that, “In Japan, the term ‘disposed of’ is used to mean slaughtered.” The last paper trace to help confirm this was Ferdinand’s registration in Japan: it was annulled September 1st, 2002. As this paper trace faded, the value invested in horses that Cassidy and Ritvo spoke of in terms of keeping records also vanished for Ferdinand, and he soon joined the ghost herd of countless other horses that had been systematically sent to slaughter in places like Japan, as Bayer explains in her words: Unfortunately, to those well-versed in the realities beyond the glitter and glory of the racetrack, it comes as no surprise... Ferdinand’s story is the story of nearly every imported stallion in Japan at that point in time when the figures no longer weigh in his favor. In a country where racing is kept booming by the world’s highest purses and astronomical betting revenues, Ferdinand’s fate is not the exception. It is the rule. (2003:3920) 5.4 Hippophagy and its taboo While it is Bayer’s particular claim that the disposal of failed Thoroughbred stallions in Japan during Ferdinand’s era is “the rule,” what remains to be investigated here is how and why Ferdinand and other horses like him came to be (and still are) slaughtered in Japan. While an analysis of the horse culture of Japan (much less of its Thoroughbred racing industry) is beyond 193 the scope of the present work, this next section will trace a partial and select history of horsemeat consumption and the taboo that surrounds it, both as it relates to both Japanese and Western history and culture. I focus exclusively on the history of processing of horses for meat because this use of a horse’s dead body is the one that carries the deepest structural force of taboo and one that contemporary anti-horse slaughter activists are most focused on; in short, I focus on horses rendered into meat because that is where the most outrage and meaning is made when it comes to Thoroughbreds going to slaughter. Furthermore, I argue that while the consumption of horsemeat - hippophagy - has been depicted by contemporary anti-horse slaughter and consumption activists as un-American and thus an issue with “foreign” demand, an examination of the historical record demonstrates that the taboo on hippophagy in any nation, foreign or domestic in the U.S., has always been an ongoing negotiation of acceptance rather than an essential practice that defines cultural identity. The Sahlins-Harris debate over the sale and taboo of horsemeat in the U.S. in the 1970s is a good example of such negotiations on an anthropological level; even more current would be the February 2013 scare over hidden horsemeat in popular meals such as Ikea’s Swedish Meatballs. The fundamental irony over the taboo of eating horsemeat is that when one considers the long durée of horses interacting with humans on this earth, we find that horses were hunted, eaten, and their corporeal by-products resourced wherever they were found in conjunction with human communities long before domestication started. Of domestication, strong, ongoing archaeological evidence suggests that horses were first harvested for milk in addition to the meat they could provide human communities (Outram et al. 2010:1332). While it is beyond the scope of the present work to analyze early horse cultures of the world, it is useful to note that particularly amongst Eurasian steppe cultures, horses were both worshipped, sacrificed, and 194 eaten - thus giving us a sense that revering horses while also eating them is not a cultural contradiction and blasphemous social practice of universal value (cf. Hiroki 2003). But, in the cultural worlds that Thoroughbreds inhabit – North America, Europe, and Japan – the contradiction is nonetheless great between horse as mount and horse as meat. This next section will elucidate why and how. 5.4.1 Japan: from uchi to sakura If we look to the historic practice of hippophagy in Japan, a 675 CE decree prohibiting the consumption of horsemeat from late spring to early autumn demonstrates how hippophagy (along with the consumption of cattle, dog and monkey) was a “purely ritual practice” of the nobility (Cwiertka 2006:24). Concerned by how these ritual meats were spreading “into the sphere of private enjoyment among the peasantry” and “motivated by a fear of a decline in the already sparse number of animals” (ibid), we can see how ritual foods were banned during select times of the year so as to maintain both human social order and nonhuman animal food sources. It was not until Buddhism and its tenants of nonviolence took hold in Japan that the issue of the necessary bloodshed created by animal butchering was raised (Cwiertka 2006:27), thus indicating a first, tentative example from Japan of how animal slaughter was perceived inhumane for the sake of the animals. But as Katarzyna Joanna Cweirtka goes on to point out in her book, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, by the 17th and 18th century, it was not so much a fundamental concern for humane treatment of animals as it was a maintenance of household honor - uchi - that motivated Japanese prohibition of hippophagy. As explained by Cweirtka, uchi (indicating the meaning of “inside” and “private domain”) 195 “represented a moral attachment to, and responsibility for, members of one’s household, including the animals” (ibid). As we can already see, horses, whether edible or edified, serve as symbolic modalities for the Japanese to maintain the social and environmental orders they saw culturally appropriate at the time. As such, the inappropriateness of horse slaughter as set forth by the moral principles of Buddhism and uchi began to historically shift again as trade with Western nations started to grown in the 19th century. “As the volume of international trade increased,” Cweirtka explains, “the number of Japanese who socialized with Western traders rose and with it the opportunities for them to taste Western [meat]” (2006:31). The urban elite especially favored meat because they associated meat eating with producing the physical and political power commanded by Westerners. The Meji government also perceived meat eating as a “significant source of intellectual and moral capacity” (Cweirtka 2006:33) and went on to establish a domestic beef cattle industry in Japan. If in one era that Buddhist proscription of meat eating was seen as “barbaric superstition,” the so-called civilized meat-eating nations of the West were seen as scientifically enlightened and socially progressed in the colonial era (ibid). Beef was the preferred meat of choice, leading to the creation of a domestic cattle industry. Horsemeat, however, did not catch on as such, but rather remained as a delicacy whose history of taboo was not as easily surpassed. Cweirtka suggests that for meats that remained slightly tabooed, euphemisms were created to mask their impact; horsemeat thus came to be referred to as sakura, or cherry blossom (2004: 25). At this point, an important nuance must be addressed. While the main assumption is that Ferdinand was slaughtered for human consumption, it is more likely that his body became food for animals (dogs or those in zoos) and rendered for additional by-products (for example, horse hair is often used for paintbrushes and 196 the bows used to play stringed instruments) as the preferred horses for sakura delicacies are draft horses like Belgiums. Nonetheless, because horse processing plants exist in Japan, along with the custom to send horses to slaughter once their use is no longer apparent, such circumstances created the conditions for horses like Ferdinand to go to slaughter. Additional historical circumstances also created the possibility for Thoroughbred racehorses in particular to go to slaughter, such as the importation of racing by western colonial interests. As the current-day Japan Association for International Racing and Stud Book (JAIRS) cites, “modern horseracing in Japan had its beginnings in racing events that were organized by foreign residents of Yokohama in 1862” (2011: 4). JAIRS’ history then picks up again after World War II when local and national racing associations were established to regulate finances, breeding, licensing, standardize facilities and employment, and support the “promotion of equestrian culture” in Japan (ibid). In 1981, the Japan Cup, Japan’s richest race, was established and, according to JAIRS “resulted in the breeding industry setting a goal for producing faster and stronger horses that could hold their own worldwide” (2011: 7). Here we can also glimpse at the origins of foreign Thoroughbred bloodstock importation that eventually brought Ferdinand to Japan: “This approach was to aim at a steady improvement of the Japanese-bred horses through the introduction of superior stallions and broodmares from overseas” (ibid). Concurrent to this time, a “Statistical Study of the Horse Industry in Japan” cites that hippophagy was most popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but had started declining in the 1990s, with “meat horses” making up 9.2% of the horse population as compared to 57.3% being “light horses” such as Thoroughbred racehorses (2000). Interestingly, the 2000 statistical study notes that even though hippophagy had decreased from the “early 90s,” domestic production of meat horses had “increased (4.6% in 1980, 28.1% in 1999).” Also of interest in the JAIRS 2011 self- 197 report, it is noted that: “A welfare program that enables champion horses to live out the final years of their lives in ease after completing stud/broodmare service following the completion of an active career was established by the Japan Bloodhorse Breeders’Association since 1973” (39, cf. Bayer 2003:3920). The report then goes on to note “The Bloodhorse Training Center also started a subsidized program from 1996 to place famous retired horses at privately owned farms for public viewing” (ibid). It seems, however, that such efforts are an exception in an industry where, to quote Tetsumi Tanaka, a struggling horse breeder interviewed by Bayer, “Japanese horsemen always think about money. Racing is not thought of as part of the culture. No matter how famous a horse was or what kind of record it had in America, unfortunately there are a lot of people who, when they don’t need the horse anymore, will just get rid of it without a second thought” (2003:3922). When Ferdinand thus became a registered stallion in Japan in the 1990s, such was the new kind of world he had stepped into - and to which would eventually succumb. Given this introduction, growth and acceptance of meat eating in Japan, I will now turn to the larger context of Western colonialism, nationalism, and the conceptual interbraiding of “civilization” and “taste.” How meat eating took hold in Japan can be further understood through consideration of how meat eating was concurrently re-conceptualized and enculturated in the so-called West (for the purpose of my analysis represented here by France, Britain, and the U.S.). Just as meat eating made in-roads in Japan along certain spatialized lines of class and culture, it cannot be overstated enough that meat eating was also undergoing such negotiations in Europe and North America. By now looking at the history of hippophagy in the West we can understand not only how meat came to be associated with the concepts of civilization, science, 198 rationality and progress, but also what a tenuous and debated role horsemeat in particular played, and still plays in European and Japanese cuisine and culture. 5.4.2 “The West” Hippophagy has always been practiced in “the West” (cf. Carrier 1992); it is the acceptance of this practice, its historical trends and fluctuations, which concerns us here. While horses were initially domesticated for food, their subsequent use for transportation, war, labor, entertainment, and enlightenment led to myriad reconceptualizations of what horses meant (and still mean) to particular human societies. Simoons has argued that “the rise of Christianity endowed the horse with a quasi-holiness which made its consumption taboo,” while Douglas and Sahlins argue that “the consumption of horsemeat in America became unacceptable because of the ‘relation of the species to human society,’ which makes the horse a subject” (Otter 2011:80). As such, when cultural anxieties surrounding hippophagy “began to appear in ancient times” in near Eastern cultures - including Greek and Roman - (Otter 2011:81), I would further suggest that this historic change might have had as much to do with Biblical injunction and cosmological moral exigencies toward sacralized animals as it did with politically differentiating one cultural group from another through marked practice. Evidence for the cultural and political distinction hippophagy taboo can create is further seen when we consider “Pope Gregory III’s oft-cited ban on horsemeat” in 732 CE (Otter 2011: 81). In addition to signaling one of the first of many attempts to legalize the taboo of hippophagy (and as I will argue later on, the taboo of horse slaughter itself) in the West, Pope Gregory III’s decree was another example of effective social distinction: defining true Christian believers - and Papal followers - from perceived paganist worshippers as exemplified in 199 Germanic and Scandinavian cultural areas of 8th century Europe. Thus, “the idea that horsemeat was somehow un-Christian or uncivilized persisted” and hippophagy “became either an enduring sign of barbarism, or a taboo to be rationally transcended” (Otter 2011 citing Simoons [1994]:81). In addition to its barbaric cultural associations, hippophagy also came to be associated with famine and poverty when during the Medieval era communities resorted to eating horses, forming “a durable connection between horsemeat and deprivation” (Otter 2011: 81). (As we will see, this connection with human desperation and perceived depravity would go on to periodically haunt subsequent attempts to re-instate horsemeat as a viable food source.) Furthermore, the social perception of horses as food sources also began to diminish as “new technologies (collar, harnesses, horseshoes, saddles) made it a central source of energy, not food, for the medieval economy” (ibid). Otter also suggests that the changing morphology and physicality of horses also distanced them from dinner as the centuries went by in Europe. In addition to the “basic biological attributes of the horse, its speed and power,” by the early modern period horses had been bred to develop “heavy, powerful front and shoulders [and a] lean body” (ibid). Horses were still edible (and still eaten by select social groups from Britain to Germany), but due to the myriad re-conceptualizations - from symbolic to genetic - that horses had undergone since Pope Gregory III’s ban, a historically-developed and culturally-determined revulsion toward horsemeat was almost hegemonic. Almost. 5.4.2.1 France and Britain: A debated, nationalist taste for horsemeat At this point I will go on to consider how France became known for its culture of hippophagy despite the hegemony of taboo, and how France’s embrace of hippophagy led Britain, and 200 subsequently the U.S., to define itself as non-horse eating nations. I will then consider the economic paradox that haunts so-called non-hippophagic cultures as I examine the history, in Britain, and ongoing practice, in the U.S., of horse slaughter and meat exportation. By the time I complete this timeline of horsemeat taboo, I will return to the origin story of Ferdinand’s death in a Japanese slaughterhouse and examine the discourse that surrounds his death (and its implications for other Thoroughbred racehorses) as proffered by contemporary anti- and pro-horse slaughter activists alike. In this discourse analysis, we will not only see a reiteration of ethnocentrism and nationalism when it comes to the taboo of hippophagy, we will see the emergence of new emphases on old issues as it pertains to the danger of consumption and pollution of slaughter. All this, to understand how it is implicated in the embodiment of Ferdy as a mascot. Horsemeat was legalized in France in 1866, and its resurgence was promoted by key members of French society: respected scientists and veterinarians, gourmands and specialty butchers, and journalists that appealed to (and helped construct) the tastes of upper and working classes alike (Otter 2011:81). Of the effectiveness of this promotion, Otter explains, “relatively tight links between scientific expertise, butchery, and popular taste allow hippophagy economic and cultural momentum in France, meaning that the taboo on horsemeat was partially shattered” (ibid; emphasis mine). This partial shattering of the horsemeat taboo was additionally accomplished through appeal to gendered concepts of progress, nationalism and civilization: “meat-eating was closely linked to ideas of masculinity, national greatness and progress, and failure to increase the meat supply was regarded by many as tantamount to socio-cultural regression” (Otter 2011:80; Weil 2010:50). 201 But why were horses reconceptualized as viable meat sources for this burgeoning perspective and practice? As Otter explains: At a historical juncture when French scientists153 were responsible for reconceptualizing chemistry and the human body, it was perhaps logical that they would also seek to attacked what they perceived to be irrationalities in the French diet. The British ate more beef, and were more labor productive; so France thought its workers should eat more meat, and scientists set out to argue that beef and horsemeat weren’t so different. (82) As French consumers adopted the practice of hippophagy and simultaneously partially diminished its taboo (although there were French detractors who still saw horsemeat as un-civilized and its promotion by scientists as politicking), over in Britain hippophagy experienced a reverse trend. Unlike in France, horsemeat had actually not been illegal in Britain and was “sold openly” as food for humans, dogs and cats (Otter 2011:83). What began to turn Britons’ stomachs regarding hippophagy, however, were concerns over horsemeat substituting for beef as British demand for meat grew exponentially in the 19th century. Turned off by the subterfuge, Britons also disliked the taste - both social and palatable - that accompanied horsemeat: it “was intended, like brown bread, to be food for the poor. Beef, like white bread, was a higher status food” (Otter 2011:84). With higher status consumers insulted by the secret substitution, “the 153 Of those scientists, Isidore Geoffrey Saint-­‐Hillaire, argued, “is it not absurd to lose, each month, in all of France, millions of kilos of good meat while all over France, there are millions of men who lack meat?” (Otter: 82) Supported by the growing social capital of science, specialty butchers for horses (hippophagists) formed their own labor unions and by 1868 Paris had 23 abattoirs, or horse butcher shops (Otter: 83). In terms of appealing to variable class tastes, “journalists also helped make horsemeat less taboo; and working classes were persuaded to eat more as cost effective and healthy,” while horsemeat came to appeal to the bourgeoisie as “its taste improved and priced rose” by the 1930s as “the horse’s reduced working like made its flesh more tender” (ibid). Rational dietitians also threw in their support for hippophagy, claiming that horsemeat cured tuberculosis, a possibility that also appealed across class lines and became “vital to the triumph of horsemeat in France” (ibid). Even efforts to appeal to the humane treatment of horses became part of the rise of French hippophagy as Saint-­‐Hillaire also argued that it was a “moral act to slaughter and eat old animals, rather to allow them to suffer in their old age” (Otter: 82). As I will discuss later in this thesis, proclaiming slaughter to be a humane alternative for old and sick horses would be echoed a century and a half later by the American Association of Equine Practitioners. 202 poor” also (were) revolted: “the privileged and wealthy classes are to have a monopoloy of beef and mutton, and the poor, politically excommunicated working man is to content himself with the flesh of the horse - which, by an unpardonable perversion of language, is proposed to call ‘horse beef’” (Otter 2011:85). As argued by Otter, Britain did not have the finesse of scientists, journalists, or cuisine to make horse “beef” as appealing across classes as it became in France. Otter also points out the nationalist and ethnocentric dimensions of Britain’s rejection of hippophagy with journalists berating the “foreign kickshaws, frogs and snails in fricasses, or sea slug, or bird’s nest soup, or horse flesh steak” (2011:86)154. In an era where there always seemed to be a race to distinguish one colonial power over the other in terms of social Darwinist notions of “civilization,” hippophagy - already with a deep historical association of barbarity, famine and poverty - was a culturally-relevant way for the British to define themselves against “‘foreign’ cultures and cuisine” (Otter 2011:80). Post-colonial yet still more ontologically British than French in many cultural customs, the U.S. ideologically followed in suit, and as such “not consuming horsemeat became a marker of Anglo-American dietary self-consciousness” (ibid). Yet even as Britain and the U.S. defined themselves in opposition to France when it came to consumption of horsemeat, the slaughter of horses for their meat and other corporeal by-products was not as tabooed given the economic benefits to be reaped by servicing “foreign populations” both internal and external to nation-state boundaries who had a taste and demand for horsemeat (Otter 2011: 86). In Britain, what began as specialty shops opened by Belgians in cities such as Glasgow to sell meat to “their fellow refugees,” by 1906 became “a significant 154 This vitriolic rhetoric is akin to the “Freedom Fries” movement experienced in the U.S. when France failed to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 203 horse export trade” where “over 50,000 horses were being shipped to Belgium and the Netherlands for slaughter” while some 10,000 horses were slaughtered within Britain “for overseas export” (ibid). While during World War I and II attempts were made to market and sell horsemeat domestically at times of rationing, “horsemeat never shed its taboo” and never caught on as horse beef for Britons (ibid). 5.4.3.2 North America / U.S.A.: inheriting the tension of “good to eat” vs. taboo In North America, the history of taboo concerning horsemeat and slaughter begins with 17th century colonial settlement. Horses were first brought over to “the New World” in ships, and then breeding farms were established later on to build domestic stock. As Cassidy observes, “The first equine colonists arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1610 only to be eaten that winter” (2007:12). Here again, we see hippophagy as a marked practice only in the context of famine-like conditions. The horses brought over to replenish the stock were a combination of many breeds favored by each Old World country, including Spanish horses of Arabian extract that would become the highly debated wild horse bands of the eastern seaboard and American West, as well as English Thoroughbreds. Other horses became specific American breeds: Morgan, Saddlebred, Quarter Horse (cf. Denhardt 1947). Native Americans saw the horses as sacred deer (cf. Anderson 2004), and some tribes did not prohibit the consumption of horsemeat while others did (cf. Gywnne 2010). Similar to how Britain distinguished itself from its colonial rival, France, along culinary lines that corresponded with the then-coveted qualities of civilization, science, and rationality, so too did the U.S. and Anglo-cultural regions of Canada also define their national character in contradistinction. Yet, as in Britain, just because the horse was tabooed as a domestic source of 204 food did not mean that the U.S. tabooed the slaughter and sale of horses for other markets. In her book, Mustang: Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, Deanne Stillman (2008) profiles the historical rise of mustang slaughter in U.S. western states like Nevada, Montana - with corollaries in the western states of Canada. While domestic horses in North America and Europe alike were conscripted by the hundreds of thousands for colonial wars in the 19th century, so too were mustangs hunted down by “cowboys” looking to make good money off of catching and selling these horses to war efforts overseas. Horses were needed not only as military remounts, but also as cheap sources of food (human and pet), fertilizer, or glue should the needs and/or demands arise (Stillman 2008: 237-238). Mustangs were plundered not only because they were seen as otherwise-idle resources needed by “man,” but also because of the perspective that mustangs were “foes” of sheep and cattlemen who would prefer the highly exploitable land of the American west to be utilized only for their purpose-bred food capital animals (Stillman 2008: 238). A quote from a grazing service spokesperson in 1939 illustrates this point: “A wild horse consumes forage needed by domestic livestock, brings in no return, and serves no useful purpose” (Stillman 2008: 245). Stillman describes that a “Hydra-headed horseflesh industry” thus arose from the mustang round-ups of the 19th and early 20th centuries (2008: 239). The first major horse processing plant was established in Rockford, Illinois, in 1923 (by Englishmen brothers, nonetheless) and then in Montana in 1925. The business of hunting mustangs and selling them specifically for overseas consumption - either by humans or for pet food - coined such journalistic euphemisms as “The wild horse returns to Europe in a tin can,” and “from cow pony to cauldron” (Stillman 2008: 240). When the supplies of wild horses began to dwindle, suppliers either relocated to horse-hegemonic nations like Argentina or turned to domestic horses 205 (Stillman 2008: 243). Horses that grew old and sick and thus unused were commissioned to slaughter; but also when breeding output began to exceed demand for horses either for transport, labor, or hobby needs, excess (or stolen) domestic horses were also commissioned for their final redemptive capital as meat and corporeal by-product. All this horse processing took place before the “benefits of automation” - referring to the machine-driven dis-assembly line that powers today’s horse slaughter process (Stillman 2008: 243). This so-called Hydra-headed horseflesh industry was not without its detractors - from organized protests to individual acts of arson (Stillman 2008: 242-243) - but it is the story of Velma “Wild Horse Annie” Johnson that helps us understand two crucial precursors to today’s anti-horse slaughter activism: (1) the successful legislation on a federal government level of protecting horses within U.S. nation-state borders from cruelty (as exemplified by slaughter), and (2) the preponderance of anti-horse slaughter activists as white females who have a great affinity for nonhuman animals and the injustice they bear at the brunt of human society. Having grown up in a ranching family that had a particularly specific reason for respecting horses (Stillman 2008: 246-248), Wild Horse Annie became an activist for wild horses when one day in 1950 she “saw blood spilling out of a truck and followed it to a slaughterhouse outside Reno” (Stillman 2008: 245). Her efforts endangered her life, but ultimately led to the creation of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, signed into law by then-president Richard Nixon in 1971 (Stillman 2008: 245). 5.5 Being Anti-Slaughter 5.5.1 The figure of Ferdinand “The uproar that followed the story, saying Ferdinand almost 206 certainly had been slaughtered, immediately caused a backlash in Japan, though not a public one. When American fans directed their anger and grief at the Japan Racing Association, I was called to the block and told to explain my motives. What else could I say but, in effect, ‘I mean you no harm but, well, the emperor has no clothes!’” (Bayer 2003) This quote is taken from a follow-up article, “The Search for Ferdinand” that Barbara Bayer wrote after she had broken the news of Ferdinand’s so-called “disposal.” While racing fans “directed their anger and grief at the Japan Racing Association,” Thoroughbred farms in North America, including Claiborne, would put clauses in their purchase agreements with overseas farms for stallions and broodmares to be returned once their breeding days were over (Shulman 2003). Ferdinand’s death, however, also resonated with the historical outrage I previously outlined regarding horsemeat taboo in the U.S. - except this time, I would argue, the abomination is as much over the slaughter as the consumption of horses. As such, animal rights and anti-horse slaughter activists became incensed over Ferdinand’s death, and cast it as another instance of how horse racing was a cruel, inhumane practice. For example, the below quote is an excerpt from the webpage “Slaughterhouses: Where Racehorses Go to Retire” (it also has an accompanying video) as published by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)’s Asia-Pacific branch: Racehorses are exploited as disposable commodities...Tens of thousands of foals are produced each year for the greedy racing industry, but there is no plan for what to do with them when their racing days are over. Even horseracing stars can end up in a slaughterhouse. Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand was sold to a Japanese breeder, and a few years later, when they were done with him, he was sold to slaughter.155 155 http://action.petaasiapacific.com/ea-­‐campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=110&ea.campaign.id=3378 207 After Ferdinand’s death, anti-horse slaughter activists launched the campaign to end horse slaughter within U.S. borders that culminated in the 2007 ban. It began in 2005, when the U.S. Senate “passed a funding limitation amendment to ban horse slaughter” (HSUS “Fact Sheet” 2011), which meant the ban was made effective by taking away the money to conduct USDA inspections on horse slaughter plants. Without USDA inspections, slaughter plants in states Illinois and Texas could not legally process and sell horsemeat and eventually closed up. In 2006, the House of Representatives passed a “permanent bad on horse slaughter” but did not get the required approval by the Senate in 2006 or 2007 (ibid). Attempts were then made to curtail slaughter at the state level. In 2007, a Texas state law from 1949 was legally determined that it “outlawed horse slaughter for human consumption,” and the Supreme Court denied petitions submitted by the affected horse slaughter plants (ibid). In September 2007 the “U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the state of Illinois decision to ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption,” not only “shutting down the last of the plants located on U.S. soil” (ibid), but tentatively156 concluding the U.S. practice of industrialized horse slaughter in the state from which it had originated. During my fieldwork157, Senate Bill 1176 had just been introduced on June 9th, 2011 by Senators Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisianna, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican from 156 I write “tentatively” because toward the end of my fieldwork, the legal status of horse slaughter in the U.S. shifted significantly. Toward the conclusion of my fieldwork, I opened up the newspaper one November morning and read the news that President Obama had signed an an agricultural appropriations spending bill that ended the funding ban on USDA inspections of horse slaughter plants. With the advent of this event, and after thoroughly analyzing the anti-­‐horse slaughter perspective, I would like to revisit the perspective of those who support horse slaughter, especially within U.S. borders. 157 I got a deeper sense of the drafting and lobbying of this legislation when during my fieldwork in September 2011, I attended the International Equine Conference in Alexandria, Virginia. My road trip from the Bluegrass to the edge of the Washington, D.C. Beltway took me through the coal-­‐belt regions of Appalachian Kentucky and then 208 South Carolina, “to prohibit the slaughter of horses for human consumption and their transport for that purpose” (HSUS “Fact Sheet” 2011). While I will examine the issue of transport in Chapter Six, what is meaningful about S.1176 is that it is a revivification of the taboo of hippophagy with a contemporary twist: the revulsion and abomination of industrialized animal slaughter. From grisly undercover videos and reports on the nature of horse slaughter in Canada and Mexico, to very disturbing illegal horse slaughter (for meat and sacrifice) farms in Florida, what is clear to anti-horse slaughter activists is the outrage they feel concerning the inhumane treatment of horses once they were identified for slaughter. It was not just the fragmentation of a horse’s physical body that perturbs them, but the disintegration of their social bodies and all that they stand for. 5.5.2 The paradox of sentience Recall that in the western history of hippophagy I previously covered, both Mary Douglas and Marshal Sahlins argued that horsemeat was primarily regarded as taboo because of the subjectivity ascribed to the horse. This subjectivity, and the empathy it required and engendered, is said to have not only come from religious inscription, but also through socially meaningful recognition of the horse as it helped foment human civilization: from charging in military battle, West Virginia, then the rolling hills of the aristocratic horse farmlands of Virginia. When I finally took my seat in the small conference room on day one of the IEC conference, I was struck by the conversations around me. Everyone knew everyone else; and in particular, a group of young women behind me kept going on and on about someone named “Sue Wallis,” and not in the most favorable light at all. I will explain why shortly. After the first presentation, I realized that I had inadvertently, but most insightfully for my research, signed up to attend not a conference where I was one of hundreds, but a newcomer to an intimate community gathering of the most prominent anti-­‐horse slaughter activists in North America. They had all gathered not just to share their latest research and campaign efforts -­‐ from tests detecting toxic levels of phenylbutazone (aka “Bute” -­‐ the equivalent of horse aspirin) in slaughtered racehorse meat going to market in Europe, to “saving” the wild horses of North Carolina’s Outer Banks from summer home developments -­‐ but to gather their efforts to lobby Congress for the passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. 209 to transporting communities, to acting as the first industrialized machine – to say the very least. Of course, this recognition of horse power and socio-cultural contribution was not without its nuances across class, gender, and nationalistic lines - and the Thoroughbred, particularly the English Thoroughbred, always figured as the most vaunted and thoroughly-human bred of horse breeds (Cassidy 2002, 2007). But, to give horses such vaunted lives and meaning above other livestock, to categorically insist on their exceptionality, and then subject them to the process of slaughter when it was associated with so much cultural pollution (much less go on to consume horses in a taboo reminiscent of cannibalism) - this paradox of sentience, I argue, is what had anti-hippophagists of the past, and what has anti-horse slaughter activists of today, so incensed to the point of governmental legal action. Furthermore, the paradox of sentience can carry implicit ethnocentric and xenophobic assumptions about those who transgress the sacred sentience of horses by consuming them. This sample discourse from the Animal Welfare Institute’s brochure “Horse Slaughter” under a section titled “Betraying Our Equine Ally”: demonstrates that the ethnocentric interpretation of hippophagy continues to be reinscribed today.158 158 However, efforts are being made to reach across nationalistic lines by organizations such as Animals’ Angels. Here is a sample of their discourse as they explain the impact “undercover video footage aired on three major news programs” had for “Belgian and Dutch consumers”: Horsemeat is commonly available in Belgium and the Netherlands where consumers are almost completely unaware of the cruelties of horse slaughter. Most believe what suppliers claim on their websites, that the meat on their dinner plate comes from contented, grass-­‐eating, healthy horses. The story begins by asking, “Do they [consumers] really know where it comes from?” Animals’ Angels goes on to claim that “consumers responding on television websites demanded action” while “supermarkets responded with promises to investigate,” meat producers “issued a response denying any wrongdoing,” and the European Commission received “an official complaint” from Animals’ Angels after a meeting in November 2009. 210 In the United States, horses have never been raised for human consumption, yet for decades, our horses have been bought and slaughtered by a predatory, foreign-owned industry for sale to high-end diners in Europe and Asia... Tens of thousands [of horses] are shipped to Mexico and Canada annually, where they are killed under barbaric conditions so their meat can continue to satisfy the palates of overseas diners in countries such as Italy, France, Belgium and Japan. 5.5.3 Re-tabooing What is perhaps most striking about the transnational nature of the horse slaughter and meat industry and protests are the attempts to re-taboo hippophagy using concerns of the era. While much outcry has been raised historically - and as I demonstrated, contemporarily - concerned the paradox of equine sentience, many activists believe that the only way to bring an end to slaughtering “America’s horses” is through appeal to public health concerns. That is to say, if “overseas diners” cannot be turned off from horse meat through appeal to the so-called cruel and barbaric conditions of horse slaughter in source countries like Canada and Mexico, then perhaps they will do so through the most compelling evidence of all: scientific documentation that horsemeat contains levels of medication and chemicals toxic for human consumption. Particularly targeted was the drug phenylbutazone, or “Bute,” a painkiller that is administered to horses as commonly as Aspirin or Ibuprophen would be to humans, because studies have shown it to be carcinogenic to humans (and if administered too much to horses, it can cause ulcers). Here again, we see science employed for its power of justification - only this time, to prove what a health risk horsemeat actually was. During my fieldwork era, it was hoped that S. 1176 could be passed not only if voting senators were compelled to accept the evidence of toxic meat, but if foreign consumers stopped demanding horsemeat based on the taboo of toxicity, thereby putting the industry of suppliers out of business. 211 5.6 Ferdinand’s Legacy: Ferdinand’s Star After building up so much symbolic, historical, and political weight, it is now time to return to Ferdy and see how burdened he is with it all. The vehicle for ascertaining this takes a narrative turn away from the heavily discursive knot I have just tied between Ferdinand’s racing and breeding life and death by slaughter, and into my intra-active (Barad 2003, 2007) fieldwork experience with him. As Maurstad, Davis, and Cowles (2013) usefully explain the approach I mean: “every ontological unit is a phenomenon, becoming through actions and events taking place in contexts where objects are entangled with humans and various other measuring agencies. Thus, the concept ‘intra-acting’ speaks better for focusing on how parties meet and change as a result from their meeting, as opposed to ‘interacting’, which refers to parties meeting and leaving each other unchanged” (323). From what I could deduce from Ferdy’s “Baby Book” and files at MMSC (the Baby Book contains all the records of horses managed and trained by MMSC, while the files are TRF’s intake records) his dam was Rose and Betty, an Ohio-based horse that was most likely trailered to Claiborne farm and impregnated by Ferdinand there before brought back to the farm where she would give birth to the chestnut colt that would come to be known as Ferdinand’s Star / Ferdy. Given that Ferdy was born in March 1995, he is one of the last crops of foals from Ferdinand before he went to Arrow Stud in Japan starting in 1995. Thus, in addition to representing his father’s fate - and a reversal of it through “good” retirement choices by his post-racing owners - Ferdy is also fleshy evidence of how Ferdinand failed to redeem his racing capital into breeding and bloodline capital. 212 This colt would go on to be sold at the Breeding Stock Sale at Keeneland in Lexington for a mere $8,000, further indicating how depreciated Ferdinand’s redemptive capital as a breeding stallion had become by then. The colt would win his first and only race as Ferdinand’s Star at River Downs Track in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 14th, 1998. It was the kind of race especially designed for horses that had not yet won - a “maiden” race - and could be “claimed” (bought) by a new owner for up to $5,000. The purse was but $5,600, compared to the Kentucky Derby, which paid out $1,000,000 in 1998 when Real Quiet won. 5.6.1 Intra-acting as a school horse It is not without irony that Ferdy, like his father, was tried as a school horse after his lackluster racing career (no mention if he was ever tried at stud, and I only ever knew of him as a gelding). But unlike Ferdinand, when Ferdy expressed great reluctance in the ring, he was not identified for “disposal” in terms of slaughter. If anything, the director of MMSC just found more illustrative ways by which to contextualize Ferdy’s quirks, such as describing him as “Sherlock Holmes on opium.” Rather, Ferdy was marked for life, quite literally: made so visible as a mascot, he was to be kept alive no matter how poorly he performed on track or in the ring because he was part of the new generation of Thoroughbreds that would not be sent to slaughter, guarded by organizational movements such as the TRF to disrupt and shame the previous practice and mindset to which Ferdinand had succumbed. And yet, Ferdy was not a flawless vehicle for all that he represented, and the breakdown in meaning and message could be read through his body and his “behavior” (which I take to be a concept that moves beyond assumptions of “animal instinct” or the animal-as-automaton [Ingold 2000]). While not characteristically fractious as many Thoroughbred racehorses and thus 213 OTTBs are described to be, Ferdy was also not exactly the kind of horse that “would stand on the cross ties for hours if you would just brush him!” - as his informational flyer proclaimed. Rather, Ferdy had no problem “testing boundaries” with less-assured riders and handlers (myself included), as when I witnessed his first reprimand - a smack on the chest to “respect my space!” from the director of MMSC - when he refused to be placed in the cross-ties in the wash stall by an intern handling him only by the halter. Ferdy’s outspoken moments, however, were quite tempered when his leg injuries acted up: a hoof abscess one week, arthritis from chip fractures in his right front and hind fetlocks the next. Just about every OTTB I encountered during my fieldwork had lingering injuries to the point where I saw how they became a part of how redemptive capital for these horses was negotiated in response. Some people would adopt horses knowing they had injuries because they were they “type” of horseperson who enjoyed healing horses others might pass up. Many more were looking for horses that did not come with the usual injuries and quirks OTTBs were rumored to have. At one point, the director of MMSC - who claimed she could see and feel animal auras since she was a little girl - guided an intern and me to attempt to feel the energy vibrations of Ferdy. We hovered our outstretched hands about one inch above Ferdy’s body and ran them all over him, clearing our minds of analytical thought and just “feeling for” any injuries or other points of intense energetic sensing. Mostly clueless but trying to be sincere, I thought I sensed something in Ferdy’s right shoulder close to the withers. Then he promptly curled his right leg up into an extended bow. Until my equestrian skills started improving about four months into my fieldwork, I interacted with Ferdy the most because he was the school horse and that was where my level of equestrianism was at when I entered the field. In addition to always starting with Ferdy in the 214 morning when I helped with the rounds of grooming horses for the day, I also rode him a few times. The first time was part of a lesson with the MMSC trainer, Lara, (to be properly introduced in the next chapter), and I had not ridden “English” (as I grew up calling it, but the more appropriate term is perhaps “hunt seat”) in any serious way since I was twelve and had retrained one of my mom’s racing and rodeo Quarter Horses for Dressage competition. The lesson was one of great humility for me, and, judging from his behavior and bodily expressions, great annoyance to Ferdy. I had never ridden a Thoroughbred ex-racehorse before, and my new field boots were as stiff and slick as, well, new leather. Everything was clumsy: from tacking up (my saddle and bit were thoroughly readjusted), to my insistence that I do some groundwork with Ferdy before I climbed on his back (he eyeballed me and shied away as I insisted on trotting alongside him instead of sitting in the saddle already on his back and do it), to the entire lesson itself. My right foot continuously slipped out of the stirrup iron and Ferdy alternatively flicked his tail in agitation, charged in a mis-cue, or stopped moving altogether whenever I grappled to get my foot back in while holding fast to my seat and reins lest I look completely helpless and hopeless. Lara gave me a plethora of things to think about in the short 45-minute lesson, which afterwards I diagrammed from the perspective of horse and rider co-physicality and frustration. When I finally dismounted Ferdy, my legs wobbled from the effort of pushing him around the ring. He certainly did no jumping or showing off under my tutelage, but was very happy to be returned to the barn for grooming in cross-ties, and easily bowed from both legs for two cookies that day. 215 5.6.2 Trot sets in the Back 40 I did not realize it at the time, but during my fieldwork at MMSC, I was seeing the last days of Ferdy as a school horse and mascot. While I will explain how he was eventually re-redeemed in the TRF program in Chapter Eight, what I wish to express here is how paradoxical his demise was in terms of his own subjectivity and experience of the world. If Ferdy was phlegmatic in the ring, he was almost fractious, in the quintessential Thoroughbred racehorse way that so many of my research participants described, when I took him out on a hack one early March day. We joined three interns - one young woman from a local high school and two in the equine studies program at the University of Kentucky - and their project horses Victor, Freddy, and Jack, as Figure 10: The diagram drawn after my lesson on (intra-acting with) Ferdy (by TVS McKee) 216 they set out to do trot sets as part of the “Horse-Centered Reschooling Program” trademarked and conducted by MMSC. As we made our way out to the “Back 40” of MMSC, the interns alternatively giggled and shared stories from their weekends while talking to their horses when they got unnerved or, even more poignantly, they talked for their horses when they wanted to express something from the horse’s point of view: “Victor is being such a brat today,” “If Freddy had a song, it would be ‘Take It Easy’ by the Eagles,” or “Jack is not happy with me today, look at him flick his tail!” MMSC’s Back 40 was a ring of grass around a large paddock field alternatively bordered by trees, brush, a pond and a creek. At this time of year, the grass was “greened up” and dotted with vivid yellow daffodil blooms, while robins had started singing the rise of the sun and mourning doves cooed their full, fluting song in branches beginning to redden. The Back 40 was a good place to start de-sensitizing horses to the unexpected occurrences of “nature” - in this case, of a world not wholly regulated by human intention as tracks and training barns are. As many adopters of OTTBs are looking for horses they can ride beyond the ring, either for a leisurely trail ride (known as a “hack”) or adventurous fox hunt, taking MMSC horses-in-training out to the Back 40 or further afield on the grounds of the KHP was not just part of the re-schooling process, but further imbued them with redemptive capital as they gained the confidence and skills to manage life beyond controlled riding settings.159 Thus, while a bubbling creek could send one horse into a panic - side-stepping, snorting or, worse yet, whirling and bolting (and almost always with a rider no longer aboard) - another 159 Alternatively, if a horse could not take to a hack, then s/he had to be specifically marketed to an adopter who also did not care for riding beyond the ring; this was, however, a smaller market, thus creating more limited chance for a horse to be adopted. 217 horse might not take one uneven step at the sound and sight. All the while, the humans aboard their backs might narrate their co-species experience: “Woah, Freddy, no horse-eating monsters in there for you today!” or “Did you see that? Victor was like: ‘no problem, I got this’ and didn’t even flinch like last time!” Once we arrived at the wide ring of black fence marking the Back 40, one intern agreed to time our sets and we were off, trotting for intervals of several minutes, then walking for a minute or two. This was not technical riding: one merely had to know how to “post” (rise and fall in the saddle seat according to the horse’s gait) taking care to alternate one’s timing with the horse’s leading leg so as not to fatigue them on one side more than the other. One also had to know how to steer, not be heavy on the horse’s mouth (an ongoing negotiation and skill as many racehorses are trained [or internalize the habit] to grab the bit and run) and know what to do should a horse get agitated and the situation turn for the worse (step one: rider should not be the first one to loose her cool). While we started out as a pack, the propensities and willingness of horses soon sorted and spread us out. Jack dropped to the back, prompting jokes to the effect of “no wonder you were too slow to race.”160 The most surprising horse, however, was Ferdy. He pulled into the lead at the outset of the trot sets, and by the time we were halfway through, he and I were requested to stay closer lest the distance we created from the other horse provoke them into anxiety over the loss of herd numbers, or create an accident between Ferdy and me without close rescue at hand. I vocalized Ferdy’s newly discovered (for me) competitive spirit as we (humans) were all 160 This is painful to acknowledge when weeks later we would come to find out he had severely injured his legs on track. This is an example of how many horses come in with partial veterinarian records, partial biographies from those who had them last, and what they can manage to communicate through their behavior should the humans around them be so sensitive and inclined to listen – something I will talk about more in the next chapter as well. 218 amazed over it: “Looks like someone still has the racing spirit!” and “Alpha Ferdy won’t have the newbies passing him today!” Ferdy was like a different horse out here on the hack, and I was a different rider. I posted lightly on his back, weight balanced forward and evenly distributed in the stirrups. As our bodies found lightness and rhythm together, we both relaxed where the most combative communication can take place between horse and rider: the equine mouth and the human hands. My hands softened and the reins were perfectly taught, not too tight and rigid, with just the right amount of give to encourage Ferdy to go forward, go forward, go forward, in combination with each rise of my seat and extension of his legs. Despret’s analysis of human-horse “anthropo-zoo-gensis” helps capture this moment when horse and rider seem to act as one: “Both, human and horse, are cause and effect of each other’s movements. Both induce and induced, both affect and are affected. Both embody each other’s mind” (2004: 115). If I had any complaints from Ferdy that day, was that he had a hard time stopping and walking for rest and to let the other horses catch up with us. But toward the end of the trot sets he settled in, his energy tapered off from the physical effort, but perhaps also from contentment that he was allowed to workout with the younger horses and show them he knew what they knew even before they were born. Perhaps it was a little bit of Ferdinand’s legacy coming out in him too. 219 Chapter 6: Rupturing the Slaughter Pipeline One day, early into my fieldwork, the back door at the Secretariat Center suddenly opened with a rush of cold, early February morning air. Usually this meant that someone was coming in from the barn to report on how a horse was getting along or that someone had arrived – the vet, the farrier, a potential adopter, a new horse – and help was needed. This person was usually accompanied by a pack of dogs that accompanied their owners – staff members, interns, volunteers, and anthropologist – everyday to work, for as I often heard during my fieldwork in Kentucky: horse people are dog people. But today, the multispecies mix that entered the office was the adoptions and volunteer coordinator for the Secretariat Center, Melissa, and her horse, Fly Lite161. Surprised and delighted laughter from all of us there immediately filled the room as Melissa led Fly through the door, her hooves clomping on the slate tile floor of the wide corridor that ran from the back, barn-access door to the front entrance door. Fly, a richly bronzed chestnut mare with a feathery small star in the middle of her forehead and two short white socks on her hind legs, was color coordinated to MMSC’s stable colors as she wore a black cooler162 trimmed with turquoise straps. At 15.1 hands and twelve years-old, Fly was shorter and stockier than the average Thoroughbred, but her diminutive size fit well with Melissa’s petite frame and height. As I was to learn, height and built were not the only compliments that fit well between the two. Melissa had put a leather halter on Fly with her name etched on a bronze plaque – called a “nameplate” - fitted on the left side cheek strap. Such halters were standard use for all 161 Or, as I will refer to her throughout this chapter, “Fly.” 162 A blanket strapped around her body that helped keep her coat clean and prevented the growth of wooly winter hair. 220 the Thoroughbreds I encountered during my fieldwork year - racing, breeding stock, and OTTB’s163 alike. A turquoise-colored, woven cotton lead rope clipped onto a ring below Fly’s chin connected her to Melissa as they walked from the corridor onto the carpeted main office area, first visiting the kitchen-and -office supply room, and then settling by the copying machine between Melissa’s desk and the workstations of the TRF’s accountant and herd manager. Little did I realize at the time, that in this surprise visit by Fly Lite I was witnessing a part of her mascot biography coming to life. Like Ferdy, Fly was promoted as a mascot for MMSC through similar channels of communication such as informational flyers. At the conclusion of her 163 “OTTB” stands for “Off-­‐track-­‐Thoroughbred,” and in this chapter I will explain how it is a political, intentional term to indicate not just a Thoroughbred ex-­‐racehorse, but one that is still athletic and competing, just not in racing. Figure 11: Fly comes into the office to check her email (photo by TVS McKee) 221 biography on such a flyer it was joked that, “On her free time, Fly Lite likes coming into the office to check her email.” While Ferdy’s personalizing effect as a mascot still kept him in the properly defined equine space of the barn, standing in the cross-ties to be groomed for hours, Fly was humanized, transgressing the humanocentric space of the MMSC/TRF office to delighted effect. In an uncanny correlation with the history of horses as humane mascots as I presented in the previous chapter, Fly’s presence in the office that day recalls the effect of Beautiful Jim Key’s performances of the good office boy, filing documents alphabetically and making change at a cash register. Yet in addition to such symbolic, historical resonance, this chapter traces another historical line - that of Fly’s biographical details before she entered the office that day and, as stated facetiously on the flyer, checked her email. As we did with Ferdy in the last chapter, when we look at Fly as a figure that collects and knots together “diverse bodies and meanings” that are as material as they are discursive (Haraway 2008:4), we see how her life experience can speak to larger issues faced by Thoroughbred ex-racehorses left in ambiguous life circumstances after their racing careers are over164. Whereas Ferdy served as a figure that gathered together the historical and symbolic roles horses have played in the U.S. as equine advocates for humane treatment of animals and children, Thoroughbred racehorse mystique and martyrdom, the continuous evolution of horse meat tabooing and the practice of hippophagy, and life as a mercurial school horse, in this chapter Fly will illuminate to us the process Thoroughbred ex- 164 In some cases, some horses are “retired” before even competing in their first race. This usually means that they either did not prove to have racing talent while in training (and the trainer did not push them into competing anyway) or were injured during race training and it was determined by the horse’s connections that training should not continue. 222 racehorses go through from failed track careers, to “kill auctions,” to transnational transport to slaughter facilities either in Canada or Mexico, to the actual slaughter plants themselves. The purpose of recounting this process (which is very graphic in some places) is to give the reader a foundational sense of the string of events involved when a horse goes to slaughter. These events, however, are not mere facts about acultural, material conditions, but rather discursive debates over what “actually” happens when a horse goes to slaughter. As suggested in the last chapter, the debate involves two general sides: anti-horse slaughter activists see slaughter as a paradox (if not violent violation) of sentience, while proponents of horse slaughter might identify this in less salient terms, preferring to emphasize how sending horses, not just Thoroughbreds, to slaughter is a humane option for end-of-life care for horses that otherwise might suffer in abusive or neglectful situations. Fly’s story, however, does not stop there; rather, her biography also shows us another fate that can await for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses that go to auction: what I call “immediate rescue,” when horses are purchased away from those who seek to otherwise consign them to slaughter. From there, Fly’s story then becomes one of redemption. It is not a linear or transcendent one, but rather will demonstrate how many channels of rescue a horse can go through as human significant others puzzle over where to place such a horse. It also demonstrates how difficult it can be to help former racehorses accumulate the redemptive capital they need to become a newly desired kind of horse. Key to this transformation is the commitment of a human significant other, therefore Fly’s story eventually becomes that of her relationship with her adopter, Melissa. As such, Fly’s story also demonstrates how redemptive capital is built from the various relationships a horse has with humans once it is rescued from death. 223 Fly will not be the only horse, however, to carry the entire symbolic and biographical burden in this chapter when it comes to understanding how Thoroughbreds can escape the fate of slaughter. The Secretariat Center also framed another former Thoroughbred racehorse as a mascot, Shooby Dooby Doo (his registered racing name). If Ferdy and Fly were the resident personalities on the MMSC campus, “Shooby” was the visiting celebrity whenever he and his human significant other, Lara, would roll into the Bluegrass from their farm outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Shooby’s story will help orient the reader to other ways that horses lives can be deterred from the slaughter pipeline when they come off-track, such as by being directly surrendered to rescue organizations like the TRF. Shooby’s story also illustrates another exceptional plot twist: how rescued Thoroughbreds can go on and excel in other equestrian sports, such as Eventing (c.f. Thompson and Nesci 2013). Furthermore, the figure of Shooby reads like an ideal-type OTTB, demonstrating how the appropriated and re-symbolized athleticism of Secretariat can really play out in the “second careers” of Thoroughbreds as show competition horses – but only through particular, if not exceptional, relationships with human companions. As such, the mascot bios of Fly and Shooby introduce how adoption is a form of redemption for such horses, especially when human significant others like Melissa and Lara not only offer them “forever homes” but do so through some initial significant challenges that might otherwise threaten the endurance of such relationships. “Horses are soul mates,” writes Maurstad, Davis, and Cowles (2013:322), “but also body mates to many humans, and the relationship is one that affects and defines both parties.” But this is not to say that both Fly and Shooby’s relationships tell the same affective and definitive story, confirming a master narrative of redemptive capital. Rather, by considering the stories of both these equine mascots in one chapter, we see how the redemptive capital of 224 each horse is very specific to the types of relationships they hold with their human significant others, demonstrating how relational redemptive capital is as a concept instead of an absolute, all-encompassing one. 6.1 The Road to Redemption is a Partial Paper Trail All the stories. I remember all of them. I know their baby books back and front. Melissa, owner of Fly Lite, on her job as adoptions coordinator Reconstructing and reconsidering the life stories of MMSC’s mascots is always a partial endeavor because the formal documentation or previous ownership of these horses seems to diminish with time and change. The partial paper trails of these horses also suggest how de- and re-valued they become after their racing careers. In order to race as a Thoroughbred in the U.S., a horse must be registered as a foal with The Jockey Club of North America (TJC). This is just one step in the intensely documented life a horse will have as long as s/he is racing. Horses will go on to accumulate vet records, health certificates, record of sale and new ownership, race entries, breeding schedules, and so much more. But as I will go on to demonstrate, and have already through the figure of Ferdy, these horses will also carry their life experiences in their bodies and behavior too. Thus, when the paper trail starts to thin out as a horse’s racing or breeding career plummets, when all that is left to testify to a horse’s former life and identity as a Thoroughbred racehorse is the faded tattoo of their TJC registration number on their upper lip, it is the body and its marks (cf. Barad 2003) that offer the chance to speak on the horse’s behalf. Of the myriad horses Melissa helped re-train and adopt out during her time as adoptions coordinator at MMSC (2009-2012), she is still working out the story of her horse, Fly. This is 225 due to how many owners/guardians Fly was passed along to, for as Snowman’s and Ferdinand’s stories showed us in the last chapter, there seems to be a correlation between the more human hands a horse is passed through, the less documentation follows the horse. I would suggest that this correlation has to do with how the effort to document (and thus maintain value) is often overcome by the peripatetic nature of horse-trading. Unless buying and selling horses “under the radar” or “on the black market” as many of my research participants put it, every horse gets a vet check by new owners and needs basic health documentation to demonstrate they have the required immunizations and are cleared of (most) communicable diseases. While very basic vet records can follow horses, these too can get lost, not transferred in a moment of oversight – or purposefully withheld. Even if transferred through myriad situations, there is only so much to read and understand in a standard health certificate – it does not necessarily tell trainers and adopters if the horse in question has been treated for colic, foundered, or had an injury that was as equally traumatic on body as in mind and spirit. Rather, the horses will tell through their bodies: ultrasounds will show scarred intestines, x-rays rotated coffin bones, and rearing or head-shyness will be the horse’s way of saying “no, I don’t want to be ridden, it has been nothing but pain in my life.” Conversely, there are owners, trainers, and veterinarians that are extremely conscientious about passing along such information – it can mean the difference between healthy and adoptable, or unhealthy and solutions to life becoming significantly narrowed. But when horses lose the value and purpose they were literally born into the world to possess – such as racing – suddenly they can become ambiguous creatures, and as they are passed from one context of care to the next, it can become harder and harder for records and documentation to follow. But what remains, however, and gathers each time a horse is passed along is their embodiment of each 226 experience. I will not spend time arguing if this is conscious or not on behalf of a horse’s consciousness (cf. Blake 2007) – rather, when you take the time, as I did, to observe and interact with horses and their human significant others on an everyday basis, memories becomes evident in the bodies and behavior of the horses themselves that. You just have to spend the time observing with an intention that you want to see, and not turn away. As Haraway provocatively advises, there is great risk in becoming curious about what animals “might actually be doing, feeling, thinking, or perhaps making available” because it has the possibility of unseating the centrality of “the human” in ways scientific, biological, philosophical, and intimate (2008:20). When we meet “the gaze of living, diverse animals” we are “in response undone and redone” as ourselves and as scientists (Haraway 2008:21). But the partial, bureaucratic documentation of Thoroughbred racehorses as they transition from one status to another is not just an issue of their racing connections losing track of them. Before MMSC took over the in-take and adoption process for horses specifically moving through their “horse centered re-schooling program” as a result of the controversy that engulfed the TRF in 2011, the Secretariat Center would either receive horses from the TRF herd identified as sound and “sane” on the front end of the re-training process, or facilitate already-approved adoption contracts on the tail end of the adoption process. This was by far not a flawless system. As Melissa explained the adoption evaluation process to me: When I first got here, it was handled by the TRF, the paperwork had to go up to Saratoga and back. So what really helped me is “A” getting our own approval committee and “B” understanding the process a little more, ruling out sketchy adopters. But it isn’t just “sketchy” adopters that can hinder the adoption process, but partial in-take records that cannot speak to a horse’s full history also hinder the transitioning process from 227 racehorse to OTTB. In this case, I would suggest that the TRF inherits the legacy of impartially kept records during a horse’s transition from racing as much as it contributes to it. This is due to the geographical, and thus bureaucratic, aggregation this organization innately operates across. As previously identified, the TRF is headquartered in Saratoga due to its foundation in New York State but carries out basic operations in Kentucky, leading to the shuttling of records and information, once via mail and fax, now via Internet, back and forth. There was many a time when I went to look for a horse’s file, Fly being one of them, in the filing cabinets in the Kentucky offices only to not find the file there. The assumption then was that the file was up in Saratoga instead, but I also discovered some files were kept by the farm managers of various prisons. With no centralized reference system, it was difficult for me, albeit an outsider, to track the stories of particular horses. As we will see in Chapter Eight, this inability to find the records for certain horses was not just an affliction for the ethnographer, but a harbinger of accusations leveled at the TRF that they had some horses die under their care without any record keeping of their passing. When Melissa says she remembers “all the stories” and knows their “baby books front and back,” this evidences an innately motivated and conscientious person keeping track of horses in both official, textual ways (the baby books, which I will explain in a moment) as well as in personally meaningful ways, that is, through memory. Melissa is a wisdom keeper of sorts (Linda Dyer, farm manager of the TRF Blackburn program, is too) of all the horses she has ever helped train and adopt out, and she blushed the day I blurted this connection out during an interview. Her investment in these horses is further materialized in the “baby books” MMSC created for each horse: small white informational binders kept for each horse (or to use the focal language of MMSC, each “candidate”) that goes through their program. On the cover will be a 228 photograph of the horse in a standard Thoroughbred conformation pose: facing left, ears perked forward, with front and hind right-side legs stepping in toward each other, and legs on the left side standing squarely underneath the horse. Inside, these books will contain any number of documentation types: from TRF in-take forms, to MMSC “horsenality” evaluations, to training and feeding charts, to vet, farrier, dentist records. These baby books serve to instigate a documentation process for these horses that was previous missing or, in Melissa’s word, “sketchy” - and also to provide evidence of MMSC’s investment in their candidates. The more evidence of such a horse’s participation the re-schooling program (from chiropractic work to participation in shows) the more the horse’s redemptive capital goes up, especially in how much MMSC can ask for in adoption fees in correlation with the horse’s proven abilities (what the Secretariat Center called “horsenality”). As far as I could tell, when horses were thus adopted, the baby books went to the new owners as a souvenir of the horse’s time at MMSC as well as a device to remind the owners that good horse care means consistent documentation of, at the very least, the horse’s health and feeding. While MMSC kept copies of the baby books and transformed them into files to be kept in office filing cabinets, there were also the memories, the stories of each horse that remained with the staff. Being so intricately involved in the adoption process is what also led Melissa to make such a strong statement about her remembering “all the stories.” Remembering the stories becomes a form of resistance practice against the effacement of these horses’ lives and their once-promised value as Thoroughbred racehorses. Remembering the stories, especially for someone like Melissa, is a form of protest against the invisibility slaughter requires from and produces for horses. 229 6.2 The Politics of Proper Witnessing As I now begin to recount Fly’s story and what it implicates about the process of slaughter, I do not seek to privilege anti-slaughter or pro-slaughter positions – rather, I wish to give polyvocality to the sides weighing in on the process. Here, I take inspiration from Donna Haraway’s (1997) concept of “proper witnessing” whereby attempts to “ground social order objectively, literally” in the era of modernity165 lead to a “separation of expert knowledge from mere opinion as the legitimating knowledge for ways of life” (24). In examining the polyvocality of information (and opinions) surrounding the process by which horses go to slaughter, what anti-horse slaughter activists call the “slaughter pipeline,” I wish to call attention to the separation of expert knowledge and mere opinion that often frame debates over how inhumane (or not) slaughter is for the purpose of demonstrating how “both the facts and the witnesses inhabit the privileged zones of ‘objective’ reality through a powerful writing technology” (Haraway 1997: 26). As we will see, there is a productive tension between what constitutes opinion and what is privileged as objective, scientific fact when it comes deciphering “exactly” how cruel or humane horse slaughter is. It must be further emphasized that implicit in this analysis of Fly’s biography and how it speaks to the so-called slaughter pipeline, is that Fly actually lived to tell the tale. As close as she got to the threat of slaughter, she was pulled from the “kill pen” before boarding any truck or loading into any feedlot or kill shoot. So Fly lived to experience fluctuations in her redemptive capital until she was adopted by Melissa and settled into a more consistently valued multispecies relationship. As such, after Fly’s story takes us through the journey horses take to slaughter, we 165 The legacy of which, I would argue, is still greatly at work in the local culture of Kentucky’s Bluegrass with its emphasis on development, progress, technology, and mastery over nature. 230 will return to consider what can happen to horses once they are rescued, and how their near-death experience can actually help enhance their redemptive capital. 6.3 Kill Auctions: Entering the Pipeline “Born March 10, 2000 at Xanthus Farm in PA, Fly Lite was a beautiful filly by Fly Till Dawn out of Feodalite,” so begins Fly’s MMSC mascot biography. To the left of the text is a faded image of Fly racing with a jockey crouched on her back. Her ears are pinned back and her nostrils flared. Her biography continues, illustrative of her lackluster start in racing, probably when she was either two or three years old: “However, after her first unsuccessful start [race], her new owners sold her to a riding program.” While the MMSC bio goes on to simply state “When she didn’t work out there…”, an article published by the Philadelphia Inquirer by Craig Donnelly in 2005 adds some crucial details as to what happened during Fly’s first consignment as “a casual riding horse” - “Fly Lite was unruly and often bucked at the riding farm,” thus marking her as a dangerous, unridable166 horse. Fly’s former exercise rider was interviewed by Donnelly, providing further information as to Fly’s caustic temperament by sharing that, “the mare had been troubled by back problems, which he believes are the reason why she bucked at the riding farm.”167 “Frustrated with the mare,” Donnelly’s article continues, the riding farm owners sent Fly “to the New Holland, Pa. auction sale two days later” in 2005. I would argue that Fly’s 166 This point about horses being ridable or not is a central issue in determining the redemptive capital of horses going through the MMSC program in particular, and one to which this dissertation will return to over and over again to further explain. 167 Having observed many chiropractors work on the OTTBs at MMSC during my fieldwork, one of the most common back ailments for racing Thoroughbreds was pelvic misalignment where one hip was displaced more forward than the other. This was due to how horses “break” or spring out of the starting gates from a standing start, and if the horse did not receive chiropractic or other therapeutic back care during his/her racing career. 231 ontological rupture happens here, as this is the moment where her worth as a slaughter commodity begins to outweigh her worth as lively capital (Haraway 2008). This is the same New Holland auction where Harry de Leyer found Snowman almost fifty years earlier, and this is now where horses begin the long, transnational journey to slaughter since the 2007 ban. New Holland is an especially notorious horse auction because of its reputation for attracting “kill buyers” who are bidders (as far as I could tell from the research literature, mostly men168) that buy up the horses that remain after others, such Amish looking for new cart horses or, like de Leyer, trainers looking for cheap but capable horses to train (many times with the intention to sell or “flip” a horse after some training has taken), have had their pick. As such, New Holland and other such similar auctions (Sugarcreek in Ohio was another one I encountered during my fieldwork) are often called “kill auctions” by anti-slaughter activists and some racing industry insiders alike. According to Donnelly, Fly had been bid on and claimed by a kill buyer and “was standing in the ‘killer pen’” (where slaughter-bound horses are kept separate from others before loaded onto “kill trucks”) when a representative from Angel Acres Horse Haven Rescue, Jo Deibel, noticed the horse. It wasn’t just that Fly was “gorgeous,” she also “appeared sound and clean legged and was very quiet and nice” (Donnelly 2005). Right here we can see Fly’s initial redemptive capital at work: she was good looking, sound, and well-behaved – traits that Deibel believed should not be sacrificed to slaughter based on her moral and ethical stance against the practice, and also because these traits could further help turn Fly into an adoptable, companion horse, thus ensuring her a sustaining second chance. I will return to this productive tension 168 Kelsey Lefebvre is an exception, as I will indicate later on in this chapter’s footnotes. 232 between the threat of slaughter and the re-identification and re-valuing of former Thoroughbred racehorses at the conclusion of Fly’s biographical analysis. 6.3.1 Debating the “kind” of horse that goes to slaughter Returning to the kind of redemptive capital embodied and demonstrated by Fly in the New Holland kill pen that day, it also indexes an ongoing debate between anti-horse slaughter activists (rescuers such as Deibel would be included here) and pro-slaughter advocates as to the type and condition of horses that go to slaughter. While pro-slaughter activists claim that slaughter provides humane, end-of-life care for aged and/or sick horses, anti-slaughter activists claim otherwise, like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) as quoted below: Some horses are in excellent health, with beautiful coats and well cared for hooves. Others have been trucked to auction by haulers from farms where they received little to no care. Often these horses suffer from extreme neglect. Starvation is the most common and obvious affliction. In fact, it is difficult to visit a horse auction and not discover horses with hip bones and ribs so visible that the animals look like skeletons. Also seen are horses with systemic infections such as pneumonia and strangles, wound, and serious foot problems that make it exceedingly difficult and painful for them to walk. The language the HSUS is colloquial and uses vocabulary most readers – not just “horse people” – would understand. While the HSUS language is non-elite in its lack of specialized terms, at the same time such distilled and elementary explanations of horse body conditions often come across as too simplistic to horse people who build social status by their grasp and fluency of horse terms – be they folk or veterinary in nature. As such, the language used by the HSUS can be dismissed for its lack of technical terminology and knowledge, and therefore characterized instead as emotional and sensational. 233 In contrast, a study conducted by Temple Grandin, K. McGee, and J.L. Lanier in 2001, “Characterizations of Horses at Auctions and in Slaughter Plants”169, presents the majority of its findings at U.S. horse auctions (including New Holland) through statistical and scientific methods and language that evince Haraway’s point about the “privileged zones of ‘objective’ reality” (1997: 26). As this study’s goal was to “characterize the types and kinds of horses that are sold at auctions and compare them to the types and kinds that are processed at the slaughter plants in the United States,” the presentation of data tracks back and forth between results obtained at auctions and those obtained at slaughter plants. For example, in the “Results” section, “Dramatic differences between types and condition…of horses were seen at slaughter plants and auctions” are explained with focal language and statistics: Slaughter plant horses had substantially poorer foot (P <.001) and body condition (P <.001), and were less sound than the auction horses. The body condition of horses at the auctions was 2% emaciated, 20% thin, 67% good, and 11% fat or obese. At the slaughter plants 3% were emaciated, 27% thin, 59% good, and 11% were fat or obese. Very poor foot condition were observed in 2% of the auction horses and in 10% of the slaughter horses. Of the auction horses, 54% had acceptable foot condition, compared to 31% of the slaughter horses. Severe behavior problems observed at the auctions (2%) and at the slaughter plants (4%) were repeated rearing, bucking, and stereotypies such as repetitive head shaking. These behaviors were more complex than simple acute stress reactions to being in an unfamiliar environment. (T. Grandin, K. McGee, and J.L. Lanier 2001) In a subsequent section, qualitative data in the forms of “discussions with traders” at auctions attempts to provide explanation about the disconnect between the condition and behavior of auction horses vs. slaughter horses: 169 http://www.saveourwildhorses.org/PDF/Articles/Article-­‐HorseConditionsatauctions.pdf; accessed 11/12/12. 234 Discussions with traders indicated that if a horse was sound enough to be ridden and it was not real old, they could usually get more money for it if they sold it for riding than if they sold it for slaughter. As a result, most horses are diverted away from the slaughter plants until they lose all potential as a riding or working horse. (T. Grandin, K. McGee, and J.L. Lanier 2001) This divergence, however, can happen right at the auctions through specific spatial and temporal structures. As reported by Animals’ Angels, an anti-horse slaughter investigative organization based out of Maryland, USA, disparity between the riding and the kill horses can happen as such: It is not easy for normal buyers to bid on designated “kill horses.” Such a horse’s chances of being purchased by a normal buyer are very limited. They are hurried in and out of the auction arena in a matter of seconds. We have observed horses not offered in the arena at all but sold directly from pens to small group of “kill buyers.” In addition treatment of horses designated as riding horses is extremely different, handling is calm, pens are uncrowded.170 Upon her entrance into the New Holland sales, Fly was probably marked as an unrideable horse because of her behavior at the riding farm – how this information was communicated and by whom, I do not know. In their conversations with traders, Grandin et al. help explain how horses like Fly can end up at slaughter: … a severe behavior problem in an otherwise usable riding or working horses may render the horse non-saleable to the public and may be taken directly to slaughter. The logic here between Animals’ Angels and Grandin et al. is that unrideable automatically means “non-saleable” to bidders other than the kill buyers, and this categorization of horse flesh is reinforced through specific spatial dynamics that seek to channel the horses in one direction only: toward slaughter. 170 Animals’ Angels Compilation Report Horse Slaughter 2007/2008/2009, found at http://animalsangels.org/the-­‐issues/horse-­‐slaughter/investigative-­‐reports.html; accessed 11/13/12. 235 6.4 No Turning Around: On the Road to Slaughter This next section I will examine the issues and discourses surrounding the transnational dynamics of transporting of horses to slaughter, and then go on to sketch how the practice of slaughter takes place at the plants themselves in the following section. Now, in addition to the perspectives and truth claims previously explored by both pro and con slaughter activists and researchers, I will now include a third voice: that of Melissa. These horses are bred for money. The majority of them end up in slaughter trucks or in not-so-good situations. Should we try to get every last ounce of money from them when they are clearly done? Send them on to second careers, or they’re a problem, put them down. There is no reason why they should be sent on a truck to Canada with no water and stabbed to death when we bred them, we did that to them. While a life long love of horses and desire to ride more might have drawn Melissa to MMSC, after two years working as the organization’s adoption coordinator she had become impassioned about rescuing OTTBs from slaughter and other “not-so-good situations.” Yet, when she talks about “we” she is referencing and indicting her own species – Homo sapiens – and the power it exerts and the culpability it assumes in the creation and destruction of another, Equus caballas. In her words she seems to indicate that while she might act in a position of resistance to those humans who breed and / or kill horses for money, no one can evade the ensuing miasma. Also in her words, Melissa provides an opening through which we can start understanding the journey and experience of horse slaughter. “There is no reason why they should be sent on a truck to Canada” speaks to how horse slaughter took on transnational transportation dimensions after the 2007 provisional ban on slaughter in the U.S. A very basic 236 reason as to why such measures were and still are taken to ship horses across international borders is simply this: not only does the market demand exist for horsemeat in countries like Japan, Italy, France, Switzerland, and Belgium171, but “companies outside of North America have organized in countries such as the United States [now defunct] and Canada172, where large horse populations exist, to supply meat products to their consumers” (Stull 2001: E12). With the structural force of supply and demand for horsemeat always already implanted in North America173, it was still possible to slaughter horses even as the business of doing so had to outsource beyond U.S. borders. 6.4.1 “No water” Melissa referenced one aspect of the hardship of this journey when she remarked that horses on trucks bound for Canada were given “no water.” This remark indexes claims by anti-slaughter activists and watchdog groups like Animals’ Angels that horses bound for slaughter arrive grossly dehydrated because the drivers of the trucks do not stop to water or rest the horses because they want to make faster travel, and thus delivery, time. There is, however, another reason why horses may be denied water, and it has to do with another kind of unintended consequence: that of ensuring that the horses have been inspected and approved for importation. Once a trailer containing horses bound for slaughter has been inspected and approved for importation, often times it is sealed and cannot be opened again until it reaches the holding pens 171 Japanese consumers prefer draft (heavy) horse meat while Belgium consumers do not; Italy prefers meat from 18-­‐24 month old horses, France from 10-­‐12 year old horses, Switzerland from 2-­‐3 year old horses. (Snellow 1999 cited in C.L. Stull 2001: E13) 172 There are also select plants in Mexico that operate under EU inspection, which I will discuss shortly. 173 For more history about the slaughter of horses on ships bound for European or Asian markets, or how horse transportation controversies and regulations are handled in Europe, please see Stull 2001: E12-­‐13. 237 for the plant. Ironically, such policies have been implemented in recent years in response to concern over the health, welfare, and sourcing of horses, such as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s requirement that each horse have an “Equine Information Document” (EID)174 as of July 31st, 2009. In particular, opposition to the slaughter of horses who have been administered Bute has inspired such policy changes in the belief that by preventing the slaughter of such horses the industry will go out of business, given the sheer number of horses that receive this medication in their lifetime. Inspecting and officially sealing trailers is supposed to indicate that the paperwork for all the horses has been approved for importation and that the horses have been assessed for any visible diseases or injuries that might inspire drivers to dump them before reaching the plants. There is, however, disconnect between policy and actual practice. For all those shippers who do comply, others still forge paperwork forged, and unhealthy, potentially drug-laden horses still make it to slaughter.175 In an article titled “Evolution of the proposed federal slaughter horse transport regulations, author C.L. Stull (2001) argues that “the realistic issues in slaughter horse transport need to be identified and separated from the overdramatized and sensationalist stories,” and much like Grandin et al. she proposes to do so by basing regulations on “scientific data and recommendations” (E13). As such, when addressing the issue of water deprivation, she does note two studies that do report “incremental rise in dehydration traits throughout 24 h of 174 see http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/meat-­‐and-­‐poultry-­‐products/manual-­‐of-­‐procedures/chapter-­‐17/annex-­‐e/eng/1370023131206/1370023203607 for more information. 175 According to Heller (2005), “Before loading, the owner-­‐shipper must sign a United States Department of Agriculture certificate stating each is fit to travel. The certificate, which must accompany the horse to the slaughterhouse, includes the name and address of the owner-­‐shipper, a description of the horse, the time, date, and place the horse was loaded, and a statement that the horse was provided access to food, water, and rest prior to being loaded. Offenders face a fine of $5,000, with each violation treated separately. Of course, that matters only if they are caught.” (emphasis mine) 238 transport” with summertime data reporting “clinical dehydration may become evident beyond 24 to 27 h of transport” (2011: E14). The conclusion seems to be that while dehydration happens to slaughter-bound horses, it only reaches “critical” levels in accordance to climatic circumstances, not human intervention (or lack thereof). 6.4.2 Transport issues Another reason why the now-transnationalized shipment of horses to slaughter plants in Canada or Mexico is decried is because of the type of trailers used and how many horses are loaded onto such trailers. According to a “Fact Sheet: Support the Horse Transportation Safety Act (S. 1281)” published by the HSUS and Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF) that I picked up at the International Equine Conference in Alexandra, Virginia, in September 2011, a bi-partisan bill was introduced by two senators from Illinois and New Jersey “to prohibit the use of double-deck trailers (‘double-deckers’) for the interstate transport of horses.” The impetus behind this prohibition was to stop the use of these type of trailers because they “are not designed for horse transport” and thus their spatial layouts cause undue injury or fatalities to horses: “These trailers are designed for livestock such as cattle and pigs – animals that, unlike horses, do not use their heads and necks for balance.” Horses not only fall because they are rendered off-balance, but due to the low ceilings – “double-deckers can have ceilings as low as 5 feet 7 inches” while horses need “at least an 8 foot ceiling” when standing on all fours – horses that throw their heads or rear (which can make them “12 feet tall when rearing”) can strike these ceilings and severely injure or kill themselves. This fact sheet then deploys the authority of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a way to further substantiate its claims: “The USDA has stated: ‘We do not believe 239 that equines can be safely and humanely transported on a conveyance that has an animal cargo space divided into two or more stacked levels’ (from 9 CFR Parts 70 and 88).” By citing the USDA, I would argue in a return to the spirit of Haraway’s proper witnessing, the HSUS and HSLF recognize how privileged entities rooted in scientific epistemology and practice (such as the USDA) are to debates such as interstate horse transportation and slaughter, therefore they appropriate the scientific, objective authority of such entities to further legitimate their arguments. Additionally, because there has been such polarization between so-called animal rights activists and “Ag people” (an almost epithet I heard used frequently at the International Equine Conference referring to people who subscribe to an “agricultural” point of view that dichotomizes nature and culture for the purpose of mastering both through the application of positivist, determinist science176) I would argue that the inclusion of USDA rhetoric is a purposeful and strategic inclusion of the voice of the Ag people for their appeal or, at the very least, minor diffusion of entrenched polarization. Either way, citing the USDA helps substantiate claims that might otherwise be critiqued and dismissed as “opinion” and biased only toward HSUS and HSLC goals. Returning to Stull’s assessment of horse transportation to slaughter facilities, she notes that in studies of two types of trailers – this time “double-deckers” are called “two-tiered trailers” or “pot-belly trailers,” whereas one-tier trailers are referred to as “the straight-deck trailer” – horses (306 studied) experienced greater “psychological stress” in one-tier trailers than in two-tier trailers. Stull explains that “[t]his difference may be due to heat stress, because rubber 176 The kind of science that Haraway has countered and criticized throughout her career. 240 padding lined the interior walls of the straight-deck trailers, limiting the ventilation capacity and adding to the heat load” (2001: E14). The implication is that in attempts to provide more humane transportation for slaughter-bound horses by shipping them in one-tier trailers that are padded so as to prevent injuries from contact with bare metal, these attempts actually cause more stress in horses than when / if shipped in two-tier trailers without rubber padding. Yet while unpadded, two-tier trailers might cause less psychological stress in horses bound for slaughter, Stull’s research did confirm HSUS and HSLC injury claims: “the number of lacerations and abrasions sustained during transport was 3.5 times greater (P<0.05) in the horses traveling in two-tiered (29.2%) compared to straight-deck (8.0%) trailers” (2001: E14). Injuries to the face and head were “the most likely areas of injury,” totaling “58% of the injuries accounted for in the shipment of slaughter horses (ibid). Further evidence of such injuries have been documented by anti-horse slaughter activists such as Animals’ Angels, who include visceral photos of horses with gruesome eye and head injuries upon unloading from trucks into export pens or slaughter plant feedlots177. Another factor that leads to injury and possible death in the transport of horses to slaughter is how many horses are stocked into a trailer. As Stull observes: “The two-tiered trailer has the capacity to carry 44 horses, providing an economic advantage compared to the straight-deck trailer, with a capacity of 38 horses” (2001: E14). When transporting horses to slaughter becomes a question of “economic advantage,” six horses make the difference in preference between a two-tier or one-tier trailer. As many anti-horse slaughter activists decry 177 See page 2 of http://animalsangels.org/images/stories/pdf/animals_angels_horse_slaughter_compilation_report_-­‐_short_paper.pdf 241 how horses are so densely packed into trailers, Stull points out was only when horses were “under conditions of high stocking density (1.28m2/horse)” during short transport (25 minutes) under “severe driving conditions of hard braking, rapid acceleration, and severe turns” that “more injuries and falling incidences” occurred (ibid). But this seems to beg the question: what about long haul drives to Canada or Mexico with similar stocking density, be it 44 or 38 horses to a trailer? To this effect, the HSUS and HSLC point to “several catastrophic accidents” that have occurred in the shipment of horses to slaughter. One in particular points to the “severe driving conditions” mentioned in Stull’s research where “In 2007, a double-decker carrying 59 horses in Illinois struck another vehicle after running a stop sign.” In the ensuing carnage it “took five horse to rescue the horses from the mangled truck” where 9 horses died on the scene and 6 others later. Rather than citing human error and reckless driving, however, the point is made that “the design of the trailer caused horses to lose parts of their legs or break their backs. Others were crushed under the weight of other horses falling on top of them.” In the end, the recommendations made by Stull and the HSUS/HSLC concerned with horse transport to slaughter indicate their differential considerations of what is “at stake” in this issue. For Stull, the intersection of humane transport with economic advantage supported by an “objective platform” of data (2001: E15) depends on several factors “including road conditions, driving maneuvers, weather, sorting and compatibility of horses, and flooring” (2001: E14). Stull does not advocate for the termination of slaughter or transnational transport, but rather sees research and regulations benefitting two outcomes: “the well-being of the horses transported to slaughter,” which translates into “the arrival of horses in better physical condition with less stress 242 and dehydration” to better support “the goal of slaughter plant managers” to “supply a quality meat product” (2001: E15). For the HSUS and HSLC, “only a uniform federal law can prevent this cruel means of transport” and “eliminate confusion caused by the myriad state laws178 on horse transport.” There is no question of making transport more humane or safe for horses: transport, moreover slaughter, should be banned from practice – period. Melissa’s perspective on horse slaughter falls into the HSUS / HSLC camp when she states: “Somebody spent a lot of money to bring this horse into the world, why not spare an extra couple of hundred of bucks and put them down and cremate them, or just get rid of them [which I took to mean the methods of decomposition or non-slaughter generated rendering. There’s no reason to subject them to torture when you brought them into the world” (emphasis mine). 6.5 The Act of Slaughter Itself 6.5.1 In Canada In what follows, I will examine the final node in the slaughter pipeline: what is claimed to take place at the slaughter plants, first in Canadian operations, and then in Mexico. The purpose of this section is not only to analyze the various truth claims made about how humane or inhumane horse slaughter is, but to give the reader a sense of what slaughter can look like – as the (anti)practice of it lies at the very heart of this dissertation. 178 According to the Fact Sheet, six states have banned the use of double-­‐deckers for “any type of horse transport” – not just to slaughter: Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Other states, including Arizona, California, Minnesota, and Virginia have various state laws regulating their use.” 243 For Melissa, subjecting horses labeled for slaughter is “torture” both in terms of transport as it is for the actual act of slaughter itself: “There is no reason why they should be sent on a truck to Canada with no water and stabbed to death when we bred them, we did that to them.” When she refers to horses being stabbed to death, however, this practice has been linked more to slaughter plants located in Mexico than in Canada. Called the “puntilla knife method,” horses are supposedly stabbed in the neck to sever the spinal cord while still alive with a double-edged, sharp pointed knife especially used for animal butchering. While I will analyze conflicting reports about what “actually” happens in slaughter plants located in Mexico, I will first consider how slaughter is claimed to be practiced in Canada. While five Canadian provinces are home to horse slaughter plants, I will focus exclusively on Viande Richelieu179, which operates two horse slaughter plants in Canada: Viande Richelieu Meat Inc. in Massueville, Quebec, and Bouvry Export in Fort MacLeod, Alberta180. 179 That Viande Richelieu was once very public about its processing of Thoroughbred racehorse meat is evident not only in how it has been targeted by anti-­‐horse slaughter activists such as the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition179, but literally on its company website179 as well. On a page titled “Clarifying the notion of horsemeat,” the benefits of horsemeat were specifically laid out: “Its taste is slightly sweet because of its glycogen content…The meat is so tender that it requires minimal cooking time”. 179 Though since the time I initially accessed this page Viande Richelieu’s website has been re-­‐designed, it is quixotic to still find the following additional statement about their horse meat product under the section heading “So Very Tender”: As the saying goes: «Old beef, bad meat, old horse, good meat!» Connoisseurs appreciate aged thoroughbreds and half-­‐breeds because their meat is ripe, tender, very red, succulent, and their fat is very firm. 180 On a road trip from Vancouver, B.C. to Colorado, I drove past the Fort Macleod plant and took photos. 244 I will begin first talking about the “ideal” way horses are claimed to be slaughtered, and then complicate this narrative with the witnessed account by an equine veterinarian of horse slaughter gone awry. 6.5.1.1 The “ideal” way to slaughter a horse Once horses make the journey to the U.S.-Canadian border, are accepted for export into Canada by an EID determined to be valid, they are at last unloaded at the plants into holding areas or feed lots181. Animals’ Angels publishes reports from their observations of various slaughter plants, and in a report posted about observations made at Richelieu in Quebec from 9/17/08- 181 Some plants will have feed lots on premises where they will feed horses in order to put more weight on them; other times horses might be sent to private feed lots after purchase to be fattened up before shipment to plants. Some horses might just be sent to plants thin and emaciated and slaughtered in such condition as well. Figure 12: Horses in a holding pen at Bouvry Export, Fort Macleod, Alberta (photo by TVS McKee) 245 9/22/08 (an era before EID but directly after the U.S. ban), they observe the location of the plant as “located in a residential area…It is bordered on two sides by personal residences”182, as well as the location of horse loading and holding facilities: “Horses are unloaded at the south end of the plant directly onto an unloading dock. After unloading directly into the plant via the dock, they are moved into the back holding area.” The report also contains identifiable information about the various trucks unloading the horses, including shipping names, department of transportation numbers, license plate numbers, and noting if they are single or double-deck trailers. Once in these holding areas, the report notes that, “There were approximately 100-200 horses…very tightly packed,” of which several were “excessively thin.” The only indication that these horses are being slaughtered comes when AA investigators leave for the night and come back the next morning and observe, “The number of horses in the holding area at the back of the plant is now approximately half of the number observed on Thursday [the day after the investigation began].” Furthermore, the report speculates that “weekend arrivals [of horses] and early morning arrivals would still allow horses to arrive at the facility without their conditions being observed by a Meat Hygiene inspector or veterinarian upon arrival.” This kind of subterfuge calls to mind Pachirat’s (2011) Foucaultian argument made in his pivotal book, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight, in terms of “how distance and concealment operate as mechanisms of power in modern society” as exemplified by the “no-place” (2011:3) of industrialized animal slaughter plants he worked at (undercover) and wrote about in the American Midwest. 182 The report I accessed was a PDF file but did not have page numbers. 246 What is being concealed, as horses are herded from the holding pen under the cover of darkness and before the inspectors and veterinarians come? Sometimes guided either by whips or electric prods, horse are ushered into the interior of the plant itself where they are then loaded into a “kill chute” which eventually channels them into a “stun box.” Here, horses are ideally restrained from any further bodily movement as a captive bolt machine or a rifle is aimed at their heads. Once the shot is taken, ideally the horse will be killed with one fatal blow. From there, the horse’s body will be suspended by one leg shackled by a chain on what is called a “bleed rail.” Their throats are then slit and, ideally, given one minute to bleed out entirely before the feet are the first to be cut off. At this point, and again, ideally, “All carcasses are individually inspected to protect the health and safety of all Canadians” by the CFIA, and meat is also randomly tested “for the presence of pesticides, environmental contaminants and drug residues” (Oakfold 2012:2). If the carcass and the meat pass inspection, then the total dismemberment of the horse begins so that it may transform into aggregated commodities, turning hair from tails into paintbrushes, bones crushed into fertilizer, and meat into “prime cuts” such as roast, steak, or minced meat, as well as sausages, pastrami, or pâté. These newly created by-products are then shipped according to the global shipping lines and transnational markets established by Viande Richelieu (the likes of which I briefly explained in the Introduction). 6.5.1.2 The multispecies messiness of slaughter But slaughtering animals – much less horses – is rarely ideal and, in addition to questionable ways nonhuman animals are treated in the process, it is also fraught with messy human social relations and realities. In addition to Pachriat’s work, we can glimpse at the fraught multispecies 247 conditions of animal slaughter through Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charlie LeDuff , who chronicled his experience for working undercover at Smithfield Packing Co in his 2003 essay: “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die” (cf. Blanchette 2013). In his portrait of a pig slaughterhouse, the working environment seethes with tensions that cut across race, gender, criminality, immigration, and socio-economic desperation, all set to the backdrop of everyday implicit violence in the labor practice itself: The place reeks of sweat and scared animal, steam and blood. Nothing is wasted from these beasts, not the plasma, not the glands, not the bones. Everything is used, and the kill men, repeating slaughterhouse lore, say that even a squeal is sold. (LeDuff 2003: 188) Specific to horse slaughter, “Many horse slaughter plants employ illegal immigrants and ex-felons who have committed violent crimes,” writes The Horse Fund183 when recounting the disastrous effects the Dallas Crown plant had on the community of Kaufman, Texas, when it operated there until it was closed in 2007 as part of the nationwide ban. “The farmed-animal industry, horse slaughter included, deliberately recruits immigrants because they will accept low wages and can be easily manipulated for fear of losing their jobs,” continues The Horse Fund, demonstrating an uneasy correlation between the wage manipulation of migrant and poor workers of the slaughter and racing industries. Also like the working class racetrackers, work in a slaughter plants is notoriously more dangerous than other manufacturing jobs, while workers are predominantly uninsured because they are illegal or desperate for employment because they must battle with society’s perception of their penal stigma (Combessie 2002). There is also concern about how the desensitized labor of killing animals might “spillover” into volatile 183 http://www.horsefund.org/horse-­‐slaughter-­‐comes-­‐to-­‐town-­‐part-­‐2.php; accessed 04/10/14 248 human social relations, with studies finding that “slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries” (Fitzgerald, Kalof, and Dietz 2009:1). Recognizing the fraught human social practice that is animal slaughter, I now turn to a veterinarian’s evaluation report of video footage “filmed in early 2010, representing a random day’s operation at two Canadian horse slaughterhouse facilities; Bouvry Exports in Fort McLeod, Alberta, and Viande Richelieu Inc. in Maussueville, Quebec” (Zimmerman 2010: 2). The purpose behind reviewing this report is to present specific, not ideal, details related to the practice of horse slaughter in Canadian plants, and to do so not from the perspective of explicit anti-horse slaughter or pro-horse slaughter perspectives but from a veterinarian’s perspective that inhabits the gray zone between positivist science and animal welfare advocacy. The vet who published this report, Dr. Debi Zimmerman, received her DVM in 1988 from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, and after owning and running her own vet clinic for 14 years, she sold her practice to become a self-employed animal rights and welfare advocate and veterinary advisor. It is through her lens as a trained and licensed veterinarian, as well as someone independently dedicated to “working towards preventing the suffering of animals on a global scale” (Zimmerman 2010:1) that we will now re-consider the process of slaughter at Canadian plants. When horses are guided from holding pens into the plants, according to Dr. Zimmerman, they encounter a sensory environment to which “they have not been conditioned to accept” and therefore “naturally fearful and suspicious” of the various “unnatural, fear-producing stimuli” encountered, such as: 249 the vocalizations of fearful horses, the strange plant workers, the metal chute systems, the loud droning of machinery, the blaring music (at Bouvry), horses being felled in-front or beside them (Richelieu), the smell of warm blood in the stun box and that spewing from the throats of horses only a few feet away from them, and the stench of excrement in high concentration in the chute system that is released from fearful and dying horses. (2010: 2) Zimmerman read the horses’ fear responses in various behavioral demonstrations, from the “switching of the tail” to “showing the whites of the eyes” to “kicking out, bucking, backing up” to “high-pitched vocalizations” and “a nervous mane shiver/shake” (Zimmerman 2010: 2). She also claims that these fear responses “were escalated by handler impatience and inattention, by loud shouting and arm gestures, and excessive use of the whip and electric prods” (ibid). Once loaded into the kill chutes – by force of whips and prods if employees decided to take such measures - some horses would be left “for excessive amounts of time, during which they became increasingly more anxious” while workers hosed down the kill floor or went for a 10 minute break before advancing a horse into the stun box (ibid). According to Zimmerman, “Every second a horse must remain isolated and confined in a strange situation, can be agonizing” (ibid). Once positioned in the stun box, some horses – particularly smaller ones such as ponies, miniature horses, and donkeys – would have enough room to turn around (Zimmerman 2010:4), while others had ample room to move their heads and necks to avoid being shot or to provide an accurate shot. That horses have longer necks and thus more range of mobility than cows or pigs has been a big source of critique of horse slaughtering practices in that the plants are inadequately designed for equine morphology to deliver the fatal, supposedly merciful shot to the head (Heller 2005: 31). 250 But it was not just the additional factor of equine head and neck mobility that caused mis-shots, but also human behavioral factors such as the fact that stun boxes were not routinely cleaned of blood and excrement throughout the day and thus remained slippery (Zimmerman 2010:4), and horses were rarely hit in the effective stun spot because of two factors of shooter inattention. First, shooters “seldom took the time to accurately place [their] shot” (especially noted at the Richelieu plant) by either taking too quick an aim or were too far away (Zimmerman 2010:7). Second, (again noted at Richelieu) “the shooter was engaged in constant conversation, complete with hand gestures, for several minutes while he processed a number of horses;” when the horses tried to back out of the chute after too many were let in during his conversation, “His patience level gradually deteriorated after this and whippings, electric proddings and the speed he processed the horses, increased” (ibid). Zimmerman goes on to note that, “Only a few of these mis-shot horses were afforded a second shot,” meaning that when their hind leg was shackled and bodies raised to hang from the bleed rail “many horses demonstrated voluntary movements, or obvious rhythmic breathing” indicating that “these horses were likely conscious as they were being hoisted high into the air with one leg bearing their entire weight” (2010:3). She also notes that once necks were slashed, many horses only bled out for 45 seconds when “a full bleed takes minutes,” and thus many “may also have experience the pain” associated with having their feet chopped off before being sent to the kill floor for total dismemberment and processing (ibid). 6.5.2 Mexico Our first look into how horse slaughter takes place in Mexico also comes through the veterinary lens, this time through a report issued by the AAEP (American Association of Equine 251 Practitioners) in February / March 2009184. In attempt to blend and balance the AAEP perspective with more critical, activist investigations of Mexican plants, I will supplement consideration of the AAEP 2009 report with a report185 issued by Animals’ Angels in 2012 of Mexican facility investigations as well. While both reports offer direct, eyewitness accounts of slaughter processes at plants in Mexico, there is great difference in not only their motivations to investigate but also their level of access and acceptance by plant personnel. While AAEP veterinarians commented that, “They allowed us to look at everything and take pictures. Even in the United States you are seldom allowed to take pictures at a processing plant,” the AA investigators meet with varying degrees of cooperation and hostility: “Unlike during the first trailing, the drivers were very hostile and threatened to destroy our camera equipment” (2012:6)186. To this effect, the 2012 AA Report is prefaced with the statement that visits by the European Union Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) are “an announced inspection and all plants were notified in advance about the upcoming audit, which significantly limits the possibility of documenting the true conditions and handling” (2012:1). 6.5.2.1 Arrival In November 2008, “a delegation representing the [AAEP] arranged a tour of two Mexican slaughter facilities in the central Mexican city of Zacatecas (2009 AAEP Report; accessed 28 October 2012). While both facilities were federally inspected, “one meets European 184 https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews?pages/090301h.aspx; hereafter referred to as “2009 AAEP Report.” 185 http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1101655399670-­‐322/Investigation+at+Mexican+horse+slaughter+plants.pdf; hereafter referred to as “2012 AA Report.” 186 It is important to note, however, that at a plant in Aguascalientes AA investigators were informed that “the slaughter plant was run by the state and that each visitor had to fill out an official document requesting permission to enter the premises” (4) – and they had not done so. 252 standards and the other, which is locally owned and run, meets Mexican standards” (ibid). The AAEP delegation toured the EU compliant plant first, noting that, “Five federal Mexican veterinary inspectors work at the plant in addition to the three company veterinarians. In all, 200 are employed there.” By noting these numbers, the AAEP report attempts to demonstrate that the plant does possess oversight personnel dedicated to the health and welfare of horses, and that the plant is a significant employer to hundreds of employees. The report also notes that around 1,000 horses are processed in a week there, with half being from the U.S. and half being from Mexico. Due to import protocol, U.S. horses are kept separate from Mexican horses during travel, but are held and processed at the same facilities. To the effect of this segregation while shipping, Animals’ Angels noted that once U.S. trailers were inspected and stamped with a seal of inspection upon crossing into Mexico “the drivers had told the investigators that they are not allowed to break this seal, even if there was an emergency such as a horse going down inside the trailer” (2012:2). As I previously addressed, his can mean that after 16 hours of transport from export pens in places like Presidio, Texas (an infamous place to many anti-horse slaughter activists), horses can go an additional 10-12 hours (if shipped to Zacatecas) without food or water.187 However, the AAEP report notes that shippers “say they could make it in eight hours but choose 10 to 12 because they arrive in better condition” – which also harkens back to the previous section in this chapter on transportation and the impact of “reckless driving conditions” on not just horse welfare but the quality of product for the meat industry. 187 Furthermore, the 2012 AA Report observed that many of these horses arrive in open-­‐top trailers that do not provide horses shelter from the sun, heat, or rain (5). 253 The AAEP report goes on to note that, “On arrival at the processing plant, a federal Mexican veterinarian cuts the seal. Any horses severely injured in transport are euthanized.” Given AAEP’s stance on slaughter as a humane form of euthanasia, this last statement leaves some ambiguity as to what kind of euthanasia is performed on horses already marked for slaughter. The 2012 AA report provides little further clarification on how these horses are killed and what happens to their bodies; although it does take note that at an EU plant in Camargo, Chihuahua, there are “death pits” adjacent to the main property where horses in varying stages of decay with “no bullet holes visible” on the carcasses left to be scavenged by vultures and other animals (2012:7). Hair from manes and tails appear to be the only useful byproducts from these horses, as they are left drying in the sun and later stuffed into bags for further re-purposing (2012:8). 6.5.2.2 Holding Pens With severely injured horses culled, the mobile horses are unloaded from the trailer into holding pens. Of this scene, the 2012 AA Report observed that at an EU plant located in Aguascalientes (two hours south of Zacatecas) The trucks immediately started to unload, the handling was calm and without any hitting. Several horses were observed limping when they walked down the ramp. Some of the horses were very thin. Many had snotty noses and eyes that appeared infected. Thoroughbreds were noted amongst them as well as several horses displaying the BLM freeze brand [indicating they are captured mustangs]. The horses were put in a large pen without access to food and water. (2012: 2) 254 A vet from the AAEP delegation observed at the Zacatecas plant that “the pens looked clean and the horses looked good, although he classified them as ‘slimmer’” (2009 AAEP Report).188 Another discrepancy between the AAEP and AA reports comes with the consideration of shipping certification of individual horses. While the AAEP report does not mention paperwork accompanying horses in 2008, in the era of the EID (at least for Canadian-bound horses) the 2012 AA Report does take the time to check the paperwork of horses with immediately identifiable BLM freeze brands (indicating they are captured mustangs) running along their necks next to their manes. After reviewing the paperwork accompanying the shipment in which these horses arrived, “Nothing on the owner/shipper paperwork indicates that any BLM branded horses were among the ones loaded, despite the fact the shipper is required to enter this information on the owner/shipper certificate” (2012:3). Further adding to the questionable verity of this paperwork, “the information regarding sex, breed and age of the horses in different Triple Crown Ranch [the shipper in question] shipments is identical on multiple owner/shipper certificates, which proves that the paperwork has been falsified” (ibid). 6.5.2.3 Into the Kill Chute When the time comes for horses to be ushered from the holding pens into the plant itself, the 2008 AAEP Reports observes at the Zacatecas plant that “workers move the horses with flags 188 The AAEP report goes on to discuss that kill buyers are increasingly buying slimmer horses because “owners are holding onto their horses for a while, even when they can’t afford them,” thus producing horses “too thin for meat processing” at sales barns and driving down the cost of horses while “the cost to ship a horse from Morton, Texas [located in the upper northwest portion of the state], to Zacatecas stays at about $200.” The 2012 AA Report also notes many emaciated horses unloading into these holding pens, and includes photos of skeletal horses (3) – but blame is not placed on owners holding on to their horses until the last desperate minute, but is rather implicated in the lack of food and water denied to these horses in transport and holding conditions once acquired by kill buyers and shippers. 255 rather than whips” into stocks where, “Once in place, a hydraulic bar pushes the horse forward while a wedge-shaped stainless steel device comes under the chin and cradles the head” thus limiting the movement of the horse’s head and “better facilitates placement of the captive device.” Meanwhile, at the Camargo, Chihuahua, plant – the only plant where Animals’ Angels was able to capture footage, albeit undercover, of the actual slaughter process189 - the herding process from holding pens into the plant is mostly calm save for “one worker who was seen impatiently whipping horses in one of the pens” (2012:10). Facility design-wise, “all pens close to the plant have slippery, concrete flooring with no bedding and several horses were observed sliding and falling down with full force” (ibid). Once inside the plant, the horses were not led directly into stocks but into chutes where pressurized water jetted down on them, causing “One stunning black horse with a white blaze” (2012:12) to panic and attempt to jump the concrete barrier. To control the situation, “Workers hit him and forced him to back down, but he injured himself in the process and obtained a bleeding injury on his face” (ibid). In the 2008 AAEP report, once the horse’s head is cradled in the stun box, it is “killed by a captive bolt, with which he [veterinarian Dr. Tom R. Lenz] said the employees were ‘extremely accurate.’” During this time, employees wore “white coveralls, hats, gloves, masks, and hairnets while working,” and took extra hygienic care in “scrubbing their boots before coming in and out of the processing area.” In the Carmargo plant footage and report from the 2012 AA Report, horses are not led into a stun box with a hydraulic bar but with the coercion of employees poking them with long, yellow sticks. Once in the stun box, no stainless steel device cradles their head for immobility, but rather a man (while without gloves but still wearing a white helmet, hair net, 189 The footage can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L0DNk_vm8Y&feature=youtu.be 256 mask [though not always over his mouth], and a yellow plastic apron over white work clothes) stands slightly above them outside the stun box with a captive bolt device in hand. He takes aim in the critical spot high on a horse’s forehead between the ears and fires, whereupon the horse falls upon impact. It is only mentioned that the horse is “stunned” (2012:12) before a chain is fastened to its back left leg before being suspended to have its neck cut and bled out. At this same time, “a female worker drew blood” for testing (ibid), while at the AAEP inspected plant in Zacatecas upon total death of a horse “the skulls were then inspected for glanders and the carcasses randomly tested for drug residues and parasites in the meat as well Escherichia coli and Salmonella infections” (2008 AAEP Report). 6.5.2.4 Differing Conclusions The AAEP report concludes its observation of the Zacatecas plant by stating that the plant “was an extremely clean, well-run plant … From a veterinary perspective, the animals were handled well.”190 Contrary to this, the AA investigation found that Mexican plants, especially the Carmargo and Aguacalientes plants, violated many aspects of the European Union Council Directives concerning “third countries exporting meat,” such as causing injury to horses through excitable movement (2012:13), and depriving horses of water and food (2012:14). The AA investigation also details concerns over the aforementioned emaciated state of horses, lack of sun / rain protection in open-top trailers, and falsified paperwork. 190 It is important to note that when the AAEP delegation went on to visit another plant that was locally owned and dealt only with Mexican horses, while the plant also killed horses by captive bolt “the stocks were not as sophisticated as the other plant” – thus giving reference to why the variation in techniques and technologies observed by the AAEP delegation and AA investigators. A crucial distinction, however, is that the Carmargo plant investigated by Animals’ Angels was an EU sanctioned, not locally-­‐run, plant that dealt with USDA inspected, not just Mexican, horses. 257 Though such distinctions between local and transnational facilities and commodities are far from self-evident or just but are rather politically and economically mediated, these distinctions nevertheless are drawn and re-inscribed in the practice of horse slaughter, deciding not only the safety of the working environment for human employees, but which horses live and die by more merciful, monitored means. 6.6 Redeemed from Slaughter: Immediate Rescue as the First Step Now with some working knowledge of how horse slaughter happens (and where points of contention lie), this section returns to Fly’s story as well as picks up Shooby’s biography, to explore what various and variable channels of redemption and reincorporation horses will go through after they have been rescued from slaughter. Fly’s story will demonstrate how immediate rescue happens at kill auctions, while Shooby’s shows how horses can be intercepted right as they come off-track. Both illustrate how negotiations of redemptive capital can lead into lasting companionate relationships with human significant others. When Deibel intervened on behalf of Fly Lite and, according to Donnelly, she “made an offer that would give Fly Lite’s new owner marginal profit,” we see how redemptive capital involves a level of economic capital to enable moral action. What Deibel accomplished through this negotiation on behalf of Angel Acres is what I call “immediate rescue,” directly intervening in a horse’s designated trajectory to slaughter. Deibel intervened at the point of auction, where rescue organizations can outbid or outpay kill buyers for certain horses either during auction or post-sale. Like Snowman, horses are even sometimes pulled off trailers as the kill trucks sit idling in the parking lots of the auction facilities; and in the 21st century, horses can even be 258 turned away at the plant, as was the case of two horses, Canuki and Cactus Café, at Richelieu in Quebec that happened during my fieldwork (see Oakfold 2012). Immediate rescue can also happen on the track, and such organizations as CANTER (The Communication Alliance to Network Thoroughbred Ex-Racehorses) specialize in sending staff and volunteers to the backstretches of racetracks to identify horses that trainers want to retire and move off their “payroll,” as many research participants put it to me. Whether Shooby was first identified by such a group and then channeled to the TRF through the efforts of his trainer, I do not know as this occurred well before the (select) visibility the age of the Internet and, moreover, social media like Facebook, now give to such processes. Circa my fieldwork year of 2011, horses identified by track-based immediate rescue groups can be “networked” to a world wide web of potential adopters for the horses and, at the very least, donors for the organization. This kind of visibility, in addition to the immense online presence of anti-horse slaughter discourse and organizations191, has two unintended effects on the purchase and shipment of Thoroughbreds to slaughter. The first is enabling of the anti-horse slaughter movement: some kill buyers have become less likely to deal in Thoroughbred ex-racehorses because, according to one supplier: “They’re just aggravation. A lot of people don’t want them slaughtered, you know” (Oakford 2012: 1). The second consequence of Thoroughbred ex-racehorse visibility, according to rescuer Jill Pflugheber192, speaks to the persistence of using slaughter as a way to off-load horses, such 191 Google “horse slaughter” and the top hits are undercover videos from slaughter plants, website for anti-­‐horse slaughter groups, and news articles spelling out the doom for certain horses. 192 See http://offtrackthoroughbreds.com/2013/07/05/a-­‐ny-­‐academic-­‐opines-­‐about-­‐horse-­‐slaughter/; accessed 05/12/2014 259 as when trainers/owners to forego auctions all together and sell horses straight, and more surreptitiously, to kill buyers193. In recent years, however, advocacy has grown to educate racehorse owners and trainers about alternative ways to off-load horses they can no longer afford. In addition to providing care and sanctuary to horses, the TRF, like CANTER, also reaches out to racetrackers and racehorse connections alike to let them know they can just as well retire a horse with their organization. While it is ideal for the TRF to receive some financial sponsorship or donation from the trainer or owner of a surrendered horse, many times organizations like the TRF will take on horses without any compensation if it means the difference between salvation or possible slaughter, and then figure out the details later. Unfortunately, such action can lead to an exponential growth in the number of horses that an organization can take care of, and in the case of the TRF, with the combination of the ban on horse slaughter in 2007 and the global economic downturn in 2008, 193 Related to this technique of evasion: in February 2012, after my fieldwork had concluded, Ray Paulick, a famous turf writer who runs the website “The Paulick Report,” broke the story of particularly nefarious case of a then-­‐23 year old Pennsylvania woman, Kelsey Lefevre, who had taken in four Thoroughbred racehorses just retired from track competition on the promise to find them “good homes” as “hunter jumpers” competition horses -­‐ only to turn around sell them to a known kill buyer (http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-­‐s-­‐paddock/kelsey-­‐lefever-­‐every-­‐one-­‐of-­‐them-­‐is-­‐dead/; accessed 11/13/12). The horses were placed on a known kill buyers’ trailer by a New Holland auction employee without going through the auction ring, and slaughtered in Canada before any additional intervention could be done. This case is notable not just for its immediate rescue evasion techniques, but also because illustrates a troubling new method in acquiring Thoroughbred ex-­‐racehorses that is made possible ironically and directly through the development of rescue and re-­‐training programs. Appropriating the reputation and appearance of such organizations, and building from her background as a horse trainer, Lefevre was able to first gain access to tracks that had known policies against the sale of their horses to slaughter suppliers, and then convince track trainers and racehorse owners to relinquish their horses to her. As to her motivations, there is additional speculation that Lefevre came from “a family of horse dealers and kill buyers and had even dated a kill buyer at one time” (Paulick 1/16/12), and was thus under undue influence from her kinship relations and social circles. As to the legal implications involved in the Lefevre case, they speak more to concern about “deceptive business practices” than any issue with horse welfare as she was charged with four counts of theft through deception, with two being grade 3 felonies and two grade 1 misdemeanors (http://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-­‐s-­‐paddock/report-­‐kelsey-­‐lefever-­‐to-­‐get-­‐probation-­‐be-­‐restricted-­‐in-­‐horse-­‐activities/; accessed 11/13/12). She entered a “first-­‐offender program” and is on probation for two years where she is prevented any contact with horses, including the acquisition of any. 260 this turned into a dire situation not only for the integrity of the organization, but for the horses as well. I will return to the specifics of this problem as encapsulated in the New York Times article authored by Joe Drape in Chapter Eight; but for now, I will continue with explaining the growing shift in how more and more horses are being retired off-track instead of selling them into oblivion. 6.6.1 “Let down” One such horse that evidences how more and more trainers are beginning to retire horses into adoption or permanent sanctuary life options is the story of Shooby. During his short racing career, Shooby was known for such antics as leaping over the inside rail during a race and grazing on the infield grass. After he ran his last race at Mountaineer Racetrack and Gaming Resort in Chester, West Virginia, his trainer retired him with the TRF. Shooby was then sent to Blackburn and “let down” there. Whether recovering from legally or illegally administered performance enhancing drugs or from the demanding training and competition lifestyle of the track, when a racehorse like Shooby first goes off-track and is given time off – or, as many of my informants called it, given “time to be a horse” – he or she is said to be “letting down” (which has an uncanny correlation to some of the men there withdrawing from alcohol, drugs, or the habitus of street life). Upon asking Linda Dyer, the farm manager at the Blackburn TRF program, what she remembers of Shooby’s time there, she recalls how one inmate who had been a blacksmith “on the streets” had hand-walked anxious Shooby for hours on end throughout the pastures allocated to the horse retirement / inmate vocational program there. After his stint at Blackburn, Shooby was then identified as a re-schooling prospect and sent to MMSC. There, he was eventually spotted by his adopter, Lara. Lara was looking for a 261 horse with specific bloodlines, and it was meaningful to her that Shooby had both Storm Cat and Alydar194 in his lineage. Show riders who are interested in OTTBs are often well-versed in the bloodlines of racing Thoroughbreds because the mystique of their athletic accomplishments, combined with favorable ancestry, can still manifest in other equestrian competitions if they did not in their racing careers. During an interview over dinner with me after a long day of training in April, Lara told me about meeting Shooby’s breeder at a show back in August 2010. Apparently, the breeder “couldn’t believe it” when she saw Shooby competing again. “She said he was bred to be a classier horse than what he showed up to be,” Lara recalls, and then added that the breeder thought they’d had the “wrong trainer” for Shooby during his racing career. Yet while this trainer could not tap into Shooby’s racing potential during his career, one could say he did make one of the best training decisions for the horse when he retired Shooby sound-enough to go on to become a high-level Eventing horse, instead of racing all the redemptive capital of athleticism out of him. 6.6.2 Rescued to re-race Compared to Shooby, Fly’s story shows how shadowy horses’ ties to their previous racing connections can be. Fly’s lip had been flipped at the New Holland auction and submitted the tattoo number to The Jockey Club (TJC) database to discover who her horses’ racing connections had been. When the breeder Barbara Rickline, was subsequently contacted by 194 Two stallions with famous racing careers. Storm Cat in particular is the son of Terilingua, daughter of Secretariat, evidencing how Secretariat’s lineage manifested more as a damsire than a sire – something I discussed in the Introduction. 262 Deibel, she claimed that she was “appalled” and “angry because I told her trainer that I had people interested in the mare and not to sell her” (Donnelly 2005). According to Melissa, Deibel then partnered up Rickline to get Fly placed with a friend, Michael Spak, who, according to Donnelly’s reporting, had worked six summers at their farm and “wanted to keep in touch with the game.” In an anomalous turn of events, Spak was able to race Fly because, according to Donnelly, “Horses rescued at New Holland normally would have their Jockey Club papers canceled to ensure they will no longer have to compete, since they are often unsound. An exception was made in Fly Lite’s case because she was unstarted at the time and her breeder decided to buy her back.” Fly’s story thus illuminates the extremely rare instance of a Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescued to race yet again. Yet even under new racing connections – and chiropractic work that solved Fly’s back problems and made her “no longer difficult to ride” (Donnelly) – Fly finished second to last in her first career race (a turf sprint at Philadelphia Park on September 25th, 2005). Returning to my previous point about the partial paper trails that follow horses off-track, it is the details between Fly’s failed racing career under Spak’s ownership and Fly’s ultimate acquisition by the TRF and re-schooling by MMSC in 2007 that Melissa finds fuzzy. Fly’s MMSC mascot biography states “When unsuccessful a second time [at racing], she was sent to Angel Acres” whereupon “Jo Deibel contacted the MMSC…” To this narrative, Melissa shared with me that, “It is my understanding that after she failed as a racehorse, Angel Acres placed her in a home that, when it fell through, was putting her on a truck to New Holland but Jo intervened quickly and got her a place at MMSC.” Then, when MMSC closed down horse training 263 operations in the winter, Fly Lite was over-wintered in the Blackburn Correctional Complex program. Then, in the spring of 2008, Fly was adopted by a TRF employee, but after Fly bucked her off in such a way that required hospital care, she relinquished Fly back into the adoption pool.195 When efforts made to adopt Fly out before MMSC’s winter recess failed again, Fly, along with four other TRF horses went to a foster farm in Ohio. Apparently they had a rough winter there, with one horse dying of choke and three others sent back to MMSC early because they were so skinny. Fly was not among them but was instead quarantined because of a strangles outbreak until she could return to MMSC in March 2009. “That’s when I started riding her,” Melissa said. 6.7 The Redemptive Capital of a Redheaded Mare From failed racehorse, to dangerous riding horse, to biohazard horse, to unadoptable horse, so far Fly’s biography does not depict her so much as a redeemable horse because she was unable to fit into any proper equine niches thus offered to her. But when Melissa started riding her, a serendipitous intervention was made that has as much to do with Fly’s string of life events as Melissa’s. Originally from South Salem, New York, of Italian and Russian heritage, Melissa was “not local” in that she came to Lexington to study music education the University of Kentucky. 195 I came to learn that returning horses to their previous rescuers is a common fate for many horses. Many times, people adopt horses thinking they will be easier to manage than they actually are – and this is particularly true for former Thoroughbred ex-­‐racehorses: just think of Shooby letting down at Blackburn or Fly consistently bucking when ridden. Thus, just because a horse is initially rescued does not mean he or she goes on to a guaranteed safe fate; rather, they must continually prove they are worthy of and working towards redemption. 264 She subsequently settled in the Lexington area after graduation as she married a local man, becoming part of the “melting pot” of the Bluegrass populated with college student who “stick around.” During her time at UK, Melissa played flute in the marching band and rode with the equestrian team until she quit and started volunteering at MMSC. Melissa had started riding horses in the Hunter-Jumper tradition when she was twelve, and then her parents realized her desire to ride wasn’t just a phase. By the time she was in high school she was helping run the barn she rode at in order to “make it work.” She would get to the barn in the morning before school started to “instruct the Mexicans on the day,” indicating the commonplace employment of Latin American laborers at high-dollar show barns; then after school she would come back to the barn, take a riding lesson and do evening chores. Despite her labor at the barn, Melissa could not afford her own horse and instead would ride horses for other clients and show them if “someone was away for the summer.” The closest she ever came to her own horse, however, was an Appaloosa Quarter Horse mare that she rode for a year. But in a barn that was in the “business of buying ponies from auction, training and selling” and working with a trainer that bought expensive Warmblood horses from Germany, mares such as the one Melissa rode were moved along – sold or traded – and not kept for any sentimental purposes. Perhaps it was this formative experience with the Appaloosa Quarter Horse mare that created an opening of understanding and attraction for Melissa toward Fly. When Melissa started volunteering at MMSC in 2008, she was initially drawn by the “love of horses” not the mission to save OTTBs. Also, still without a horse of her own, she got to ride and be more involved in the training and care of horses than what she experienced as a member of the UK equestrian team. When a friend of hers left her position as Adoptions 265 Coordinator at MMSC, Melissa stepped into the role and soon found it was just the farm manager and her “working the horses.” On typical days, Melissa would ride six horses before 11:30am – and one of those horses would often be Fly. One day before they went out on a ride, I caught up with Melissa as she was tacking up Fly and asked her to describe her horse in her own words. Melissa immediately humanized Fly horse in pop cultural terms: “A redhead. Do you know Allison Hannigan is? Actress from American Pie movies? Very uppity, very pretty, very diva. Funny, a lot of personality, but very sensitive.” It was this sensitive side of Fly’s that got triggered when being ridden – perhaps recalling formative years of being commanded to do something, like race, when she didn’t want to do it because of back pain. Fly also had issues with her hocks, essentially the ankle joints of her back legs, and often got them injected with anti-inflammatory drugs. Oftentimes when horses act out behaviorally, it is a combination of being presently in pain and/or being afraid of that pain; conversely, for traumatized horses, even if no longer in pain, the memory of, as Temple Grandin might put it, the unlearned “bad fear” (2005: 194) of pain may cause them to still act out in anticipation of pain associated with a particular stimuli (such as riding). In an interview with offtrackthoroughbreds.com196 Melissa remarked: “I don’t know exactly why I liked her so much, but I decided to take a chance” (Salk 2012). Melissa was able to take the chance and adopt Fly with the benefit of a deal struck with MMSC where Fly could be stabled at MMSC and “she would become something of a spokes horse and a mascot” (ibid). This arrangement not only helped alleviate the “second rent” that many people have to pay to board their horse in the prime real estate space of the Bluegrass, I would also argue that it helped 196 This is the same blog that profiled Finder’s Key as “Joey” in the film version of War Horse as discussed in Chapter Five. 266 Melissa through the hard times with Fly. By not having to pay board, Melissa did not get more discouraged about her investment in Fly when things did not go so well in their relationship at first; and having Fly consigned as a residential mascot at MMSC also kept her value and visibility foregrounded by others, not just in the one-to-one relationship with Melissa. While Fly epitomized the still-viable Thoroughbred saved from the kill pen, through Melissa’s additional care her mascot-ry additional morphed into an example of what loving, enduring dedication to an OTTB can accomplish. In this sense, the more that Fly acted out and the more Melissa refused to give up on her, the more Fly’s redemptive capital climbed and set an even higher example to potential adopters of MMSC horses and other OTTBs owners made aware of their story (such as through OTTB.com) that Thoroughbreds are worthy of dedication, even at their worst. Melissa thus had the support of MMSC training staff (albeit to varying success) and, moreover, MMSC fans and donors to remain dedicated to Fly Lite. Without such a supportive community – morally and financially – it is easy to see how many OTTB adopters with horses similar to Fly’s disposition might not have the financial and emotional endurance to stick with their horses. In terms of the role and labor she served as an MMSC mascot, not only would Fly accompany Ferdy to elementary school visits as discussed in the previous chapter, but she would also compete at shows as representative of MMSC by wearing a saddle pad with MMSC’s logo embroidered on it. The first show of Melissa’s and Fly’s I saw was at the Snowbird Dressage show at the Kentucky Horse Park in mid-March 2011. Of their performance in the test they rode, Melissa called it a “learning” kind of test, where in the mistakes made, Melissa had the wherewithal to see them as elements to work on rather than bemoan. Sometimes, though, it was hard to be so patient and laborious with Fly, as I also came to witness Melissa storming back up 267 to MMSC from the KHP show grounds sobbing and cursing Fly after a particularly bad ride. “She pulled on me and barrel around, but she’d just stop at jumps and dump me,” Melissa explained to OTTB.com about some of Fly’s “signature moves” as a disobedient and borderline un-ridable mount. Another one of Fly’s “signature moves” came if Melissa put her “leg on” her: she was “opinionated” and expressed it by pinning her ears and swishing her tail. At the time of my fieldwork, coercive methods were being employed to get Fly to be more obedient under the saddle, such as lunging and riding her in side-reins to get her to soften her back and not rear or buck. Melissa also rode her with spurs – which in the English world looked as threatening as a metal wishbone cradling the heel of one’s boot compared to the revolving spiked spurs I often heard jingling from cowboy boots while growing up. Melissa explained her use of spurs: “She can be very ‘I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to do that’ and then you hit her with a spur and she’s like,” here Melissa mimics an exasperated voice for Fly: “‘okay, if you make me I will.’” 268 Perhaps what made Fly’s inability to “come around” as a reliable mount at first all the more frustrating was that she was absolutely lovable and congenial on the ground. Melissa fawned over Fly – feeding her the best supplements until her coat was an almost surreal glimmer of bronze, dressing her in color-coordinated blankets, wraps, halters, and tack, and just generally talking about and to Fly as an equal companion. I personally found Fly a very charismatic horse – during my first interview with Melissa as she was tacking her up for a ride, Fly nuzzled at my audio recorder while Melissa vocalized Fly’s thoughts in the characteristic high-pitched voice she used when doing so: “Please can I eat it? Let me try.” Melissa was always joking about how Fly loved cookies, and MMSC kept a whole tub of molasses-infused oat cookies in the feed Figure 13: Melissa and Fly representing MMSC at a Dressage show (photo by TVS McKee) 269 room that would make horses (and dogs alike) remember you always for your generosity and good taste. And as mentioned at the outset of this chapter, Fly was “bomb proof”197 enough to walk into an office, or have elementary school kids surround her, petting her. Perhaps it was Fly’s ability to be such a soul and body mate on the ground that kept redeeming her un-ridable ways. 6.8 Moving into a New Field I had first learned of Lara and Shooby when I picked up a marketing postcard for the TRF during the first days of my fieldwork when I had nothing more to do but wander around the KHP-based administrative offices of the TRF / MMSC and read and collect whatever data was immediately on hand. At the time, I had heard passing mention of the two but had yet to meet them, so I looked upon this card with naivety and will thus recount my first impression of this card as such. In doing so, I will thus also be emulating the reaction many first-time visitors to the TRF / MMSC offices might have also had when encountering the marketing materials that feature Lara and Shooby to promote the mission and fundraising needs of each program. The postcard in question was approximate five by seven inches, printed in color with a glossy finish, and was thus very visually appealing upon initial glance. It consisted of two images of what apparently was the same horse, Shooby Dooby Do, but not the same riders. The image to the left featured a classic, side view shot of a jockey astride a racehorse with the infield of the racetrack – tote board, green grass, inside rail and all – as the backdrop. But there are a few oddities about this photo. First, the jockey, who I presume to be a man clad 197 That is, trained and calm enough. 270 in yellow and brown racing silks, is standing up in the saddle, a riding stance jockeys only take when they pull their horses up after crossing the wire (finish line) or upon injury of the horse. The jockey next to him is still in a crouched, active riding position. The horse the yellow-and-brown silks clad jockey rides, Shooby, however, still has a competitive look and stance to him: ears pinned far back, eyes dark slits, nostrils flared back so far as to reveal the red of his straining nasal passage, his mouth pulled back into a hard grimace by the force of the bit and ringed with a light colored edge of slobber from the effort of running. Shooby, a gelding that is “bay” colored with a maple brown coat and black mane, tail, and socks198 is racehorse fit: ropes of muscles bulge and twine across his neck, chest, and hindquarters. His back legs are also wrapped in bright white bandages, from fetlock to the top of his cannon bones, and his back right leg flashes white in parallel unison with the natural black sock of his front left. Above this image, reads the word “Before” in somewhat stylized, cursive font. Next to this image is the same horse, but in a different, “After” context, as the same kind of font informs me. Instead of being ridden by a jockey, Shooby carries a female rider – Lara - clad in a navy blue and white short sleeved shirt designed for competing in cross-country jumping events on hot days. She wears beige breeches (form-fitting riding pants) as are uniform in such events, and her shiny black boot-clad heel is down in the preferred form of this riding style. There are two remarkable elements in the content of this image. The first is the difference in the sport this horse is now competing in: instead of flat racing, he has just cleared a jump over a thick log and is descending with both front legs before him into a pool of water. Though his rider has him on a tight rein, her arms fully extended but strong before her, leaning just a touch 198 White color markings at the end of a horse’s legs. 271 back in the saddle enough to keep a solid, deep seat once they land, his mouth is closed and nostrils wide but not to the point of showing red like in the other photo. This gets to the second noticeable difference in this photo: this horse’s eyes are wide and looking forward, and his ears are pricked forward, if not a bit to the side, meaning he is both paying attention to what is before him (ears forward) as well as listening for cues from his rider (ears sideways). Beneath these “Before” and “After” photos a caption reads in clear, plain font: “Rather than settling for retirement, Shooby Dooby Do moved into a new field.” Being at the start of my fieldwork when I encountered this presentation of Shooby and Lara’s relationship and the competitive accomplishments it was generating, I marveled (as many did, and as was no doubt intended through the card’s design) at the juxtaposition presented in this postcard. While I had arrived in the Bluegrass knowing that ex-racehorses could be re-trained for riding (as I had done so with one of my family’s former racing Quarter Horses when I was an adolescent growing up in Colorado), I did not realize that some horses, such as Shooby, could go on to become such incredibly accomplished, competitive athletes in other, heavily demanding equestrian sports. By the time I left the field, I heard stories and met racehorses who were worthless as flat racers but went on to excel as jumpers – whether in steeplechase racing, show jumping, or on the cross-country course for Eventing competitions. Like Ferdy and Fly, Shooby’s outstanding story of transition became the stuff of mascot legend not just for MMSC, but also for the TRF. He was deployed as an idea type OTTB of the show competition world in that he made the transition from the prison pastures (of Blackburn) to the re-schooling program of “the Secretariat Center” into one of the most successful adoption stories MMSC could proffer. Shooby’s story was also one that illustrated the rewards of responsible action taken by a trainer and owner. 272 Yet despite the innate talents of well-blooded off-track Thoroughbreds, some clearly have to be coaxed along – and the more “baggage,” as Susanna described it, a horse comes with, the more work they need. Even Shooby needed substantial transformative time. “With Shooby,” Lara explained about the beginning of her relationship with her horse, “he always turned his butt to us when we were at the door,” a comment that illustrates how asocial many Thoroughbreds can be after making the transition from racing. This incidence also calls to Levi-Strauss’ impression of racehorses, that “they are products of human industry and they are born and live as isolated individuals…They constitute the desocialised condition of existence of a private society” (1966:122 [quoted in Cassidy 2002:124]). Shooby’s challenging behavior continued to manifest when she took him to their first show after just adopting him in August 2009: “I took him to a little Hunter show in October [2009] and he about destroyed my trailer. I mean, he was rocking the boat, so stressed out and everything.” She then added, “Just so scrawny and everything,” like the memory was still so fresh to her. But like Fly, Shooby had fallen into the hands of a human significant other that was committed to him. Born and raised just steps from the Manassas Battlefield in Virginia where, in 1861, the Confederate army of the south twice defeated the Union soldiers of the north during the famous battle of Bull Run during the U.S. Civil War, Lara was a woman in her early 30s with straight blond hair as brilliant as her smile. Standing at about 5”7’, she was trim and strong from a lifetime of riding. While gregarious and polite, Lara was not into riding for the social or fashion aspect of it like so many people I observed during my fieldwork year; she was determined to become one of the top riders in the nation, and she had had that kind of determination all her life. Her focus on horses over human sociability came early in her riding career: “I didn’t have a whole lot of friends, didn’t care to, my life was horses.” She “worked 273 my butt off,” and as a result advanced her horsemanship and responsibilities well past other riders her age, riding for trainers “who didn’t take kids” and was driving a “rig” – a horse trailer that might carry up to four horses, a portable tack room, and even sleeping quarters – by the time she was sixteen. “I just didn’t quit,” she said. “Somebody tells me to master something and it takes me to the next level, I will master it. I will work something to death until it’s perfect.” So despite Shooby’s sometimes dangerous asociality and scrawniness, he had been adopted by a woman pre-disposed to hard work and determination, and one who saw innate potential in him – even if just initially in his racing lineage. Furthermore, Lara was raised in a deeply Christian family, a faith that continues with her today as she rides: “So now I have this thing where my whole cross country prep is The Lord’s Prayer – over, and over, and over again. It’s sort of my saving grace. If I can’t sleep at night I’ll just repeat that. It’s not for anybody else, it’s just for myself, it’s part of our bond.” This last part - it’s part of our bond – evidences the knot she ties between herself, Shooby, and God, as well as glimpses into the empathetic relationship she takes with her horse: I was raised to put myself in an animal’s position, to get into their mind – my mom was very good about that, to put yourself in everybody’s shoes, to have compassion. We trained dogs and we had cats and everything like that, and I think that is one of my best parts is that I am able to know and I teach all my riders – I don’t want them to be puppets – I want them to know why. I’m always about: this is how God programmed the animal, we teach him to be like this. With such an approach to her relationship with animals, after that “little Hunter show” in October when a scrawny and stressed out Shooby was “rocking the boat,” Lara decided to start more fundamentally and got him on a good feeding regimen where “then it was right in that February/March he all of a sudden came around, started coming up under his 274 back199, he started taking the bit200, he started understanding peppermints (as a reward for good behavior) and looking forward to work.” As Lara further observed in relation to her ongoing relationship with MMSC because of Shooby: As I’ve gotten into the Maker’s Mark I’ve gotten more aware of why a horse does something based on his history. He rushes a fence – he grabs the bit and runs for a fence, most people say, “oh he’s just being excitable.” And I’m sitting there going “no, he’s been grabbing the bit in self-defense instead of having his mouth ripped on and he’s panicking.” The horse doesn’t naturally do that on its own. So if you can try and put yourself there, you get a lot farther. To not just dominate the animal, it’s a partnership. It was when Shooby finally “came around” that his redemptive capital really began manifesting in an embodied state: “He’s the first horse in my whole life that I can ride for an hour and a half,” Lara shared with me, “and he’s still going strong, he’s not quittin’.” She then added: “I mean, he’s just got a strong, a solid work ethic.” I would suggest here that given the diversity of human personalities, so there are “horsenalities,” and different human personalities fit horsenalities (and vice versa) – there is no one-size fits all for how a horse is perceived and accepted as human oriented and “willing” as I previously mentioned. That being the case, in Lara and Shooby’s relationship, Lara clearly found a horse that responded to and complimented her determined, hard-working personality; and Shooby had found a partner willing to help him redeem his vices and move him into a new field of possibilities. 199 Many horses will start training with hollow backs which means they are withholding trust and full bodily power from the rider. 200 Instead of grabbing the bit and running away with it as many racehorses are trained / allowed to do. 275 Figure 14: Lara and Shooby finish up a successful round of show jumping at the Kentucky Horse Park (photo by TVS McKee) 276 Chapter 7: Multispecies Redemption in a Bluegrass Prison According to my field notes, I arrived in the lower parking lot at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Kentucky, at approximately 8:50am on the 13th of September 2011. As I watched yearling horses load on to trailers bound for new farms and new fates that morning, a while van labeled “Kentucky Department of Corrections” rolled past me and parked about 20 feet beyond my car. It was time for me to finally introduce myself in person to my Blackburn Correctional Complex research participants. Six men were still emerging from the van as I walked up and introduced myself to Linda Dyer, the farm manager at Blackburn. With short, wiry auburn hair, a square jaw, and forearms like a boxer from years of riding horses and lifting weights, she greeted me matter-of-factly with the thick accent native to central Kentucky and then called to the men to follow her toward the shedrows for their first taste of the famed September Yearlings Sale at Keeneland. After two hours of traveling and teaching in the shedrow world, Linda and her students settled onto some benches for lunch just outside the covered walking paddock that had been such a site of elite spectacle just a few nights before on opening night. Horses still traversed inside the paddock and people still eye-balled and evaluated them, but this time the horses weren’t being sold for millions of dollars and the humans walked around in manure-scuffed boots and openly spit or smoked tobacco. As brown bag lunches were distributed to the men, it was established that I was without lunch, so I was given an extra bagged lunch and a seat next to the men. Together, we all ate baloney sandwiches, crunched on Fritos chips, and unwrapped and ate what I took to be an oatmeal cookie from a plastic wrap labeled “Tuesday.” 277 This chapter is about the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation farm at Blackburn Correctional Complex and the Second Chances / Groom Elite horsemanship program offered to inmates there as I witnessed it during my three-month fieldwork at the prison201. In this chapter, I will specifically consider how the Thoroughbred ex-racehorses at Blackburn are cared for by the inmates I interviewed, and what kind of “becoming with” (Haraway 2008) and “co-being” (Maurstad et al. 2013) relationships developed between these men and horses. As such, I am specifically interested in how these relationships further cultivate what I identify as “redemptive capital.” This time however, we will consider how this might extend not just the horses but also the men who are their daily interlocutors and significant human others. Before Fly and Shooby found “forever homes” with Melissa and Lara, they spent some time running with the TRF rescue herd at Blackburn prior to being selected to move on to the re-schooling program at the Secretariat Center. And while he did not start off at Blackburn, Ferdy was eventually retired from being a schooling horse and resident mascot at the Center due to soundness issues and was transferred to the prison pastures to be cared for by student-inmates. In my interviews with the men in the program, some would marvel at how still and calm he stood while having his legs and feet taken care of. “A lot of horses flip out and not want to move,” one inmate told me when I asked him what he thought of Ferdy. “He’s just, stays there, he’s so relaxed. He knows what’s going on. He’s smart, real smart, and just calm.” Through such calm and patience, Ferdy would not only come to teach these men how to wrap a horse’s leg by giving them enough time and a compliant equine to work with, he would also help foster something less 201 I will variously use the terms “prison,” “incarceration institute,” “correctional complex,” and even “jail” to connote a general reference to the spaces in which humans are incarcerated as a form of punishment and protection of society – all understood as innately cultural and historically variable; Foucault 1977 will help me think through and represent these nuances. 278 tangible but perhaps even more powerful in these men – what that might be exactly, I will explore in this chapter. This kind of responsiveness – or what Haraway might call the politeness of cosmopolitics (2008:42) – on Ferdy’s behalf towards the men echoes what Maurstad et al. state about horses being able to “control their natureculture” (2013:334) differently for humans than for horses. The example these authors give is how a horse learns not to bite humans, even though biting is one major way horses engage and communicate with each other. “Getting in contact with humans,” Maurstad et al. write, “they learn to intra-act with other species, and they can put their new skills to use. Horses can have humans trust them, and follow their lead” (ibid). As such, a main question that drives this particular chapter is how might the redemptive capital of horses, such as Ferdy, drive the redemptive capital of the men that intra-act (Barad 2007) and become with them? I will thus begin with a comprehensive spatial and historical orientation to Blackburn as a Kentucky-based penal institution and how the TRF operates in this context as an animal-based, prison education program based in the U.S. I will then turn to an analysis of the TRF program itself, first exploring the redemptive capital of the horses there, and then that of the men. As a part of this model, I will also include analysis of the role the lone female TRF farm manager, Linda Dyer, plays in the program and in the cultivation of these men’s and horses’ redemptive capital. I will then theoretically and ethnographically contextualize the narrative life stories of the men as they unfolded through a series of questions I posed to them during formal interviews and questionnaires. Like the horses in previous chapters – Ferdy, Fly, and Shooby, and those still to come - I am interested in illustrating how these men’s life experiences before, and during their time at Blackburn shape their redemptive capital in profoundly multispecies as well as 279 multi-classed, -raced, and -gendered social ways. As this chapter concludes, we will understand through thick ethnographic consideration of the BCC TRF farm program how redemptive capital can expand into a comprehensive, multispecies analytic. 7.1 Spatial Context of Blackburn and the TRF Farm as My Fieldsite From the small horse farm in Scott County I lived on during my fieldwork, to reach Blackburn I would make the drive south on Georgetown Road and then turn right (west) onto Spurr Road. Once on Spurr Road and over the railroad tracks, I never failed to marvel how Blackburn coexisted so close with the suburban sprawl of Lexington202. While there still existed small farms and undeveloped bramble fields along the drive, planned neighborhoods as part of the redevelopment of Masterston Station had cropped up around Blackburn, literally stopping across the street from the main entrance gate with its historical plaque and neat flower beds leading to the guard station. This guard station was but one marker of the “sensitive perimeter” (Combessie 2002:536) common to the spatiality of all incarceration institutions; this perimeter was also felt and seen in the imposing brick buildings of the administrative offices and dormitories, the wide-open, surveillable yards and fields flanking all sides of the grounds, and the various men in beige traversing between those grounds and buildings. Whenever I pulled up to the main gate to begin my day of fieldwork, I was met with a guard who asked me who I was there to see. Many came to know me by sight, but would still have to ask the requisite questions and take the prescribed cautions. As such, I had to renounce my driver’s license to the guard at the main gate as well as verbally-yet-legally confirm that I did 202 Blackburn is a minimum security/transitional facility; but still some men try to escape, and succeed. 280 not have any alcohol, tobacco, firearms or weapons in my car. The guard would then radio Linda, the farm manager and instructor for the TRF program, to let her know I had arrived. When I first started my fieldwork, Linda would have to stop what she was doing – like teaching the student-inmates how to hold a horse for the farrier or monitoring morning grooming and feeding activities – and drive up to get me in the dark blue pick-up truck issued to the TRF program by the DOC. I would then park my car in the visitor’s lot across from the main administrative building and wait for Linda to pick me up. At first I was surprised she could leave the men alone, but as my research progressed I came to understand why she could – something I will talk about later on in this chapter. Also as my research progressed and familiarity with the institution increased, I was allowed to drive my own car onto the grounds and right up to the TRF barn. To get there, I would first cruise past the administration buildings, dormitories, library and so forth, and then turn down the road that led me past the greenhouse used for horticultural programs and the cattle fields tended by inmates learning about bovine husbandry and industry. From there, the road leveled out and stopped at the TRF farm with its big white barn topped by quaint green roofs that was once a dairy cow barn. All the while, whenever I drove past the inmates, all dressed in beige prison uniforms with their identification tags clipped to their shirts, I wondered about how to meet their gaze as a “free” person and a woman navigating the highly masculine space of human discipline and punishment. As Haraway talks about the importance of meeting “the gaze of living, diverse [nonhuman] animals” (2008: 21) and how it causes previously held notions of species separateness to come undone, looking back at these men troubled divisions that had more to do with my own participation and internalization of how human society divides itself. As 281 such, my research at Blackburn further called into question what exactly made “us” human and more humane. When the inmate mirror was polished, what did it reveal? Whenever I parked my car at the TRF farm I felt, like many of the men did, that I was no longer a part of the volatile environment of the main BCC grounds. “I’m not locked up when I’m down here,” was a response one man gave to me when I asked him if working with the horses made him feel better about his situation. It consistently resonated with me throughout my time at Blackburn. Also during my fieldwork at Blackburn, another doctoral student (in social work) was conducting her dissertation research there and she also captured this sense of spatial and Figure 15: TRF barn at Blackburn (photo by TVS McKee) 282 social difference through soliciting “I poems” from the men (Bachi 2014:76-77). Here is an example of one such poem (Bachi 2014:111) that speaks to the paradoxical sense of freedom the men experience through the TRF program while simultaneously being incarcerated at Blackburn: When I am up there I am locked up when I am down her I’m free I am going through this locked up and free when I am here I walk into fields I am interacting with nature I don’t have to listen to buzz cuss I am interacting with horses I am free I am free to think I am free to roam within my mind I am free to collect my poetry I am free to do I am free to think I am free to look you don’t hear all these 30 or 40 different voices all talking altogether, everybody is talking they talk to into each other here, I don’t hear all that The horses are not talking I am not talking sometimes, I am out there by myself Here, I get away through the horses There, I get away through my rhymes and my poetry. The first tangible sign of how set apart the TRF farm was from the rest of Blackburn was, literally that: a large sign that announced the program site and Linda’s position as farm manager. Then, there was the condition of the barn and the surrounding grounds: immaculately mowed lawns (despite temperamental equipment), trimmed hedges, weeded and glorious flower beds, and clean pastures, paddocks and stalls. Under her management, Linda brought a little of the 283 Lexington-as-Yorkshire landscape aesthetic, and the labor investment and precision to create it, to the prison farm. Creating such a space and teaching then men how to care for it was but one way Linda taught them about the “horse capital of the world” culture beyond the prison perimeter, its structures and standards, and how they might come to participate, and benefit, from it. Once inside the barn, Linda’s (locked) office was on the right, and across the wide cement corridor from it was a large wash stall where the students mostly parked their manure-and-dirt caked boots. Beyond the wash stall was a tool room in two-parts. The first held the grooming boxes the men would take out with them to the fields to groom the horses every morning. The next room one could find tools like hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and so forth. Every item needed to be checked out in an inmate’s name and checked back in at the end of the day. As such, if an item went missing it could be traced back to someone and, depending on the circumstances, reprimand would be given accordingly. Back out in the main part of the barn, the classroom where I conducted the majority of my interviews was down the corridor from Linda’s office, and then an anachronistic tack room was next to the classroom. Student-inmates could not ride as part of the TRF / BCC program, but still a few old saddles collected dust next to other stored items. From there, the rest of the barn was full of stalls on both sides of the corridor. However, horses were kept in these stalls only if they required special medical or feeding attention. Otherwise, they were kept outside in the pastures per the TRF’s minimum care protocol. Thus, when one stepped out the barn door at the end of the corridor opposite the entrance, one entered the horses’ wide-open, yet-still spatially segmented world. For example, a round-pen was stationed close to the barn where Linda would teach the men how to interact and 284 communicate with horses at liberty (without tack). Through the principles of Natural Horsemanship, students learned how horses could be worked with using body cues and knowledge about equine behavior – this in contrast with relying only on tools and technologies like halters, lead ropes, chain shanks, and so forth. Beyond the barn and the round pen lay the rest of the farm’s 110 acres of paddocks and wind-swept pastures that ultimately truncated at Interstate 64. Dirt roads navigable by Linda’s DOC truck or by-foot ringed around the larger pastures, and often times you could hear the shimmering sound of horse whinnies over the distance as you traversed these roads. I often wondered if these could be heard “up the hill” into the main incarceration grounds, and what the men and staff there made of them. Michel Foucault’s examination of the historical rise of the prison in Discipline and Punish (1977) was always on my mind when I conducted fieldwork at Blackburn, especially as I thought about the spatial layout and organizing of bodies and activity there. I particularly puzzled over his analysis of power and surveillance via the idea of Bentham’s Panoptician: “Hence the major effect of the Panoptician: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (1977:201). Through such reading, I anticipated encountering a solemn and strict penal atmosphere where the men functioned akin to automatons, overlorded not just by guards and administrators, but by internalized self-discipline and wariness of being punished. I was then surprised to come to find dynamic and spontaneous relationships between myself and Linda, the inmates, and the horses at Blackburn. We were not watched or imposed into regimented actions by an all-seing Panoptician; rather, there was the definite structure of the incarceration institute, and the TRF farm seemed to work in concert, and at times, contradistinction to it. This is not to say that I found forms of freedom or resistance that Foucault overlooked; rather, I think his point about 285 surveillance and visibility being “permanent in its effects” even when their exercise and necessity are “discontinuous” (which I take to mean not always obviously at work) was at work at the TRF farm, even as spatially and socially separated as it was from the main incarceration grounds. That is to say, the relative freedom that some men – and anthropologists – felt when down at the barn with the horses was made meaningful and seen as liberating exactly because of the discipline and punishment otherwise felt in other places. But as the main incarceration grounds looked out over the farm and horse pastures, and the disciplinary apparatus of the Kentucky Department of Corrections extended to everyone – inmates, guards, staff, anthropologists, horses - within the sensitive perimeter of Blackburn to varying degrees and types, perhaps, as suggested above, there were times when the gaze was reversed, when perhaps the men and the institution up on the hill looked out over the TRF grounds not with scrutiny and tyranny, but curiosity and envy. 7.2 Historical Context of Blackburn Correctional Complex Blackburn Correctional Complex was named after Luke P. Blackburn203, 28th governor of Kentucky who served as a Democrat from 1879-1883. The reason why L.P. Blackburn inspired a late-20th century correctional complex to be named after him comes from his controversial efforts at penal reform during his governorship. He eased overcrowding and deplorable conditions at the Frankfort penitentiary through a liberal pardon record, replaced private oversight of penitentiaries with the warden system, and instigated the state’s first parole system. One other way that L.P. Blackburn eased overcrowding was to work with the state Assembly and 203 Ironically, there was a Thoroughbred racehorse named “Luke Blackburn” too. He was named after the Kentucky Governor and born and based in Tenneseee from 1877-­‐1904. 286 grant private contractors lease of convict labor. Contractors were then responsible for feeding, clothing, housing and caring for inmates - though much abuse of this system came to pass when contractors acted with minimal oversight from the penal and governmental system. As we will see further on in this chapter, the outsourcing of Kentucky-based prison labor that began in L.P. Blackburn’s time continued to evolve in subsequent programs – including, I will argue, the TRF’s. Though such actions earned him the title “the father of prison reform in Kentucky,” L.P. Blackburn was a controversial and loathed figure in late 19th century Kentucky, especially criticized for to his pardon record (Tapp and Klotter 1977: 180) and use of taxpayer money to provide better living conditions for inmates (Harrison and Klotter 1997: 260). After he was booed and shouted down at his party’s 1883 nominating convention, Blackburn returned to his previous practice as a doctor and died in 1887 at age 71. Fast-forward almost 125 years after L.P. Blackburn’s death to 2011 – the year of my fieldwork, but also the year the “Report of the Task Force on the Penal Code and Controlled Substances Act” was published. Propelled by the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Center on the States, the Task Force was created in 2010 by the Kentucky House of Representatives “to study and report on recommended changes to the Kentucky Penal Code and the Controlled Substances Act” (Legislative Research Commission [hereafter “LRC”] 2011:i). Key to this report is to find “new ways to protect public safety while controlling the growth of prison costs” (LRC 2011:2). Of stated concern is the fact that an increase in spending state money on prisons “has not translated into a better return for public safety” while also not curbing the rate of recidivism204 (ibid). What follows is a brief summary of that report for the purpose of 204 This is considered “the number of offenders who return to prison within 3 years of release” (LRC 2011:2). 287 picking up where L.P. Blackburn left off in terms of the history of Kentucky’s penal reforms, and also to frame the state of Kentucky’s prisons – such as Blackburn – circa my fieldwork year. Kentucky is an exceptional state through which to view penal reform – and to conduct and write prison-based ethnography – in the U.S. because over the past ten year “Kentucky has had one of the fastest growing prison populations in the nation” (LRC 2011: 1). Furthermore, since 2000, while the prison population in “the U.S. state prison system as a whole” has only grown 13%, Kentucky’s population boomed at 45%, incarcerating 1 out of every 92 adults in “the Commonwealth”205 as opposed to 1 out of 100 adults nationally (ibid). The report then highlights a paradox in these statistics: this increase in prison expansion comes not from an increase in crime, but rather “Kentucky’s serious crime rate has been well below that of the nation and other southern206 states since the 1960s” (ibid). So what is going on in Kentucky? The report goes on to indicate four leading causes of Kentucky’s prison growth. As I summarize them, I include statistical details not only to share the language of this report in the spirit of the previous two chapters’ interrogation of scientific, statistical framing of contentious issues, but to also help paint a larger, albeit quantitatively-based picture of the dynamic change Kentucky’s penal system was undergoing during my fieldwork tenure at Blackburn. As the report called, them, here are four salient “Drivers of the Prison Population” (LRC 2010: 2) in Kentucky: (1) An increase in arrests and court cases despite a flat rate of reported crime. The cause of this increase is due to a 70% spike in arrests for drug offenses (LRC 2011: 7). 205 Kentucky is referred to as a Commonwealth state because it was once a part of the land grant of Virginia, one of four original colonies of the U.S., which was legally organized by the common law system present in England at the time. When Kentucky became its own state, it came to refer to itself as the Commonwealth in its constitution. 206 Recall Wall’s 2010 argument about how Kentucky became Southern culturally; here it is considered so legally and geopolitically. 288 (2) A high percentage of offenders being sent to prison as “Kentucky uses prison as opposed to probation or other alternative sentences at a much higher rater than most other states” (LRC 2011: 7). For example, in 2009, courts sentenced 57 percent of all convicted felony offenders to prison compared to a 41% national average (ibid). (3) A nearly doubling of “offenders on parole who are sent back to prison and who do not have a new felony conviction” (LRC 2011: 7). This population of “Technical Parole Violators” went from 10.2% of total prison admissions in 1998 to 19.5% in 2010, while new felony convictions for parole violators represented just 2.2% of admissions in 2010 (ibid). (4) An 8% rise in the incarceration of drug offenders from 2000-2009, adding up to 25% of current prison inmates being held for drug offenses. Of those, 75% are for possession offenses or trafficking first offenses (LRC 2011: 7). This increase in imprisonment has led to a dire increase in “general fund corrections spending” - 214% in the last two decades, from $140 million in 1990 to $440 million in 2010 (LRC 2011: 6). This dramatic increase in spending was also exacerbated by one of the worst recessions to hit Kentucky and the nation in 2009, as also detailed in Chapter Three (LRC 2011: 18). Furthermore, the report cautions that at the current rate of incarceration and spending, by 2020 “the state would need at least $161 million more on correction to cover this growth” including and increase in funds needed for beds, as well as triple the debt needed to cover any constructions through bonds (LRC 2011: 8). And while “the average state spending per prisoner” increased 10% between 2005 and 2009 to $19,000/year to house and inmate, spending for offenders on probation and parole during that same period decreased from $1,191 to $961 per year (ibid). These last statistics anticipate the reports overwhelming recommendation that more resources and effort – in short, capital - be put toward managing qualified offenders in transition-back-to-society (my words) programs. There are other flaws in the current state of Kentucky’s penal system identified by the report. Recidivism rates remain high because of how parole violations are handled, as well as 289 because of a lack of societal transition programs, including community intervention programs for substance abuse (LRC 2011: 9). The report is explicit about the incredible dearth of these programs as sponsored by the DOC and the state as a whole. It also notes that one reason why offenders and parolees might continuously revert back to prison is because they “often lack stable home environments to return to and thus remain in prison to serve out their sentence” (LRC 2011: 10). Furthermore, prison might come to be seen as more desirable than home and community life because they cannot earn a reduction in their sentence (“earned-time credits”) for community-based treatment, whereas they can for treatment in prison. The TRF program was one such program. Having identified some of the major issues in Kentucky’s penal system, the report put forth 10 recommendations (LRC 2011: 11-20). While it is beyond the scope of this thesis to summarize these recommendations, I will return to some specific recommendations later on in this chapter to contemplate what perspective the TRF program brings to these problems and proposed solutions (c.f. Bachi 2014). Furthermore, where applicable, I will consider how illustrative certain prisoners’ stories are of the problems facing Kentucky’s penal system and society at large, as I just summarized them above. 7.3 The TRF as an Educational Program – for “Offenders” The institution that came to be named in honor of Gov. Luke P. Blackburn was founded in 1972, and, according to the Kentucky Department of Corrections (DOC) website207, consists of 456 acres and approximately 592 inmates served by 128 staff members, Linda Dyer among them. Of 207 http://corrections.ky.gov/depts/AI/BCC/Pages/AboutBCC.aspx; accessed 01/21/13 290 those “offenders” 208 58% are “black” (I will use the term African-American) and 41% are “white.” BCC’s DOC website also notes how much it costs to keep inmates annually - $20,442.81 – as well as daily - $56.01 – for a total of a $6 million dollar annual operating budget; these statistics indicate where Blackburn falls in the picture painted by the LRC report, and are a part of understanding how the TRF program operates in a larger, penal-based financial and historical climate. With this developing picture of where Blackburn falls in terms of national trends in prison expansion in the U.S. as well as in the Kentucky state system, I will now begin to contextualize the TRF program at Blackburn in two ways: first in relation to the recent history of prison-based educational programs in the U.S., then as part of the rise of human-animal interaction programs in prisons (also called PAPs or “Prison Animal Programs”). To understand the dynamic and precarious state of gaining an education in prison – whether it is to obtain a GED, a college degree, or vocational certification – let us consider some key historical trends in U.S. incarceration over the past fifty years. Contardo (2010: 15) points out three distinct periods of correctional history and theory: (1) 1960 - 1975: Indeterminate Sentencing / Rehabilitation for prisoners (2) 1975 – mid-1980s: The Justice Model / Retribution for societal harm done (3) 1980s – Present: Crime Control / Incapacitation and Deterrence. Furthermore, Wacquant (2002: 382) has characterized the Indeterminate Sentencing era as one where 208 Instead of the term “inmate,” the word “offender” is used by the KY Department of Corrections. I forego using this term intentionally -­‐ even though it does qualify as part of the focal language of the culture of the DOC – because I did not want to reinscribe the judgment and power dynamics inherent in labeling a human being, however, criminal, as an offender. This was too hard, too foreign, and too problematic of a word for me to use without question or qualification. However, I did use this term in my application to conduct research at Blackburn submitted to the DOC. 291 the number of inmates was going down slowly but steadily; facilities of confinement were being closed; America was a leader in penological innovation and primed to show the world the way toward a nation ‘without prisons’… Wacquant then signals an end to this era with the Attica riots that took place in 1971, further exacerbating already volatile race relations and highlighting the decrepit state of prisoners’ rights. After this incredibly violent event that pitted prisoners against guards and law enforcement agents, “the carceral population ballooned abruptly from 380,000 in 1975 to one million in 1990” reaching approximately 2 million today, effectively making the U.S. “the biggest incarcerator of the planet” (Wacquant 2002: 382). To put this in further perspective, 1 in 100 adults is in prison “or under the supervision of the criminal justice system (1 in 32 adults, which includes those in prison, on probation or on parole, around 7 million in 2009)” (Gordon 2010:9). Contardo helps further explain what led to this ballooning of prison population, particularly during the Crime Control era beginning in the 1980s. This was an era of two major policies, the “war on drugs”209 and the “get tough” era, which “sought to remove dangerous criminals from the streets through harsher and longer sentences” (Contardo 2010: 4; 17). I suggest we can still see the legacy of this era, particularly as it relates to drug-based incarceration, in Kentucky today. Concurrent to this time period spanning from the 1970s to today, prison educational programs were in great flux according to how incarceration was theorized and put into practice. In 1972, the qualification criteria for Federal Pell Grants - which provide grants for low-income students seeking a college education - expanded the definition of “low-income students” to 209 This policy, controversial for decades, was recently heavily researched and criticized by a research group at the London School of Economics. A report of their findings, “Ending the Drug Wars,” was released in May 2014: http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/LSE-­‐IDEAS-­‐DRUGS-­‐REPORT-­‐FINAL-­‐WEB.pdf; accessed 05/08/14. 292 include prisoners (Contardo 2010:4). This had the effect that by the early 1980s, 8% of all state inmates were pursing postsecondary education while in prison (ibid). Yet support of such programs did not last, as the get tough era progressed in the late 1980s and the overwhelming assumption that “nothing works” when it came to prisoner rehabilitation took root (ibid). This ubiquitous and notorious attitude can be traced to the 1974 Martinson Report where the author concluded that, “rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism” (1974 as quoted in Gerber and Fritsch 1995:120). This attitude persisted for quite some time, developing further with the passage of the Violent Crime Act in 1994 whereby the Higher Education Act was amended to prohibit the less than 1% of inmates who did receive Pell grants from receiving the assistance (Contardo 2010:5). During his fieldwork at the Men’s Central Jail (MCJ) of the Los Angeles County Jail, Wacquant observed what had become of “’school’, or what passes for it” four years after such legislative moves: Miriam, the young white woman who runs it, gushes that MCJ offers ABE (Adult Basic Education), ESL (English as a Second Language), high school remedial education (including the GED) and Health-Safety-Parenting classes. Sounds terrific. Only problem is, these programs reach a grand total of 40-60 inmates, less than 1 percent of the jail’s average daily population. (2002:377) Yet despite such these setbacks to support prison educational programs, in subsequent years participation in the programs “eventually stabilized” and many who questioned the impact of “get tough” policies had built up a “growth of evidence documenting the value of postsecondary education for inmates” (ibid). This thus takes us up to the current decade (2010 and onward) and into the growing body of research of, and advocacy for prison education programs. Contardo’s study of prison education programs in North Carolina, Providing College to Prison Inmates, represents some of the advocacy research done in favor of such programming. 293 Recognizing that “research indicates that time spent in prison may actually decrease one’s ability to cope in traditional society” due to the fact that “values needed to succeed in prison often directly conflict with social norms,” Contardo argues that prison educational programs can represent “the difference between returning to criminal activities and possessing skills and credentials necessary to find employment on release sufficient to reduce recidivism (2010:1-2). Prison programs can make the difference between recidivism and not returning to prison in that they “attempt to address the factors that contribute to incarceration and assist with post-release transition to society by offering course and counseling to inmates prior to release from prison’ (Contardo 2010:1). Yet while states like North Carolina have created post-release transitional programs, neighboring states like Kentucky were clearly lacking, and suffering, from non-existent or ineffective post-release resources. Furthermore, it is argued that maintaining an education in prison not only helps mitigate the un- or under-employability that afflicts those with a prison record, but it especially helps the disproportionate numbers of African-American males who make up the prison population of the U.S. by reducing one of three strikes against them: low education attainment; the other two are having a record, and being of a stigmatized “race” (Contardo 2010:2;12). Given this context, where does the TRF program at Blackburn fall in relation to the ups and downs of prison education programs in the U.S.? It begins with the first farmland the TRF acquired to house its herd of rescues in 1984 at Wallkill Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Then-New York State Senator Howard Nolan (who was also a Thoroughbred racehorse and farm owner) had suggested to TRF founder, Monique Koehler, that prisons with farmland might offer the space needed for the horses. Koehler then approached Wallkill and negotiated to use 72-acres adjacent to the prison. In an era where the harsh policies of the Crime Control 294 model of incarceration had yet taken great hold, Koehler “started a program to train inmates to care for horses with a curriculum developed by the TRF and accredited by the New York State Department of Education” (Strimple 2003: 76). The TRF Blackburn program, on the other hand, was implemented in 1999 at the height of the Crime Control era and the “nothing works” attitude. At the urging of then-Governor Paul Patton (who, during his first term in office, was especially noted for his education and criminal justice reforms), the Department of Corrections permitted the establishment of the Blackburn program (Strimple 2003: 76). While the TRF program at Blackburn is more of a vocational program where inmates learn about horse care and horsemanship through the nation-wide Groom Elite program210, student-inmates in the program also get educational credit (16 credits) within the prison system. Linda Dyer tried to get it college accredited but found the cost of doing so prohibitive and no local post-secondary institution willing to do it pro bono. I will go into more detail about the educational structure and outcomes for student-inmates when we turn to their life stories in the second half of this chapter. 7.4 The TRF as an Animal-based Prison Program Like education / vocational programs offered to prisoners, non-human animal-based programs (commonly referred to as “Prison Animal Programs” or “PAPs” [cf. Bachi 2014]) are also championed by researchers and policy makers alike for how they can lower the financial cost of incarceration and community crime as well as assist in the rehabilitation of inmates so that they can become “functioning members of society” (Strimple 2003: 70). It must be mentioned at the 210 http://www.groomelite.com/index.shtml; accessed 04/29/14 295 outset of this section, however, that unlike non-animal based education programs, PAPs have not been formally studied with any methodological rigor, save for Bachi’s (2014) aforementioned research at the Blackburn TRF program. Instead, the purported benefits of such programs have been largely anecdotal or research findings made without controls (Bachi 2014:14). This important caveat aside (and one that I will return to further into this chapter), the premise of such animal-based prison programs211 when it involves domesticated animals like horses and dogs is to teach inmates how to train and care for animals and in doing so, animals such as dogs and horses gain the kind of redemptive capital that transforms them into adoptable, serviceable companion species while inmates gain their own form of redemptive capital. A short list of these qualities of redemptive capital would include behavioral modification, learning teamwork and responsibility, and reduced recidivism (Strimple 2003:70;72). Once we delve into the life stories of the inmates in my study, we will further explore the purported beneficial outcomes for both horses and humans specific to the Blackburn TRF. While stories of animals taken in by prisoners have a rich literature and cinematic tradition (Strimple 2003:71-72), formalized interaction and care programs, as well as research of those programs take the inclusion of animals into a prison-setting one step further. Strimple (2003:72) points to a dog-training program started in 1981 by Sister Pauline Quinn in the Washington State Correctional Center for Women as the genesis for these more formally implemented and researched PAP-specific programs. With this program, we can start 211 There are a variety of PAP programs: companion animal visitation, wildlife rehabilitation, livestock care, pet adoption, service animal socialization, vocational (this is where the TRF program falls), community service, and “multimodal…Usually vocational program component and community service program component” (Furst 2006:413). 296 understanding how these programs are both advocated to be, and productive of multispecies co-redemption when Stimple observes The benefits of this program for the prisoners were threefold. The women experienced increased self-esteem, developed a marketable skill, and earned college credits. The community gained as well. Dogs that would have otherwise been killed were trained to help people with special needs. (ibid). The first horse-based prison programs began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Colorado-based veterinarian and founder of the National Organization for Wild American Horses (NOWAH), Dr. Ron Zaidlicz was asked by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to help train three mustangs acquired by the state penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado. Though at first met with skepticism by the prison superintendent, he soon relented based on the “multiple benefit of such programs” (Altschille 2011:34) – such as inmates gaining “meaningful and marketable work experience” with reduced chances for recidivism (though this connection has been questioned, see Bachi 2014:12), as well as the prison making money off the adoption sales of trained mustangs (Bachi 2014:11; Strimple 2003). The prison thus provided the labor and facilities, the BLM the horses and feed, and NOWAH the training expertise. In another indication of co-species, co-redemption, while the men learned “all aspects of equine husbandry, including treating injuries and illnesses and gentling212 horses” (Strimple 2003:73), the mustangs would either be adopted as pets or riding horses, or used for the U.S. Border Patrol (Altschille 2011:34). But these redemptive outcomes are never complete or final, as I will go on to discuss in this chapter for the men, and in the next chapter for the horses. 212 More and more, this term used to describe how horses are first taught to accept riders rather than “breaking” them. 297 In 1986, the Canon City prison / NOWAH partnership formalized into the Wild Horse Inmate Program (WHIP). In addition to classroom instruction and on-the-job training, student-inmates were now made eligible to receive local college academic credits (Altschille 2011:34). Because the corrals where the horses were (and still are, as the program is on-going today even with the death of Dr. Zaidlicz in 2008) kept are off-site, only prisoners near the end of their term (and thus in good standing) are eligible to participate in the program. Despite this fact, no inmates have attempted to flee from the site – and my research experience at Blackburn also evidenced the willingness to stay on good behavior (and the prison grounds) because such programs were valued so. According to Dalke, who conducted fieldwork with the Colorado WHIP program, men interested in this program must “compete with thousands of inmates to secure one of the 40 or so wild horse program positions” (2008:6). Furthermore, Dalke observed that, “Inmates know that if they do not work hard, they can easily be replaced” (ibid). In regards to the behavioral benefit brought to the inmates, not only do they become, in the words of prison superintendent Harry B. Johnson, “compassionate cowpokes” (Altschille 2011:34), but “[e]specially noteworthy is the low recidivism for the released inmates who worked with horses” (Altschille 2011:35). The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation was the first (and remains the only) program that combined Thoroughbred ex-racehorses with prison inmate education and training. As previously mentioned, the first prison to accept TRF horses was in New York state, and, as the TRF explains on its website, “it was only natural that the prison farm program would spread to the place where the horse is king, the great state of Kentucky”213. In addition to programs in 213 http://www.trfinc.org/c10/Blackburn-­‐Correctional-­‐Complex-­‐c11.html; accessed 01/20/2014 298 these two states, there are programs for both men and women in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Virginia – all told, there are ten prison farm programs. In addition to these farms, there are several “private” or “satellite” farms as I explained in Chapter Three. All these farms make up the facilities where TRF horses are boarded and cared for214, and as we also know from Chapter Three, some farms are better able than others to provide the care necessary. When the New York Times article broke and controversy ensued, it mainly shed light on the TRF’s problematic relationship and resourcing of its satellite farms; in fact, Drape did not mention the prison farm programs at all in his March 17th, 2011 article, even though they were the foundational farms of the TRF and what set it a part from other Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue programs. The prison farm programs, or the “Second Chances” programs as they have been branded, are identified as such because they are meant to encompass the fates and futurity (Gordon 2010) of both horses and men after they have been dealt their own specific blows or ontological ruptures in life. More specific to the men, the Groom Elite program is part of a nation-wide program that was started in Texas by racehorse owner Susan O’Hara “who believed that her horses would have a better chance of competing effectively and retiring reasonably sound if the people that spent the most time with them, the grooms, were not discounted as necessary evils, but were provided with knowledge and skills training that would enable them to 214 I do not include MMSC on this list for a few reasons. First, aside from the occasional horses kept on site over the winter, the MMSC facilities do not operate for continuous, year-­‐round care of horses; rather, it boards horses only in reschooling and awaiting adoption and will outsource horses to other farms – including Blackburn – if a horse is not to be re-­‐schooled, require extra-­‐care, etc. The second reason for omitting MMSC is that the program split from the TRF in the aftermath of the NYT article controversy, a historical development that happened during my fieldwork and will be explained in the conclusion. 299 more effectively take care of their assigned horses”215. While this program was started to help non-incarcerated, yet still-socially stigmatized backstretch workers (recall my discussion of Castenada et al.’s study on Latino racetrack workers in the Introduction), it transitioned into the TRF’s prison programs with the intention to teach “prisoners to care for horses and qualify for jobs on their release” (TRF 2011:1). 7.4.1 Redeeming time, segmented space Now with a macrocosmic understanding of where the TRF prison program fits into a history of human-animal prison programs, as well as how it generally came about, I will now provide more context into the daily function of the TRF BCC program. As I witnessed it at Blackburn, prisoners are taught through a combination of hands-on and classroom lessons facilitated by farm managers like Linda Dyer. These hands-on lessons are where horses also benefit by receiving the care they need while becoming a co-participant in the men’s learning. As it is often explained by the TRF, either in their newsletters, fundraising materials, or in interviews with me, this set-up is a “win-win” for both horses and men, in that the horses get the care and human companionship they need, and the men – supposedly – get employable skills upon parole. As such, these lessons are a key site of multispecies relationships and reciprocity whereby the redemptive capital of the men is set-up to be cultivated by the horses as both willing subjects and agentive teachers (more on how in a moment). For the horses, their redemptive capital increases as well in relationship to the men’s, but not the ways we previously saw with Ferdy, Fly, and Shooby, as they are not being transformed into mascots or show competition horses. Rather, 215 http://www.groomelite.com/history.shtml?submenuheader=0; accessed 4/29/14. 300 their mere survival and subsequent thriving under the Second Chances program becomes the fodder by which the TRF can prove it is fulfilling its mission as well as bringing unexpected benefit to another population of what Gordon (2010:12) might call the “fallen insider”216 – that of the incarcerated human being. Originally, the program was designed to have the inmates care for the horses seven days a week, but during my fieldwork Linda informed me that this was changed because she was not allowed to work overtime. Instead, she supervises and teaches approximately 18 student-inmates Monday through Friday, from roughly 8am to 4pm. I say “roughly” because despite Linda’s attempts to run the TRF farm “like any Thoroughbred farm,” the crucial difference is that she has to work around the prison’s schedule for the men. This means that the day starts off with the men coming down to the farm after breakfast and starting on their morning chores – which involved first feeding the horses and then, for most, grabbing their groom boxes and heading out to the pastures to groom and check over the horses. These activities might be followed up with Linda teaching them how to work a horse in a round-pen, or instructing them on horse care in the barn with an actual horse or in the classroom. The way that Linda had to work around the schedule and surveillance practices of Blackburn returns us to my previous consideration of Foucault’s ideas on the prison Panoptician. Though it often seemed like Blackburn’s power to discipline became diluted or - in Foucault’s words, “discontinuous” (1977:201) - in the different world “down at” the barn, when it took longer than expected for men to clear count after lunch, or if a man suddenly stopped showing up 216 Vis-­‐à-­‐vis Orland Patterson, Gordon explains: “In the ‘extrusive model’ [whereby an inmate becomes a slave; the ‘intrusive model’ is where the slave becomes an inmate or “permanent enemy on the inside”] where criminality, poverty, misery, heresy, and rebelliousness are the principle conduits to enslavement, the slave is conceived as the fallen insider, as someone who might have or did in principle belong, but has been expelled and now no longer belongs…The fallen insider has violated the social or legal terms of order, the fallen insider is an outlaw” (2010:12). 301 for work because of disciplinary measures or he had been transferred without saying goodbye, these instances reminded me of how Blackburn was still a “disciplinary mechanism” in that This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted into a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchal figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among living beings, the sick and the dead – all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism. (1977:197) As such, a great break in the day in a temporal, not just spatial, sense would then occur when the men had to go back up the hill not only for lunch but to be counted - that is, to make sure no one has escaped or is otherwise occupied in unsanctioned behavior. “That part cuts into the day,” Linda told me one day as we sat in her pick-up truck next to the loafing shed the men were building in a pasture. “You don’t get as much work as you do on a normal farm because they have to go up at lunch, eat lunch, be counted – and that’s two hours out right there,” she explained further. “And in the afternoon,” which was the time during which I was interviewing her in the truck, “they have to leave early, they have to leave by 3:15, and they don’t come down until about 1:30 after count clears, so it really cuts your afternoon short.” The men building the shed were also another kind of time constraint, trying to get the shed up before the weather turned cold and the first snow flurries of November would hit. “We’d get more done actually if we had longer hours,” Linda lamented, concerned about the progress of the shed. This structuring / destructuring of time for the inmates, and Linda and the horses for that matter, also conjures Gordon’s discussion of prison time (2010:13-15). “Around the prisoner,” writes Gordon, “there is an enormous complex practice and discourse of time” (2010:13). Such practice and discourse is defined by “the law” which “renders punishment in units of life-time, 302 giving time to be done in the present and taking away a life with a future, with the right to a future time, or futurity” (ibid). So just as the men are punished with schedules not their own, so too this “taking away a life with a future” comes to present obstacles to the function and success of the TRF program within the larger prison system. For the time the men could commit during the week, they earned $2 per day – with one of those dollars they got to keep (the other going to the prison). In terms of the larger rewards these men would take away if they persisted within the temporal regime, if they committed to (or the circumstances conspired such that they could commit to) the program for the required six months, and passed the 250217 question exam, they would earn a certificate of completion. When I asked Linda what kind of accreditation this program came with, she told me that while the men got educational credit within the prison system, she could not find a cost-effective way to get the program accredited by any of the local colleges – that is, she could not find any professors or administrators to sanction the program “for free.” If this program could not contribute to an inmate’s college education, I asked about what kind of job prospects these men after parole. Due to an extensive career in managing Thoroughbred farms in the Bluegrass before she worked for the State Police for four and a half years as an Officer in Security (the combination of both occupations made her a shoo-in candidate for the Blackburn position when it came up in 2005), Linda not only gives these men a very apt education in Thoroughbred farm management, she can also parlay her still-existing community connections in the form of social capital and networks for job placement for the more promising and proactive parolees. But even this comes with its caveats. 217 I was informed that Linda bumped the exam up to 300 questions right after I left “amongst many groans and moans” (Dyer, personal communication, 02/15/2013). 303 At the time of my fieldwork, as previously mentioned when discussing the increasing costs of state incarceration, Kentucky was still reeling from the global economic downtown that sent the U.S. in a deep recession in late 2008. The horse industry, always a weathervane blown by the larger economic climate, was reeling as well. After recalling the impact of a recession that hit locally in the mid-1980s, Linda observed “farms tightened up, but nothing like this” meaning the current recession. “This has been a lot worse. A lot of people aren’t even breeding their mares, can’t afford to” in terms of paying the stud fees. Linda continued: “And a lot of people are sending horses to the killers” – her word for the network of buyers, shippers, and plants I detailed in Chapter Six – “sneakily, across the [state] borders.” Her sentiment then shifted to the farms: It’s just sad – if you can’t see a business thrive, especially when an area is known for that, I always feels sorry for people who have to file for bankruptcy or have to lose their farm, sell their farm because they can’t keep it up. To indicate the unprecedented reach of the current recession and how it led to the closure of the famous horse farms of the Bluegrass, Linda concluded, “It’s usually the small farms, but even now the big farms are doing it Paroled into this uncertain economy complicated the many claims made that such programs would reduce recidivism through employable skills and education. Though Linda had five farms that said they would be willing to hire parolees from her program if there were any openings, the fact that farms were scaling back operations and positions put such job placement prospects in jeopardy. This situation is akin to the problem the WHIP program experienced between the training of inmates and the job prospects that awaited them upon release. Through the insights of Lamm (2010), Bachi writes, “Most parole criteria require inmates to be employed 304 in full-time jobs” because it is assumed that part-time or cash paying jobs “are often associated with patterns that contribute to repeat offenses” (2014:12). Paradoxically, the types of jobs the men are prepared for via the WHIP, such as handling, training, or providing farrier work for horses, are often part-time, on-call, or cash paying jobs (ibid). “Due to these restrictions many inmates lose the skills they have developed, and in many instances have come to love,” laments Bachi. She goes on to suggest an enhancement of “the program by a structured syllabus including a certification based on proficiency of participants” (ibid); but what is left untroubled is the larger, social context of discrimination against not just the released prisoners as job-seekers, but against the types of jobs they are more socially sanctioned and enabled to acquire. On this note of questionable labor, another criticism leveled at vocational programs like WHIP is that inmate labor is exploited while incarcerated because of the low-to-no wage paid to inmates, yet upon parole these men (or women) cannot get the same jobs as “free” people (ibid) because this would mean demanding a living wage. This calls to mind Angela Davis’ galvanizing criticism of the “prison industrial complex” whereby, “Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by U.S.-based global corporations” (Davis 1998218). Yet in light of this structural contradiction, where there is a disconnect between what inmates learn and labor in prison versus their options for employment and social empowerment beyond prison, something more subtle and nonetheless empowering on a personal level can and seems to be happening with student inmates in the TRF Second Chances program in particular. While we will hear from the men in their own words shortly, as Linda explained it to me: 218http://www.colorlines.com/archives/1998/09/masked_racism_reflections_on_the_prison_industrial_complex.html 305 It helps them with their self-esteem and self-accomplishment. A lot of them feel they cannot pass such a huge test and are so proud of themselves when they do, they just beam. That really makes me feel like I have helped them in their lives also, teaching them if they stick with it and apply themselves they can do what they set out to accomplish. This insight brings us back to Gordon’s writing on prison time. While there is an overwhelming sense of time and future possibility being taken away, Gordon also considers how prisoners find critical ways to “redeem time” while “doing time” in prison (2010:15). Instead of internalizing the “social death” that criminality and the temporal regime of prison can impose on someone219, “If there is one clear lesson that prisoners who refuse the social death sentence teach, it is that to redeem a future, a life, out of a space of living death requires an integrity and fortitude that’s impervious to the contingencies of institutionalized dehumanization and domination” (Gordon 2010:16). As this chapter will go on to illustrate, the TRF Second Chances and Groom Elite program offers the student-inmates of Blackburn a chance to defy such social death sentences and to cultivate integrity and fortitude amidst “institutionalized dehumanization and domination.” One very specific and tangible way this happens, I argue, is through the “touch” (Haraway 2008) of the horses. As one man commented in a documentary film made about the TRF’s prison programs called Homestretch: “These horses help me do the time.” In a way, the touch of the horses and the redemption of time (and life) they come to offer through the TRF program acts as an elixir, if not a form of resistance, to the Panoptic control and regulation of Blackburn. 219 “I’ve seen guys who as soon as they got their sentence from the judge, they take it as literal meaning. They don’t have enough insight to know that when the judge says ‘life,’ he’s not talking about your natural life.” (Gordon [2010:15] quoting from Frederick 2001) 306 Furthermore, this kind of redemption extends beyond the sensitive perimeter of the prison and into the surrounding social world that “immorally” relies on the prison “for the work it does for us [the “non-imprisoned”] in managing our putative right to a safe and prosperous future” (Gordon 2010:17). “This redemption,” writes Gordon, “involves refusing the death sentence and its doom, involves refusing to be treated as if one was never born, fated to a life of abandonment and spectrality” (2010:15). As such, the redemption offered through the relationships these men build with the horses can extend even further, into questions of ontology, existence, and the possibility of refusing the internalization of the Panoptician. That is to say, these men do not have to become the specter grooms that attend to ghost herds should they refuse “to serve time, to become its servant” (Gordon 2010:15). 7.5 The Redemptive Capital of the Blackburn Herd In what follows, I delve at last into the ethnographic thickness of my research at Blackburn. However, I must also acknowledge that I cannot generalize for all the Second Chance / Groom Elite programs managed by the TRF through the lone example of Blackburn, for as we will learn in the next chapter with my encounter with another prison and its horses in Indiana, not all TRF prison farm programs run like Blackburn, and therefore not all farms produce the same quality of care for horses or the same kind of relationships between inmates and equines. This important disclaimer aside, I will begin this section first by considering the redemptive capital of the horses in the Blackburn herd. I will look at certain horses in particular because of how they were identified by individual men for the connection they had with them. This analysis will involve a discussion of the first two stages of redemptive capital: ontological rupture and the identification of redeeming traits. In this particular generative context, it must be noted that these horses are 307 initially valued by these men from their unique status and experience as an incarcerated person, and, moreover, as someone who sought out the TRF program to redeem this very status and experience. When I asked Linda to generalize on how this program impacts the horses, she responded: On the horses it’s interesting because when they come to the farm lots of times they have bad habits, biters, off the racetrack and not very nice. The guys work with them and show them a lot of love and attention and the horses really come around to be nice horses and quit all the biting and being nasty. The ontological rupture for these horses is the moment it is determined they will no longer race. As we saw in the previous chapter, this decision can be made serially by passing a horse down the line of care (as was the case with Fly) or through a one-time exchange of responsibility between trainer and the TRF (as was the case with Shooby). Unmoored from the purpose and position for which they were exclusively brought into the world, these horses are herded away from the fatality of ambiguity (the “figure” of which being the slaughter pipeline) and into the relative safety of the TRF for reasons I explained in the previous chapter as well – the greatest of which, I would argue, being that they proved to be identifiable (and thus still-socially and economically valuable) Thoroughbreds. From here, however their discernibility is still uncertain as their additional redeeming traits are assessed, or have yet to emerge in the midst of undeniable vices like biting and other bad habits (cribbing is hugely undesirable, as I will come to explain). But as I observed at the outset of this chapter through the example set by Ferdy at Blackburn, it is critical to these horses’ redemption (and thus survival and thriving) that they learn to become with humans they intra-act with by controlling their nature-culture – such as biting. In this way, the moral dimensions of redemptive capital are not just applicable to human interlocutors; horses 308 must be able to show that they can act morally (or what is interpreted as “moral”) in response to human care (c.f. Bekoff 2007). This is one debt horses come to owe their redeemers: that they reciprocate one moral action (their rescue from fatal ambiguity) with another (becoming human amenable, that is “handle-able” and not prone to violence or trickery, or, for even more economically-oriented redemptive capital, ride-able). Thus, while horses may carry undesirable traits from their ontological rupture into their new lives, they can off-set these deficits by either fazing out these traits (“coming around”) through control of their natureculture, or over-ride (as it were) the persistence of such traits by demonstrating the presence of more redeemable ones – such as protecting a student-inmate from another horse, as we will learn shortly. Key to nurturing the traits that come to redeem these horses are the relationships they build with the men, how, to re-state Linda’s observation, “The guys work with them and show them a lot of love and attention and the horses really come around to be nice horses and quit all the biting and being nasty.” What are some of the specific ways in which the men “show them a lot of love” and help these horses come around? We can evidence these transformations in how the men describe their relationships with the horses. 7.5.1 Call Anytime “Nate”220 was a 26 year-old Iraq war veteran when he told me about his growing attachment to a horse named “Call Anytime”: …there’s this one horse out there, Call Anytime. I took a likin’ to that horse though. He’s just, he’s got a good attitude on him, he’s 220 pseudonym 309 kinda high strung, plus he looks like he’s a big man-looking horse so… But if anything, if you take me to a horse, in a couple of days I’m gonna grow attached to it because I like animals, you know. Some people, they just look at them and it’s “just a horse” – I don’t look at them like that, it’s just the same as, you know, a person, really. Like Ferdy, Fly, and Shooby, Call Anytime has a story that can be partially traced via a “paper trail” in addition to what he tells men like Nate. The paper trail I could immediate locate for Call Anytime came from looking up his profile on Equibase.com, a website that specializes in providing the racing records of racehorses. Here, I discovered that he foaled in Florida on March 20th, 2002, and raced as a bay colored gelding. He was (is) by Family Calling, out of Just Anything. Looking deeper into his pedigree via Equineline.com, a website useful for looking up the five-generation pedigree of racehorses for free, Call Anytime had a mixture of obviously illustrious ancestors such as Mr. Prospector (his grandfather), Northern Dancer, Raise a Native, and Native Dancer (just to name a few, and those that are quite closely related at that), and those more known to racing enthusiasts or whose fame is now fading with time. In his racing career, which only spanned his two and three year old years, Call Anytime “started” (raced competitively) 16 times, winning but two times, “placing” (coming in second) twice, and “showing” (coming in third) three times, all for a career earnings total of $25,705. Tracing Nate’s story and connection to Call Anytime came through my one-time interview with him. Nate grew up on a cattle and tobacco221 farm in a region “thirty miles from the Tennessee border” know for its lakes and the foothills of the Appalachians. He grew up with horses like Quarter Horses, Tennessee Walkers – “I learned to ride and mess with horses since 221 Though Kentucky is famously known for its production of bourbon and racehorses, it is cattle, tobacco, and coal that have served as the true cash crops, so to speak, of the state’s economy. Cf. Kingsolver 2010 310 I’ve been able to walk, since I was a lil’kid222” – and came to associate riding with “man time” where “there ain’t no lady, go out to the woods, ride around a lil’bit. We just relax.” He was raised Baptist and remains a Christian – “I believe in God, I know He’s there.” When I asked him about his educational background, he replied “ah well, quit school my freshman year, got my GED and then…. That’s about it.” But that wasn’t just it, for soon after he joined the Army, “did basic right over here in Ft. Knox” and then was stationed in Basrah, Iraq. “I was a tanker,” he told me, and then, in uncanny correlation to how he had just described Call Anytime, “so mostly we drove around looking big in our tanks, tryin’ to scare people, blow a’few things up.” When I asked him further what it was like being in Iraq, the first word out of his mouth was, “Scary.” When he got back, “the doctors said I was okay” in terms of PTSD, and he wanted to serve out his time in either Korea or Germany after he took a break to come home but “that’s when I got locked up, though, with DUI’s and stuff.” He explained his journey to incarceration haltingly: “I was good while I was in the Army! I mean, I drank, but that one of my main problems, I’m a bad drinker. And then, uh, you what we said about choices? I sold some stuff to some guys and that ended up… It’s just where I’m at.” When I asked Nate more about Call Anytime, if there were any similarities he saw between the ex-racehorse and himself, he shared: “Yeah, I like a horse that’s got its own mind. We’re a little headstrong, I guess. That’s me, like I said, I don’t listen very well.” 222 My attempt to transcribe his particular kind of Kentucky-­‐accent. 311 7.5.2 Ivory “Luis”223 was a 24 year-old the former night watchman and field crew horse farm employee. He grew up working on horse farms in the Bluegrass – Woodford County, to be exact - and came from a family that worked with horses: “My grandfather has been working with horses for 46 years. And my grandma – she passed away – she was a foaler224 too.” He foaled his first horse when he was twelve, and commented on this experience in relation to the horses he now cared for at Blackburn: “I foal these horses and I see the beginning and it’s so great, then it’s so sad to see the end part. You know, I never got to see the end part, how, you can see it in their eyes, they’re just wore down and beat.” Luis knew about being beaten: “When I was growing up, I have an uncle who used to beat the crap out of me[…]he’d get drunk and knock me around “ but “I never fell down.” He compared his infallibility to a horse he admired, “Ivory, the one with the missing tail”225 – saying “that horse over there, it gets beat up and beat upon, everyday. It’s the same personality comin’ up to you…and he doesn’t change. That’s me, I guess.” Upon hearing this, Linda226 piped up from the back of the room, “And he saved you!” When I asked what happened, Luis recounted the story: Yeah, he saved me today. I was checking out this other horse, and I’m having some trouble with my eyesight – I can’t see anything over here [indicating peripheral vision] and the alpha was coming up behind me to take a little nip. And I was doing something with Ivory and then all of a sudden he just took off and went straight – At this point, Luis saw it necessary to qualify Ivory’s typical personality: 223 Pseudonym 224 Meaning she worked the night watch, staying in the barn with mares about to deliver foals and then assisting with the delivery – like an equine midwife. 225 Linda told me that Ivory’s tail had been slammed in a starting gate and when he “broke” – sprang – from the gate at the start of a race, he ripped part of his tail off. 226 Per Blackburn protocol, Linda had to attend all interviews for safety, and surveillance. 312 Ivory’s a wuss, he gets picked on by everybody – and for some reason he took V [unclear] on, and teeth were open, so it was kinda cool for him to look out. Luis then went on describe why he thought Ivory, normally a “wuss” would try to protect him from the head herd leader (“the alpha”): Since the first week I was here, and I’ve been working with him for three months… He got kicked in the side and he had a big welt and it swelled real bad, and he was all standoffish and wouldn’t come to the gate with the other horses so I was kinda lookin’ out for him. And then, all of a sudden, one day I’m sittin’ there groomin’ horses, and he just comes and puts his head on my shoulder. I guess he was tired or sick or somethin’, and he just puts his head on my shoulder and just chills there a good ten minutes. Just wanted to be loved on. As Luis grew up working on horse farms, the labor identity was a part of his family heritage and too was imprinted on him through his own work helping birth foals and grooming horses. He was thus comfortable and knowledgeable when it came to attending to Ivory’s “big welt,” and the consequence of that care was to have a horse, who would have otherwise been “standoffish” wanting, instead, “to be loved on.” Like Nate, Luis brought a background and perspective that were conducive to drawing out horses’ to interact and communicate cross-species. But in Luis’ case, Ivory’s gravitation towards him after he “looked out for him” went beyond just making Ivory more healthy and social-able: And ever since then he’s always come straight to me and make sure, I don’t know… It’s weird. I’d have a crappy day and he’ll come right up to me. But any other time he’s just chillin’, waits for me to come right up to him. What is illustrative about Luis and Ivory’s relationship is how Ivory responded to the extra-ordinary care given to him by his human interlocutor. By protecting Luis from the alpha horse, Ivory saw him as part of his herd in need of protection – this assumption can be made on a basic 313 understand of horse herd behavior. Conversely, Ivory seemed to reach out to Luis when he needed love, and was able to discern this need in Luis when he needed it. As such, it is almost like Ivory accepted Luis as a “horse,” whereas in Nate’s relationship with Call Anytime, he accepted the horse as one of his own, “a person.” In both cases, the redemptive capital of the horses, be it their stubbornness and sense of self, or unexpected bravery and uncanny sensitivity, was drawn out by being in responsive relation to these men. These men met the equine gaze (even if only seeing themselves mirrored in the horses’ proverbial eye), and the horses responded in ways that were heavily interpreted (Nate) and also almost beyond discursive explanation (Luis). By responding in ways that resonated with these men, Call Anytime and Ivory demonstrated a form of redemptive capital that is suggestive of what Haraway wishes to call “joy:” “What if work and play, and not just pity, open up when the possibility of mutual response, without names, is taken seriously as an everyday practice available to philosophy and science? What if a useable word for this is joy?” (original emphasis; 2008:22). So far, I have illustrated transformative relationships involving student-inmates with previous horse histories; what about the men who had no previous horse experience? What kind of relationships did they have with the horses, and what kind of transformations with the horses ensued? 7.5.3 Trevor “Stewart” was 35 years old from the Frankfort (state capital) area. He described his previous experience with horses as “ZERO - I went on a trail ride once and I was sore for three days,” and his identity as a “city boy” who “likes country work.” He was enticed by the TRF 314 program because, “The main reason was because I love animals and it was for a 90 day program. I figured I got the best of both worlds. I get to play with animals all day and I get out a little bit quicker.” Vis-à-vis Gordon, Stewart’s story demonstrates how one inmate attempts to redeem his time by trying not to become its servant, but rather extending his labor investment to the care of the horses (“I get to play with animals all day and I get out a little bit quicker”). He then told me about his favorite horse, Trevor: …he’s a chestnut horse over in the other field. He don’t… I think he’s one of the smaller horses… He kinda keeps to himself – I’m sure he’s got buddies, but I’ve never really seen anybody that’s around’em. And he’ll let you do anything to him. He knows you’re there to help him, to feed him and stuff; he accepts that. But he’s one of the few horses that I’ve come in contact with that actually let’s you do whatever… So yeah, I guess that’s why: he’s one of the smaller horses and he lets you help him when somethin’s wrong with him. Stewart himself was a shorter man who kept to himself, and saw a lot of similarity between him and Trevor for such reasons. “I look at myself as a situational inmate,” he told me when I asked him about what his life was like beyond the farm program and the prison. “I’m not gonna be back. A major bad accident happened, I’m here. Not that I’m any better than anyone else here, but I won’t be back.” Though I respected the inmate’s privacy and wishes not to tell me what they were incarcerated for, it usually came out, especially when they started hinting at it because it haunted them everyday, as it did with Stewart. It was our typical night: we’d go out in Lexington, play shootin’ pool, we left there and went somewhere else where we usually go dancing, had a few drinks there, and went somewhere else and got bored and she was ready to leave… I asked her to try to get a room but she wanted to sleep in her own bed… So we drove home that night and ah… We didn’t make it. […] So um, yeah: don’t drink and drive. 315 Shattered by this loss of his partner, Stewart also had to sell or forfeit his house, his car, his motorcycle until “I had nothing but the clothes I have and what furniture I have” in the wake of the legal consequences. His partner’s family also sued him for millions of dollars for the loss of their child. Incarceration seemed to add insult to injury for Stewart, which is why he came down to the TRF barn looking for escape and time off his sentence. He described his initial reaction to working with the horses in the Blackburn herd as, “Damn they’re big! Relative to me, my size, I’m only 5’6” and you see these horses, they’re pretty good size,” and Trevor, in relation to the herd: “He kinda hangs out by himself, relies on himself and that’s pretty much how I live.” But it wasn’t just the physical and personality complementarity that made Trevor so relatable to Stewart; it was also Trevor’s propensity to “let you help him when somethin’s wrong with him,” instead of fighting and intimidating men like Stewart. Because Trevor allowed himself to be cared for and, moreover, cared by someone who would see such personal complementarity with him, he responded favorably to the care program offered by the TRF. Demonstrating himself to be very manageable, horses like Trevor can reach men who are more intimidated by horses or, moreover, who have trouble identifying with and / or forming caring relationships. In the equestrian world of the non-imprisoned, horses like this are called “social workers” for how they are perceived to “babysit” neophyte riders. The redemptive capital of such horses thus becomes not just how morally reciprocal they can be, but also the labor niche they can fulfill, pulling in would-be horse people and gently initiating them into relationships that previously offered only fear, anxiety, and bewilderment. On a larger, less intimate scale, these transformations in the horses are also observable and appreciable to key supporters of the TRF program. As Linda explains: “A lot of people come to visit and they say ‘your horses look happy’ because they’re relaxed and the guys work 316 with them. They groom them, trim’em. That’s why I preach to them: you want happy, healthy horses.” By responding to the care regime Linda teaches the men and the men implement, these horses help demonstrate not only that the TRF Blackburn program produces “happy, healthy horses,” but this program also represents for the TRF on a larger, pan-organizational scale. By coming around behaviorally and physically, these horses help demonstrate that the “humane alternative” the TRF implements – rescuing Thoroughbred ex-racehorses and placing them in the care of attentive student-inmates – is successful and worthwhile. This fulfillment of the TRF’s mission in turn helps satisfy donors and grow the additional financial support so crucial for the continued functioning of a nonprofit organization, thus strengthening the social capital of the TRF as a whole, and Blackburn in particular (yet not in equal ways, as I will later discuss). As one student-inmate, “Hoyt,” described such economic dimensions to the redemptive capital of the Blackburn herd: “We’ve got people that come here and donate money to the TRF, and they come here periodically and check on these horses, and the way I understand it, some of them will even pay for their vet bills out of their own pocket for the love of the horses.” Thus, the redemptive capital of the TRF Blackburn horses can also be the evidence they provide (and become) for demonstrating the success of the TRF. As these horses continue to thrive and instill “joy” in the Second Chances / Groom Elite program, while continuously contributing to and maintaining the social capital and network of the TRF, we see “stage three” of their redemptive capital as being one where their value and position holds steady in a field that continues to recognize and empower their value. Yet as I mentioned at the outset of this section, such a spectrum of redemptive capital is not experienced across the entire TRF herd, as will be explored in the next chapter in relation to another population of prison horses and the New York Times controversy. 317 Having just polished the mirror of horses like Call Anytime, Ivory, and Trevor, we have received a glimpse not just in how they are valued by the inmates, but by the TRF as a total organization – from the program managers to the sponsors themselves. What is also being revealed, however, is how Call Anytime, Ivory, Trevor, and other horses are “becoming with” these inmates – that is to say, as they are transforming from “products” with vices learned from life on the track to teachers, protectors, and friends of these men, so too are the men becoming something other by regaining their own form of redemptive capital. 7.6 The Redemptive Capital of Student-Inmates In this final section, I will now explore some of the ways in which the men described how the program impacted them and gave them perspective on the changes they made in it. These transformations are what are touted in the research and media literature on prison-based education program and, moreover, animal-interaction programs at prisons. During my fieldwork tenure at Blackburn, I often heard the phrase that programs such as these were “win-win” for both horses and the men. This meant that just as the horses benefitted from the care relationships with the men, the men also benefitted from these relationships and the educational instruction / vocational training they concurrently received. The crucial difference, however, in these two types of “wins” is that the benefits brought to the horses were channeled into the economic and social capital (these “species” of capital to be discussed shortly) of the TRF, whereas the benefits of the prisoners were channeled through the Kentucky Department of Corrections and its institutional struggle with funding, ballooning imprisonment, and recidivism – as briefly sketched in the outset of this chapter. 318 Before we delve into the local particularity of the benefits the student-inmates of the TRF Blackburn program received, I would like to more substantially frame exactly what are some of the benefits for prisoners that are commonly associated with (or hoped to be associated with) prison programs such as the TRF’s. If the first and second stages of redemptive capital propose that the subject possesses culturally-specific characteristics or attributes that are deemed too valuable to die in the wake of an ontological rupture (here, understood as the “social death sentence” illustrated by Gordon), then what do the men possess and how does it come to be recognized and empowered? Here, we do see some crucial differences between subjects if we compare horses to men. A crucial difference, I would argue, is based on questions of objectification through commodification: how are the horses commodified compared to the men? As I demonstrated in the previous two chapters, in the Bluegrass horses are ontologically seen as commodities: from the profits they might generate from racing, sales, breeding, to the costs necessary to make these profits happen, such as purchasing food, paying for vet bills and farrier service – and the list goes on and on. This kind of commodification feeds into the economic elements of redemptive capital as it is particular to the Bluegrass: horses, even when rescued, are still evaluated for what it will cost to repurpose them, as well as what kind of economic capital they can command, especially in the form of adoption fees. As we now know, however, this kind of economic valuing of horses coexists right alongside other, sometimes as equally-if-not-more compelling value people place on these horses: what I’ve identified as existing in the moral dimensions of redemptive capital. Here, horses are redeemed not just for the money they make, but the moral stance they come to signify: that had they been slaughtered, or subjected to the other two evils of abuse and neglect, a good 319 life would have been wasted. In contrast for the men in my study, the initial redemptive capital they came to the TRF program with was not the kind that other people identified for them and thus channeled them down to the hill to Linda’s office; rather, these men self-selected to come down the hill, and through a complex process based on a lot of hypothetical, desired outcomes, only then did the economic and moral forces of redemptive capital at work emerge. Thus, for the men the second stage of redemptive capital happens differently than for their horses, whereby the identification of the traits that will enable the redemptive process for them happens less from a third-party position of power and influence, and more from the men’s self-initiative and personal valuation. For example, when Stewart says, “I’m a situational inmate,” he sees himself as an outsider to the incarceration system and culture even as he is still ensconced within it. He does not want to internalize his social death sentence, but rather wants to distance himself as much as possible from it both in terms of his self-perception and worth, and the time he must spend in punishment. The way to enable that process, as he identified it, was through the TRF Second Chances program. He saw himself as worthy, if not in need, of what the program could do for him. 7.6.1 Distancing oneself from imprisonment That being said, the initial reasons why many of the men selected to be in the TRF program were based on an exchange that at first had nothing to do with valuing their relationships to horses or gaining an education. It had to do with redeeming time in a strictly temporal sense: graduate from the TRF program and receive ninety days off their sentence. As one inmate explained to me: 320 I came to the TRF when I first got to Blackburn. Basically I needed a 90-day program to get me out of here. And another: There is a benefit to me as time goes, the 90 days. But some men were also, or simultaneously drawn, by the possibility of working with the horses. This intrigue usually came out of previous experience with “animals,” be they in livestock or companion species roles – so here we some traits of redemptive capital starting to emerge, where a man’s previous relationships and experiences with animals made it personally conceivable for him to motivate to pursue additional relationships in a very new experience. In addition to the pragmatic and strategic benefits directly related to the man’s negotiation of his incarcerated state, some shared that by coming down and working with the horses their time could be rendered meaningful, “redeemed” as Gordon put it, through service to the horses – not “servitude” to the prison system and its “relational idiom of power” (2010:13, 16). I’m actually doing something. It is the time credit and using time wisely. Also, I have an “Ag”[agricultural] background. I subscribe to the concept of Thoroughbred retirement. Furthermore, by self-selecting to come down to the TRF farm, many men are looking to simply find relief from the pressure they feel “up” the hill at the main incarceration grounds. They are looking for a sense of abolition within captivity. Their bodies may be confined, but their minds (and spirits, if you will) will not be condemned; as Gordon observed via Gregory Frederick, these men potentially seek to “’live in prison with allowing the evil of prison to live’ in you” (2010:16). When I came in I just saw a bunch of horses and had to come down. It felt a little like an escape. 321 I just got here two weeks ago, so when you get here you hear about the horse program. Pretty much, I mean, if you’re in jail and you go to the camps you hear about the horse program, so this is about the only thing I wanted to do. 7.6.2 The ability to become-with horses With a glimpse into some of the motivations men had to self-select for participating in the TRF program at Blackburn, let us now turn to consider how such motivation initiated the growth of their redemptive capital at stages two and three. Here, redemptive capital in both its moral and economic terms is defined on two levels of phenomenon. The first is how educationally-based programs like the TRF’s are conceived to work and, in turn, “pay off” in terms of improved human behavior in exchange for less volatile costs incurred by the prison. After I consider this kind of macro-structure, I will turn to the words of the men themselves and explore how they understood the benefits of the program – for both themselves, and the horses. In a 1995 article, “Adult Academic and Vocational Correctional Education Programs: A Review of Recent Research,” Gerber and Fritsch provide insight into how problematic it actually is to correlate these programs with the hypotheses that adult academic and vocational correctional education programs lead to fewer disciplinary violations during incarceration, to reductions in recidivism, to increases in employment opportunities, and to increases in participation in education upon release. (1995:119) The difficulty of constructing this correlation comes not from the fact that these programs make no difference in inmate rehabilitation (the authors take on the infamous 1974 Martinson Report that sparked the “nothing works” era for being premature in “dismissing all forms of intervention [1995:120]), but rather because the research conducted thus far (circa 1995) has been methodologically uneven (c.f. Bachi 2014). Perhaps the most pervasive obstacle to producing 322 research that affirms educational programs – be they academic, vocational, or social skills – is a lack of control groups, whereby the researchers simultaneously study a group of inmates not participating in these programs along with a sampling of those who do, and then compare the results of each group. In this way, researchers can analyze for any significant difference in, for example, recidivism rates for men who participated in programs versus those who did not. But Gerber and Fritsch also acknowledge that determining the benefits of education programs in prison is not just about statistics, but rather “evaluating any one prison program without regard for the social environment is bound to be problematic” due to a variety of factors such as “the offender’s previous life history, post-release family and other socio-economic connections, access to opportunity systems, physical and mental health” (1995:121). Furthermore, the inmates that participate in these programs may have more personal motivation and have therefore “self-selected” to participate, thus making it “difficult to determine whether their postrelease success is due to their ambitions or to the success of the program in which they were involved” (1995:122). Lastly, “[a]s a general rule, the longer researchers follow subjects, the more confident we are in accepting their findings” (ibid), but such research is difficult to conduct due to the limits of human research ethics (as I experienced with my research) and available funding. Of the studies that Gerber and Fritsch do consider, some “show no correlation between prison education and recidivism” (1995:126) and “that vocational-technical training did not increase postrelease employment success,” while others, particularly college education programs, “consistently show positive consequences for society” (1995:129). Acknowledging this fluctuation in research results, the authors share some reasons why some programs may be more 323 successful than others. As I go through these reasons, I will also make note of where the Blackburn TRF program falls in relation to them in italicized text. 1.) “The more extensive the educational program, the more likely it is to achieve its stated objective,” such as students actually completing programs rather than taking just a few courses (1995:135). This is the equivalent of men participating in the TRF program but either not committing to the full six months or not taking, and passing, the certification exam. 2.) “Programs that are separate from the rest of the prison are more likely to succeed,” such as operating in their own designated space (1995:135). A great part of the appeal of the TRF program at Blackburn is how the farm itself is set down the hill and thus away – spatially and socially – from the main correctional grounds. As Stewart described it: “I’m not locked up when I am down here,” and then later on went to inquire if such programs like the one the TRF ran out of Blackburn were available upon parole, stating “She’s [Linda] taught us a lot and I’d hate to throw that away or out it on the back burner.” 3.) “Programs that provide follow-up after release are more likely to succeed,” especially those with placement services (1995:136). As previously mentioned, Linda has connections with farms who would hire paroled men from her program, but the economics of the situation are of concern as starter positions at farms either don’t pay enough for the men to cover living costs and debts, or that these jobs just simply are not available due to a locally-felt downturn in the global economy. This last part indexes the last two recommendations made by Gerber and Fritsch: 4.) “With respect to vocational education, programs that provide skills relevant to the contemporary job market are more likely to achieve their stated objectives” (1995:136). 324 5.) “Programs that are successful in attracting an appropriate audience are more likely to achieve their intended audience” (1995:136). Though Gerber and Fritsch cite time duration of programs as often being a mismatch for student-inmates, the special circumstances of working with horses can be a factor that eliminates many men from participating in the program. Linda told me that some men start out and then quit because they remain afraid of the horses – “which is fine because horses aren’t for everybody.” In other cases, Linda has to keep an eye on some men, even deny them application to the program at first, to make sure that their commitment and good behavior can be counted on. Many are attracted to the program because of the 90 days it knocks off their sentence, but also exactly because of the spatial and social separation the farm offers from the rest of the prison grounds. Some men aren’t just looking for the sense of freedom, escape, and uncanny relationships they can forge with the horses – some are just looking for a clandestine place to smoke (tobacco is outlawed at Blackburn, and furthermore it is a danger to a wood building filled to the top with hay as most barns are) or participate in other prohibited activities. Gerber and Fritsch go on to conclude that future research should analyze the relationship between precollege and college education and disciplinary programs during incarceration, between college education and postrelease employment and education, and between vocational education and postrelease participation in education. (1995:137) In relation to this, my research at Blackburn can only offer suggestions of connections between the TRF as a vocational program and how the men participating in it experience and behave during incarceration – though I also asked them what they would remember and take away from this program, but this is only speculation from lives still imprisoned and yet momentarily empowered by the TRF program. Knowing that the locally lived lives of the student-inmates of 325 this program cannot, at least through the methodology of my study, confirm the societal and economic benefits of these programs either during incarceration or upon parole, they can nevertheless offer us a glimpse into the micropractices and changes that can constitute macrocosmic concerns – and it begins back at the concept of redemptive capital. On an embodied, cultural capital level, the men are taught lessons of responsibility, team work, dedication, and patience not outright but through learning how to handle and care for horses; as Nate helps put it: “It’s [at the TRF farm] like you’re not really being told what to do, you have to do it because they [the horses] can’t do it for themselves.” However, this is not a process of linear transmission, as Linda detailed: “It’s not hard to teach them the material, it’s trying to make them open up their eyes for their own life and that they can make themselves a better life if they take control of their life and think about it.” One of the most immediate ways that the men begin to receive the cultural capital of the TRF program is by learning how to change their basic behavioral patterns around the horses. As Hoyt put it, reflecting on the difference between the Tennessee Walking horses he once had before incarceration and the TRF ex-racehorses: These [TRF] horses, I call them high strung, and they’re ready to race as they’ve raced all their lives. I guess you have to be a little more careful around these horses than the pleasure horses we had because I know you can drop a quarter, slam a door, and some of these horses will go off… So that’s what some of these new guys that come down here don’t understand. They come through here, talking loud and what-have-you. One question that I posed to the men during my formal interviews with them that touches upon how working with the horses has taught them social skills they might take into their human relationships was “What have horses taught you that humans have not been able to?” For some, 326 this stumped them and they had to think about it some more; for others, they had immediate responses, like “Ryan”: I don’t know if the horses have brought anything to the table in terms of my edification and outlook in life in general. There’s things that animals can give you that – they love and are appreciative everyday. I don’t know if I am projecting that, but I feel it. Especially when you are deeply involved in the care of a horse, like these couple two last days doctoring feet. The way that they just accept their treatment, even when some of it makes them feel uncomfortable it is like “ok, this guy is here to help me.” For Ryan, it was the love but moreover the appreciation that the horses supposedly demonstrated when men like him took care of him that was the basis of a perspective transformation that, while he could not grasp it consciously, he nevertheless felt it. Seeing the relationship between his work and care and the horse’s response by both healing and becoming more relatable deepened the educational impact of the TRF program into an embodied, almost pre-verbal experience and knowledge. When Nate answered this question, he brought up issues of ethics and responsibility: If you work with horses you’s gonna have good ethics anyways, you know. It’s like caring for a kid, you know. It teaches you to have a little bit of responsibility, I guess kindness, you know, ‘cause anytime yer with any type of living creature and you grow a bond, you show niceness, they’re gonna be kind to you in return. For Nate, when “responsibility” and “kindness” were a part of a human’s interaction with a horse, one got the same “in return.” This cross-species reciprocity would confirm that the ethics held by a human, such as Nate, were valid and productive. That Nate described these ethics as “like caring for a kid” is notable in that he once again makes a connection between his relationships with the TRF horses and those with his own species. Given that Nate expressed great remorse about neglecting his family and children as he partied too much upon returning 327 from Iraq, it is telling that he consistently reflects on human relationships when asked about his relationships with the TRF horses. When I asked Luis what the horses were teaching him that humans could not, he responded: To be patient. I’m just not patient. I’m learning that here, you know, explaining things. Horses, when they get frustrated, they’re gettin’ a handful. I’ve always taken the time. So that’s the main thing, and compassion. I’ve turned it towards my fellow man and… Yeah, that’s about it. Figure 16: Linda and inmate (face obscured for anonymity) with horses at Blackburn (photo by TVS McKee) 328 What is notable about Luis’ response is that he formally acknowledges that he has “turned” the patience and compassion he has learned from the program to his “fellow man.” But for some men, like Hoyt, a man in his 50s from Bath County who claimed that, like the horses, “I’m basically in here for a crime I didn’t commit,” the horses were helping him get through the emotional struggle of incarceration: Well, it reminds me of an old song by Tom T. Hall, “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine” – friends are hard to find when they discover that you’re down, and basically the old dog will be there for you – and the horses are the same way. Hoyt also saw the relationships the horses offered in juxtaposition with the volatile social relationships with his own species he had to endure back up the hill: “These horses are just – they don’t ask you any questions, they don’t tell you what to do – all they need is to be fed, cared for, and loved.” He then reflected on how the horses got to the TRF farm in the first place and why such care could not be extended to them by their pre-TRF owners: “And why these people that put them in here don’t realize that I don’t know. It’s not just a money game, they need some care.” Hoyt’s reflection on the economics of Thoroughbred ex-racehorse retirement and care echo Linda’s additional observation of how the value and personalities of horses shifts because of how they are recontextualized in the TRF program: The great thing working with these horses is that we aren’t in a business to produce. So we really get to enjoy more of the personalities of the horses because we’re not running them, we’re not breeding them, we’re not selling them. So I think we get to enjoy them probably more than anybody else. That’s what some of them say who’ve never worked with horse before: “I never realized how much personality horses have and they’re all different.” 329 Yet while the horses in the TRF program are retired from the “business to produce” – except in the sense it is only their emerging personalities and health that are called upon to reify the TRF’s mission from time to time – the student-inmates of the TRF program are not exempt from social demands of their labor and behavioral compliance. While their education in the TRF program enhances their cultural capital twofold – knowledge of horse care, coupled with an increased sense of emotional and social intelligence – the social capital they gain from this program is uneven and, I would argue, does not neatly convert investments made in economic capital and transmissions received in cultural capital. 7.6.3 Life beyond the fence? Bourdieu understood the third fundamental species of capital – social – as a “durable network of members with the backing of collectively-owned capital” (1986). For the TRF horses, their social capital is the network of the non-profit itself: staff, board members, volunteers, donors, and general fans of / activists for Thoroughbred retirement. Once accessioned into the TRF herd, according to its mission, these horses will be backed by the collectively-owned capital of the TRF until the end of their lives. They might be shuffled between TRF farms for various reasons or be adopted out but they will only lose that social capital, the membership and profits it provides, when they die. As such, they will also continuously participate in the reproduction of the TRF by helping to continuously re-consecrate the TRF’s mission and function by living and thriving as they do in the prison pasture of the TRF. For the student-inmates of the TRF program at Blackburn, while they are granted temporary membership into the social capital of the TRF, the network that they ultimately answer to (the “postrelease” field, if you will) is first that of the Kentucky Department of 330 Corrections and Justice when assessing their parole, and then upon release, transitional programs – if offered by the state – as well as whatever configuration of nonincarceral society they end up in. If Linda can find a job for these men, then they peripherally stay within the social capital of the TRF, but otherwise, unless these men do not / can not deploy the cultural capital earned from their graduation from the TRF program in terms of securing horse-based employment, perhaps all they have to fall back on from the program are the lessons horses could teach them but humans could not. And even then, these lessons might not be honored or valued by the networks these men find themselves in, especially should they return to the old patterns, people, and places that enabled their path to incarceration in the first place. As such, the third stage of redemptive capital for these men – either the continuous cultivation and negotiation of their redemptive capital, or another slide toward rupture and demise – is not certain given both the questionable economic circumstances into which they are paroled, and the lack of infrastructure (economically and ethically) with which to receive and further guide these men. That is to say, the same knots threaten to retie in the same old ways, just with new threads once intended to affect change. Speaking of such threads, because I could not follow these men into postrelease life, I instead asked them “When you are finished with this program and released from Blackburn, how are you going to remember this TRF program?” At the time I knew him, “Dan” was his 50s who made “bad choices” with drinking and drugs while “I was depressed, unemployed, and homeless,” answered: First, I will remember “my” horses – Ferdinand’s Star, Sea of Red, Phantom on Tour, the respect and learning of these fine animals –and to know they really trusted me and looked forward to seeing me daily. 331 “Paul,” who was in his 30s and incarcerated for ten years for selling drugs “instead of just working and living a normal life,” shared his plans with me to literally adopt a Thoroughbred: When I am released from here I plan on coming back to adopt at least one horse, Do Not Touch, so I believe I will take a lot of the things I learned here with me. Before I started this program nine months ago I didn’t know a thing about horses but I have learned a lot in the time I have spent in this program and I believe it is a very good program not only for us but for the horses. For “David,” among the many jobs he held when he moved from California to Kentucky a few years ago, he worked as a hot walker at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Given this experience he reflected: I have learned so much about the Thoroughbred and think much more highly of them, and also the positive structure of Ms. Dyer. David’s remark lends important recognition of Linda’s management of the farm and of the education program as it was clear during my fieldwork time at Blackburn that the men respected and were committed to the program because they respected her. Linda’s specific impact on these men came not just from the fact that she ran the TRF farm like a basic horse farm – and, I might add, allowed the fundamental needs and behavior of the horses be the best disciplinary mechanisms for the men – but because she took an interest in what the men’s cultural capital was before they came to the program: It’s interesting to me what their families do for a living and if they had both parents. Because it kind of helps tell you what kind of background they’re coming from, but not always. You never know what goes on in someone’s family. But it helps you understand where they are coming from and why they are the way they are. This observation of Linda’s taps directly into Bourdieu’s point about how “scholastic yield from educational action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by the family” (1986), knowing now how the transmission of cultural capital is proportionately enabled by the 332 economic capital and labor-time made possible by family - in this case, parents. The relationship Linda is interested in with these men is what kind of education and behavioral foundation parents made for their children, and how that translated into social capital that led them into networks first of crime and then incarceration. To her credit, she recognized that this is “not always” the case because “you never know what goes on in someone’s family,” but her recognition of – and subsequent adjustment to – the potentially volatile backgrounds of the men in her programs help dispel the lingering sense that “nothing works” with prison education as rehabilitation because she has implicitly asked the questions “which methods work best for which types of offenders, and under what conditions or in what types of settings?” (Gerber and Fritsch 1995: 120). For Linda, this orientation to providing education and training for the student-inmates in her program did not come from studying up policies or educational theory – rather, it came from the horses with which she has worked her whole life: I understand how the Thoroughbreds are broken and where they’re coming from so it is easy for me [to understand]. I don’t get upset with them, because of the way they are made. When I asked her “Do you ever think that with these guys?” that day in her pick-up truck in the pasture, she replied: “Oh yeah. You really see a lot of how these guys are raised and how it affects their whole life. And you can see how it influences their behavior.” And then she went on to talk about her aforementioned interest in their parental background. Perhaps the student-inmate I perceived the biggest change in was “Darin,” a man in his 20s incarcerated for robbing a man who “sealed his fate by calling me a ‘nigger.’” While Darin had grown up with urban pets – cats, dogs, hamsters, snakes, “things like that” – he’d never been around horses before and was at first highly intimidated. But after a few months in the program, 333 his “affinity for equine” grew in such a way that he became very expressive about what legacy the TRF program would leave for him, especially as it relates to Linda’s tutelage: I’m very grateful for this opportunity and experience working with horses – something I’ve never done in my life. I remember Ms. Dyer and the knowledge she kindly and yet sometimes angrily shared with us. (I say that because there are many who took this for granted) and many more who even takes her knowledge for a weakness, which I know aggravated her. She always took it in stride however, and she’s a very happy person. I do love and admire her dedication to these horses. It could be a field of eighty and she knows each one by name just looking at them. And for such a small woman, she shows no fear in handling “the best in the field.” You have to respect that. Darin then went on to contemplate how working with and learning from the horses impacted him: As for the horses, such beautiful creatures. They teach me something new about themselves everyday. The look in their eyes tell you so much… The older horse who’s been around humans for so long can teach you so much more than a younger horse. The experience in knowing how to deal with us… Even though the horse can’t hug me back I can still feel that embrace when I wrap my arms around their neck… Or that head nudge he or she gives you when they vie for your attention. That’s love. That is what TRF help me find. In this last part, “That’s love. That is what TRF help me find,” we glimpse at how redemptive capital involves not just the initial traits that help identify the men as candidates for redemption – it also helps to account for the traits that emerge through the human-animal / human-human relationship; as such, redemptive capital helps account for the generative aspects of such relationships, “that’s love.” Becoming-with can mean discovering new or dormant possibilities. Even when Darin was not down at the TRF barn, he still sought out the horses from up the hill. One day when I was bumping along the roads of the main incarceration grounds with Linda in her truck, we drove past Darin sitting on the fence with another African-American man 334 with dreadlocks tumbling past his waist. They both were facing the pastures of TRF horses spreading down the hill before them. Darin turned to see us and he gave us an upward nod of recognition. In that moment, I remembered how he told me in our interview that even just watching the horses from afar made him feel better about his “situation” more than anything else at Blackburn. Furthermore for Darin, participating in the TRF program created a desire to get into Thoroughbred owning and racing, to receive “that unbelievable feeling of seeing my horse cross the finish line at the Belmont Stakes claiming the first Triple Crown win in almost forty years.” Having confessed that he once “chased money” because he “didn’t like working,” he felt as though that upon incarceration, “I’ve studied and found numerous ways to generate huge sums of money legally” – and one way he wanted to make money and invest that money was in “Thoroughbred hobbies.” Darin’s unsuccessful chase for money is not unlike bell hooks’ observation that, “Prisons in our nation are full of intelligent, capable black men who could have accomplish their goals of making money in a responsible, legitimate way but who commit crimes to small amounts of money because they cannot delay gratification” (2004:27). hooks attributes this inability to delay gratification to a history of “black males whose brute labor had helped build the foundation of advanced capitalism in this society” and never being paid a “living wage” (2004:19). As sons saw their fathers struggle and, in turn, were subjected to the same struggles, “sons grew up associating work with disrespect and prejudice” and so began the pursuit of “easy money,” namely selling drugs, and “conning and hustling their own people” (2004:23). Through the TRF program, Darin had been taken in by the mystique of the Thoroughbred: “I want that feeling I got when I first watched the movie ‘Secretariat’ or when I see ‘great’ Thoroughbreds from the past that help me create this ‘present’ by starting this dynasty 335 to last.” Harnessing the social capital of the racing Thoroughbred, Darin said he would create “my legacy” and leave “my name in history so that people feel what I feel when I think of the Northern Dancers, Bold Rulers, Nasrullahs…” This vision of Darin’s conjures up the arrested history of African Americans in Thoroughbred racing as discussed at the beginning of this dissertation. How serendipitous, but also problematic, it would be should African American men, in particular, find their way back into racing based on the entanglement of human incarceration and horse slaughter; of rescuing horses and horse people in Bluegrass Kentucky. In his desire to create a legacy for himself that echoes the effaced achievements of other African American men, however, Darin was not poised to perpetuate the ideal type approach to Thoroughbreds as I examined in Chapters Three and Five. Rather, he saw himself as taking “what TRF along with Ms. Linda Dyer has done for me and how I will remember all of this” into his pursuits, knowing that as glorious as a Triple Crown victory could be for a horse and his/her connections, it did not have to require total depletion of each species’ redemptive capital. In this way, during my time with him, Darin stood poised not only to redeem his prison time, but to reincorporate into society with “critical consciousness” (hooks 2004:27) brought on by serving the TRF horses and not succumbing to the social death sentence that could be said to have begun when horsemen like Jimmy Winkfield could no longer find a horse to race or train in Jim Crow America. 336 Chapter 8: The Transformation of the Putnamville Five Spring was beginning to mark the Bluegrass. Everywhere the fields sprouted vivid green, daffodil flowers burst into bloom, robins chorused the morning’s arrival, and the Putnamville horses had finally arrived the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center. They arrived via a horse transport trailer that had taken them from pastures at a correctional facility in Indiana to their new, yet-temporary home in the Kentucky Horse Park at the MMSC. One by one, five horses were unclipped from their traveling stations inside the cavernous trailer. They were then led down the exit ramp by Susanna and Tony, the farm manager at MMSC, and into stalls for temporary holding. A chorus of whinnies began echoing inside the barn. Horses communicating about their new situation, inquiring if they were still all accounted for and who might be new and unknown out there. Soon after, they were all led outside to the paddocks to be turned out, some for their first night in years, apart from their companions back in the Putnamville herd. Once their halters were slipped off their heads, the horses whirled away from all of us watching them at the gate and began running and bucking out the stiffness and confinement of a long trailer ride – and perhaps also a combination of joy and anxiety about their new living arrangements. Then, one by one they settled in, arched their necks down, and took a first bite of Kentucky bluegrass. This chapter is about the transformation of five Thoroughbred ex-racehorses whom I call the “Putnamville Five” from initial retirement in prison pastures maintained by the TRF to re-training and adoption as show-prospect OTTBs by the MMSC. Whereas the last chapter centered around the companionate relationships between horses and inmates and what species of redemptive capital they brought out in each, in this chapter we see horses from another TRF 337 Second Chances program essentially removed from such relationships and entered into new ones that ultimately transformed their lives based on a significantly different sense of redemptive capital. In this chapter, we thus see how redemptive capital can be a multilayered, dynamic phenomenon as humans and horses move in and out of relationships and fields, jockeying for position (or being jockeyed as well) depending on what they are considered to be worth socially, economically, culturally, and morally. Through observations of horse selection, training, and adoption process; formal and informal interviews; questionnaires; and photographs, this chapter chronicles the transformation of the Putnamville Five as I witnessed it over the course of four months, approximately March to June 2011. By chance, this fieldwork moment also occurred in the vortex of the controversy created by Joe Drape’s NYT article, “Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Horses,” which I hereafter refer to as the Drape Article. As what I witnessed with the Putnamville Five horses not only corresponded with, but also spoke to key issues raised and debated over in the Drape Article in terms of where the TRF’s mission to care for horses might have failed, allegations from this article, along with defenses made by the TRF in an official response report (hereafter the TRF Report), will interweave with my narrative data detailing the transformation of the Putnamville Five. This chapter both compliments and complicates what was alleged in that article. Recall that the Drape Article was an expose not just of the TRF’s mismanagement of its operational budget, but an accusation that went against everything the TRF stood for: providing basic care for the Thoroughbred ex-racehorses in their program. At the heart of the issue was the claim that the TRF had been “so slow or delinquent in paying for the upkeep of the more than 1,000 horses under its care that scores have wound up starved and neglected, some fatally.” That 338 “one of the largest private organizations in the world dedicated to caring for former racehorses” had supposedly failed in its mission so drastically so as to cause death to horses already so symbolically and politically marked as rescued from death was a paradox that many TRF supporters – be they from the racing industry or part of a larger population of horse rescuers and animal welfare/rights activism – found incredibly disappointing and baffling. In the words of the veterinarian that carried out the herd inspection of the TRF’s horses, Dr. Stacey Huntingon, as quoted by Joe Drape: “The horses are getting the short end of the stick from this group that advertises itself as advocates of the horses.” At stake in this discussion is how the TRF, originally tasked to rescue the figure of the starving horse from the pasture, ended up perpetuating that cycle. But the crisis did not end there. Rather, in the Conclusion of this dissertation, I will discuss how the TRF rebounded from this controversy, and while it did so at some costs (like losing the MMSC as an affiliated facility), I also argue that as an organization it realized and called upon its own form of redemptive capital to recover from the fallout from the Drape Article. This present chapter thus first begins by discussing a trip I made with staff and interns from the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center to another TRF prison Second Chances program, this time in Indiana at the Putnamville Correctional Facility. There, I observed how MMSC representatives went about selecting horses from the herd. What I did not realize at the time was that this visit came about directly in response to Huntington’s then-ongoing herd assessment as commissioned by the Mellon executers. As this assessment was being conducted, the TRF, including MMSC, was under orders not to take in any new horses until Huntington’s reports were in. Therefore, in order to start the 2011 re-schooling season and have horses to offer for 339 adoption at one of the biggest equestrian competitions, the Rolex Three Day Event227 that was about to come to the Horse Park at the end of April, the Secretariat Center had to scout out horses within the TRF’s existing herds. Though MMSC often got horses from Blackburn (think Fly and Shooby from Chapter Six) this time the program was directed to Putnamville’s herd. As this chapter will reveal, the horses that were ultimately selected from Putnamville came with a host of physical and mental re-training challenges that were further politicized by the publication of the Drape article and the public controversy that ensued. To further contextualize the training challenges presented by the Putnamville Five, I will explore how the training techniques of Natural Horsemanship that were applied to the Putnamville Five via MMSC’s “horse centered reschooling program” carry their own load of gendered complications that then influence the way horses are related to by their human interlocutors. Particularly in relation to the training of the mares, I also consider how sex and gender inflects, and is seen to inflect the redemptive capital of female horses in particular. Additionally, the transformation of the Putnamville Five horses was made further unique by their eventual adoption, which I was also able to witness and document. This chapter will thus 227 “Rolex,” as it was commonly referred to, had taken place at the Kentucky Horse Park since 1978, and was classified as a “four star” Concours Complet International (CCI) by the International Federation of Equine Sports (FEI). That is to say, Rolex is the highest level of competition – the “advanced” level – that a horse and rider could compete in internationally, and as it was hosted in Kentucky, it was the highest level of equestrian competition in the Western Hemisphere227. Furthermore, Rolex is specifically an “eventing” competition: on “day one” horse and rider would compete in Dressage; “day two” in stadium jumping; and “day three” in cross-­‐country227. Laura aspired for her and Shooby to compete at Rolex one day: “To get in and to get around it – you’re a four star rider. That’s a huge accomplishment, just to play the game.” But she acknowledged that while she had “high aspirations” “the horse will tell you if they’re going to handle it.” Susanna saw Rolex from her perspective as director of MMSC, as “a remarkable chance to showcase our product, so to speak, and broadcast our mission.” And Melissa, being the adoptions coordinator, explained Rolex as a unique marketing opportunity: “People who might normally not be able to try our horses can try them.” Rolex was thus a very important event for MMSC as it not only brought the world of eventing to its doorstep, it also brought a plethora of potential adopters, donors, fans. 340 conclude with an analysis of interpersonal interactions I had with, and questionnaire responses I received from the women who ultimately adopted four out of the five Putnamville horses - Robin, Halo, Marlin, and Manny, as they came to be known. This analysis will be illustrative of the third phase of these horses’ redemptive capital, capturing them as they enter into the “second lives” and “forever homes” they are promised through MMSC’s re-training and adoption process. Unlike the men in the previous chapter, I was able to trace these horses’ journey from prison life (as it were) to their new, “reborn” life as an adopted show horse, and therefore can explore the lasting effects and new configurations of their redemptive capital beyond the initial traits that signaled their worthiness of being redeemed. 8.1 Horse Scouting Trip to Putnamville Correctional Facility Dawn was still a far cry on the cold, frosty morning early March morning I met up Susanna, Melissa, Lara and Jill, a college intern from the Equine Studies program at the University of Kentucky, at the Secretariat Center for the four hour drive to Greencastle, Indiana, where the Putnamville Correctional Facility was located. It was ascertained who would drive (I offered) and we all, plus Lara’s miniature Australian Shepard, piled into my 2010 Chevy Equinox and headed north on Interstate 75 bound for Indiana just as the eastern sky began to glow pink in anticipation of the sun’s rise. The four hour drive up to Putnamville was a trip through the late-winter brown and beige landscape of northern Middle-America: agricultural fields, whose edges were increasingly nibbled away by suburbia, stretching into towns and cities clustered around various factories and plants pluming steam and smoke into a crisp blue sky. Yet despite the blue skies also harkened a cold, cold day, such that when we pulled up to the main gate of Putnamville Correctional Facility 341 only Susanna got out to report our arrival as we remained in the warmth of the car. She then hurried back to the car with the directions that the TRF farm was located about half a mile further on down the highway. I then steered the car in that direction, and was surprised to find that we could just pull off the road and park in front of the main entrance into the barn. Blackburn is a minimum-security prison, but the farm is ensconced within the main prison grounds and surveillance system. In contrast, Putnamville is a medium-security institution, with spirals of razor, barbed wire atop tall chainlink fences greeting us at the main gate – but as we arrived at the TRF farm, we found only barbed wire and wood fences erected for the horses ensconcing the facility. The farm manager, Barbara228, greeted us as we piled out of the car. I was immediately taken by her feminine appearance, especially her brilliant blond hair, which freely flowed into brushed out curls. Just as with Linda, I was continuously surprised and intrigued how these women comported themselves physically and aesthetically as “female” (cf. Butler 2006) while working in the male-centered incarcerated system, which ranged from the prisoners to the administrators. After introducing each other, Barb began showing us around the farm, stopping first at the fence of a pasture situated between the front of the barn and the highway. Susanna, Lara, and Melissa intently observed the horses before them, asking Barb about their bloodlines and soundness, these being redemptive capital traits MMSC came looking for in horses, and that could mean the difference between being pulled from the pasture for further evaluation or remaining with the rest of the herd. Jill observed and learned, while I took photos of the experience. 228 Who I also refer to as “Barb” in this chapter. 342 Figure 17: MMSC representatives scout out horses with Putnamville Farm manager (photo by TVS McKee) 8.1.1 Searching for redemptive capital in a winter hardened herd The horses ambled before us, some coming up to the fence and inquiring about the new visitors, while others scuffed at the ground with their top lips in search of any lasting flecks of morning grain. Instead of blanketed to ward off the winter’s chill (as all of the horses back at MMSC were) bare, shaggy winter coats sprouted from every horse in the pastures at Putnamville. Furthermore, they shucked around in mud that sometimes almost came up to their knees, especially around the fence line where no doubt they jostled for feeding privileges in the mornings and late afternoons. Some of the horses just looked simply old and decrepit, while 343 Susanna, Lara, Melissa and Jill searched for redemptive capital amongst the rest, like promising conformation, a “kind eye,” and possible soundness beneath the mud and shaggy coats. All these horses were perfect examples of what the minimum-care standards of the TRF meant for their herd that winter. In my interviews with staff members just a few weeks after this Putnamville trip and in the midst of the newly erupted NYT article controversy, I inquired about the care program the TRF offered its horses. If a horse relinquished to the TRF is deemed healthy enough, preferably by a Thoroughbred-specific veterinarian, this horse will be subjected to the standard conditions of care as detailed by the TRF in its response to the Drape article allegations: “the TRF has an aging population of horses who live outside 24 hours a day, seven days a week” (2011:3). As previously mentioned in Chapter Three, it was originally determined that TRF horses should live on $5/day, but as the TRF grew larger and came to rely on less wealthy farms upon which to keep their horses, this per diem went down to $3/day, in some cases, $2.50/day if the horse was an “easy keeper” and could take it. As witnessed with the horses at BCC, most take to the herd life quite well, while special care is given to horses who need to eat alone, come in at night or during hot days – but this attentive care is most often unique to the know-how and initiative of accomplished farm managers, such as Linda Dyer. On a whole, most TRF horses must live outside for the first time in as many years because it is the most economical way to care for them. Furthermore, these horses are fed only hay (ideally good quality hay) as it too is the most economical way to care for so many horses, but “only” hay after lives on the track where they were fed specialized diets. As such, most times “three dollars a day doesn’t feed a Thoroughbred,” one staff member curtly told me. When I asked “who” came up with this per diem, the staff member replied, “somebody really silly. The treasurer.” Yet, supposedly, if the situation arose where a horse needed more 344 money for more care, the farm just needed to “call in and say $3 won’t cut it…and we’ll bump it up to a special needs horse.” But as the NYT article alleged, such requests didn’t happen as easily as that. For my part, having grown up with Quarter Horses who went on riding hiatus in the depths of winter, I was used to seeing horses in unattractive winter coats waddling around in late-winter mud. We knew that come the first warmth of spring, those coats would start shedding and end up fodder for bird’s nests and that the mud would dry out as would their hooves. Not only are Quarter Horses are known for being “easy keepers” in terms of outside boarding conditions and hay-only feed, but unless they are being shown and need to keep their coats short and glossy for the preferred aesthetic of show horses, they also are not blanketed year-round. It was later pointed out to me that Barb was more well-versed in Quarter Horse care and appreciation than that for Thoroughbreds, and her level of care and concern for the horses reflected that229. The issue of how well educated some TRF farm managers were to the specific needs and characteristics of Thoroughbreds was also raised in Joe Drape’s article: “Dr. Huntington found that the foundation’s education of the caretakers and oversight of their farms had been poor.” While Drape cited an extreme example – that of some horses being fed “cattle feed that contained a toxic element” – there were also accompanying allegations that the TRF did not communicate well enough with its farm managers to oversee the proper care and nutrition of their horses. Furthermore, especially with the farms in Oklahoma, environment and composition of land use played a huge factor in how care could be provided to the horses. Facilities in 229 Nevertheless, she was also abiding by the minimum-­‐care protocol all TRF horses had to exist by if they were to become part of the herd, and she did bring in horses that did have special needs, much like Linda did. 345 Oklahoma were conscripted as satellite farms for the TRF for reasons as political (and initially well-intentioned230) as they were ecological. Being “out west,” it was a belief Oklahoma had more land to offer the horses. Yet it was the quality of the land that became problematic. “One of the farms had decent pasture because there is a creek running through it,” the key staff member told me, so it’s okay - ‘okay’” she added, as though with a disclaimer that it was barely adequate. The rest of the “farms” – or ranches, as they are more commonly called out west – were weeds “for the most part.” So, despite the illusion of there being more space for more horses, the issue came down to the quality of that space – and it fell very short of Bluegrass, Thoroughbred-specific standards. In particular, it is common practice in the Bluegrass to rotate pastures, allowing horses to graze in cycles so as to allow pastures to re-generate when horses weren’t on them. Add this land use regime on top of generally better-quality grass and pasture surface (recall the Bluegrass as the royal carpet for Thoroughbreds from Chapter Three) and there is a high standard set for the care of Thoroughbreds that many farms, including Putnamville with its horses shucking around in knee-deep, late winter mud, cannot match. MMSC, on the other hand, could, and thus the condition of the land and horses at Putnamville was cause for salient commentary by MMSC members as I asked them later about this trip. 8.1.2 Selecting horses from the herd As we finished making our rounds of all the pastures, nodding the occasional “hello” to inmates in bright yellow jumpsuits with “IDOC” stenciled on the back, we convened in the classroom to warm up (it was a lot more spacious and warm than the one at Blackburn where I conducted my 230 Explain about the board member who rescued horses from the rescues only to fall short on fundraising. 346 interviews with inmates). There, I took notes as MMSC personnel conversed with Barb. They first started talking about the woes of running horse rescues, how there needed to be more synergy between rescue organizations as the number of rescues was “outstripping the money available.” Barb shared that in the state of Indiana the horse culture there favored Quarter Horses, and Thoroughbreds carried the stigma as being nothing but “broken down horses. She was lucky if she could find an adopter will to “pay” more than $500 for one of her horses. These comments would come to index an additional outcome from the Drape Article controversy: criticism leveled at the general assumption and practice that Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue should be run as a charity and not as a well-funded, recognized wing of the industry itself. Over and over again in my staff interviews, I was told how the TRF was in constant competition with other Thoroughbred rescue organizations for donation dollars and that they were all hitting up the same donation pools. This lack of structural, ongoing support from the industry was laid bare in the NYT article, with Drape231 opining that the TRF controversy was “only the latest embarrassment for an industry that remains vexed by one of its most fundamental challenges: how to humanely look out for horses that no longer have any value at the racetrack or in the breeding shed.” 231 Other journalists, veterinarians and turf writers alike, responded to how the TRF controversy indicted not only the shortcomings of the charity, but the racing industry as well. “The predicament of insufficient charitable donations is not proportional to our obligation to the horse,” wrote Dr. Doug Byers in the now-­‐defunct Thoroughbred Times on March 22nd, 2011. “As a national, multi-­‐billion dollar enterprise, the horse industry’s R&D [research and development] is confined to special interests and is woefully anemic,” he pointed out. He recommended that in the wake of the TRF controversy that the industry step up to meet “a humane obligation” to the horses beyond their “ability to generate income.” Byers believed that such humane action would generate capital (both economic and redemptive, I would argue) for the industry: “Putting dollars back into the horse’s health and welfare will benefit us all through new and renewed jobs, pride in our industry, and demonstrating imaginative solutions to the equine problems we all share in the form of a responsibility.” 347 At the time of MMSC’s horse scouting trip to Putnamville, however, the woes of running a Thoroughbred rescue as a charity were not yet laid bare by the Drape article and instead remained a common conversational point and everyday structuring force for the MMSC representatives and Barb. Yet however similar and shared the complaints were, the struggles were different for each program based on their ultimate purpose for the horses in question. For example, Barb struggled to simply provide good quality feed to her horses while instructing the student inmates in the Second Chances program. The Secretariat Center was mainly concerned with finding horses that could be made ride-able and adoptable in time for Rolex. In that classroom conversation, there was also criticism of some Thoroughbred rescues that “cherry picked” sound and “pretty horses” that they knew would be easier to market and adopt out, instead of extending their charity to all horses in need. I later came to understand this point as ironic, for MMSC had not driven four hours one way to scout and re-school horses that were lame or, quite frankly, ugly. Rather, they were looking for horses that already possessed distinct markers of redemptive capital: such as those horses that “tracked up” nicely (meaning they moved symmetrically on both sides of the body laterally [right to left] as well as front to back) and were “lovely movers,” which could mean they had an “integrated, swingy walk” that did not demonstrate any movement flaws based on awkward, abnormal conformation (such as walking with “toes in” because their front hooves turned in like “pigeon toes”). As such, the conversation in the classroom soon turned toward assessing the horses based on the notes Susanna had taken during our tour of the pastures. First, there were the horses that sort of stood out, but ultimately did not have the kind of redemptive capital MMSC was looking for. There was Rusty, an 11 year-old solidly-built dark bay who had been rescued twice, which made for an emotionally compelling story. 348 Nevertheless, he was ruled out because he was an active cribber232 and moved and looked “like a buffalo” – that is, a lot of his body composition was bulky around his withers, front legs and neck, and he thus moved front-heavy instead of more preferred balanced look and feel MMSC was looking for. Then there was 12 year old Glory, for whom it was ascertained she would be more suitable for trail riding or even as a therapeutic riding horse. As Susanna was an active member of organizations that supported therapeutic riding and equine-assisted psychotherapy, she informed Barb that any personable yet-unride-able horses she might have could possibly be used for non-riding based therapy; especially aggressive horses could “open up healing” in those who learned to handle them233. Of the horses that were favorably spoke of, I took notes on a mare called “Halo” and a gelding named “Cazador” – two horses that would become part of the Putnamville Five. Halo had been scouted out by Jill, whereas Cazador had caught the interest of Susanna because of his “intelligent eye.” Barb told us that when he first came in, he was so skinny he “couldn’t even whinny.” Additionally, he had sustained a cut on his third eyelid234 and as a consequence had a fleshy build-up of scar tissue that protruded in the front corner of his eye. Being only a “cosmetic blight,” Cazador was still chosen because of what Susanna supposedly saw behind and beyond that injury, so he, along with Halo and a handful of other horses, were to be gathered 232 Cribbing, also known as windsucking, is when a horse will grab on to an object and simultaneously pull on it while inhaling, thereby releasing endorphins. The reasons for why horses crib are said to vary, but during my time in the field it was explained to me that horses did this when they were bored and were not allowed to graze and/or eat – such as racehorses kept in stalls all day and on race-­‐fit diets. Furthermore, I would argue that cribbing is one vice from which there is no redemptive capital to be discerned because of how damaging it can be to the horse and its bitten-­‐off surroundings – unless someone read cribbing as a vice that horses only get when they are neglected/subjected to humanocentric routines and care, and therefore seen as a marker of species inequality and inhumane treatment of the horse. For more general information and explanation on cribbing: http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/barns/cribbing-­‐why-­‐some-­‐horses-­‐need-­‐pacifiers/ 233 Books like The Tao of Equus and programs such as EponaQuest to demonstrate how this relationship works. 234 Horses have three eyelids; see http://equestrianoutreach.com/Equestrian-­‐Outreach-­‐Equine-­‐Vision-­‐Page.html for more details. 349 from the pastures by the inmates and brought into the main barn to evaluated for their soundness and movement quality at the walk and trot gaits. 8.1.3 Evaluating the horses that made the cut In this second phase of evaluation, we exited the classroom and gathered in the main corridor in the barn. As we waited for the horses to be brought in, Barb explained that the barn had been built by the inmates themselves, with a lot of the wood taken from the forests that ringed the more expansive pastures around the farm. It was a lofty barn, allowing for good ventilation, with open-air stalls on either side of the corridor leading out to the back door that led out to the pastures beyond. On the other side of the barn was the classroom, a wall covered in equine-related newspaper articles and TRF documentation, and tack room235. Across from that was the main barn door leading out to the front pasture where we first started looking at horses, my parked car with Lara’s dog eyeing us from within, and the highway and main incarceration grounds beyond. Then the horses started coming in, led by quiet inmates who nevertheless bore their skills and knowledge about the horses with subtle, communicative confidence in their own adept body movements. Susanna and Lara began the evaluation process, asking the inmates to make the horses walk and trot the length of the long corridor. Lara would cluck or jingle a loose halter behind the horses to get them moving if they lagged behind the inmates while Susanna continued with her notes. I took further notes of my own about how they talked about the horses, evaluating those that they thought would be good for their program versus those that would not. 235 Unlike at Blackburn, the men at Putnamville were allowed to ride the horses. 350 In particular, they spoke of MMSC-potential horses as being “Ivy League” while other horses, though sound and therefore still ride-able and trainable, being “4-H Show Barn” horses that MMSC could “help adopt out” even if not through their re-schooling program. Though these comments were jokingly made and considered innocuous to those who spoke them, this flippant categorization of horses reflected how classed divisions of two different U.S., human cultural networks (and their attendant social capital) were used to then categorize the horses. By referring to horses that would make the MMSC cut as “Ivy League,” this distinction called upon and reified the perception of a select group of elite U.S. universities236 as being better than other forms of educational channels – such as 4-H programs. Additionally, the comparison is not species-equivalent, and favors highly elite, human-based cultural and social capital, the Ivy League, over a multispecies one, 4-H, that does not enforce the same kind of distancing from animals and nature but rather specifically advocates for and facilitates closer relationships with them (if only to keep alive a sense of agricultural heritage and inculcate future laborers and believers in that heritage). I take the time to qualify the implicit humanocentrism of the Ivy League vs. 4-H reference because in demonstrating its effects of hierarchy on human and nonhuman worlds we can more clearly see how these comments work to further set-apart and denigrate the 4-H reference and the horses associated with it. The “4-H Show Barn” reference comes from the youth organization, 4-H237, that was founded in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century in order to 236Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. 237 4-­‐H refers to the four elements of head, heart, hands, and health of the following pledge: I pledge my Head to clearer thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Hands to larger service, 351 keep agricultural traditions and innovations relevant to public school students in an ever-urbanizing and industrializing era238. With its particular focus on agriculture, 4-H taught members how to rear, train, and show various livestock – horses included. As compared to another youth-based organization that promotes horsemanship education, Pony Club239, 4-H is considered less exclusive and elite than Pony Club – hence the reason why reference is not made to “Pony Club Show Barn” because it does not index enough the classed juxtaposition between horses. I would argue that this has to do with the different riding traditions each organization focuses on. Pony Club teaches mainly English riding techniques, whereas 4-H focuses more on Western riding techniques. For MMSC, horses that can fulfill not just the technical but sociocultural demands of English riding are more preferred than those who would be supposedly more suited to 4-H. So the hierarchy formed in this comment – MMSC horses are Ivy League, while others (such as Tony and Boss) are better off for 4-H Show Barns - gives implicit reference to both human forms of elitism, as well as equine-enabled forms of elitism. Another example of ranking horses according to human-based social stereotypes that proliferate in the U.S. was when one horse was described as “shopping at Wal-Mart” based on how he moved and looked. The implicit reference/joke here is that only those of lower class, poor taste shop at Wal-Mart. These references were somewhat disquieting given the context and company in which they were made. For example, after MMSC representatives had made implicit classist remarks about horses, when Barb and the inmates went on to share some disparaging details of running the program, the different social positions and species of power, to use and my Health to better living, for my Club, my Community, my Country, and my World! 238 (http://www.4-­‐h.org/about/4-­‐h-­‐history/; accessed 02/11/13) 239 (http://www.ponyclub.org/?page=aboutus; accessed 02/12/13) 352 Bourdieu’s language, between those ensconced in the prison world and those of us just visiting became evident. The men complained of getting lunch late or not at all, and sometimes receiving “green baloney,” whereas Barb, in the constant search for Thoroughbred-quality hay, would sometimes be delivered moldy hay. It was clear in these comments that the Putnamville program often struggled for recognition and legitimization from within the prison system, and also from without in terms of finding networks of quality feed in Indiana. Though the Secretariat Center had its own form of challenges and deprivation of resources, it did not have to operate from within the penal system and, moreover, had the choice to distance itself from a coeval class relationship with those who shopped at Walmart or grew up doing 4-H. By the end of the soundness evaluation come mid-afternoon, it had been decided which horses had the redemptive capital to be pulled from the prison pastures and go on to the Ivy League of the Secretariat Center, and which would be better off as 4-H prospects. That decision made, we loaded back into my car, exited the world of Barb, her students, and their horses, and four hours later re-entered the Bluegrass to await the arrival of the Putnamville Five240. 240 Two other horses, Skip and Abby, eventually came to MMSC as well, but later on in August. 353 8.2 The Arrival of the Putnamville Five About three weeks after the road trip to the Putnamville Correctional Facility, a giant transport horse trailer241 pulled up alongside the barn at MMSC. As I was spending the majority of my fieldwork days at MMSC at this time, observing the training of the horses already on campus and scrambling for any information or interviews I could get, I was on hand to witness and photographically document the arrival of the horses that became the “Putnamville Five” as I came to refer them in my fieldnotes. One by one, two mares - Reallyneedn’ahalo, and Marlin 241 The transport company was Brook Ledge, who often did pro bono or reduced cost transport for MMSC. Figure 18: The first Putnamville horse comes off the trailer at MMSC (photo by TVS McKee) 354 My Darling – and three geldings – Robin’sonaroll, Cazador de Suenos, and Classic Order, were unloaded from the trailer. Instead of arriving at a feedlot destined for slaughter, or left to shuck around in late winter mud, they were first led into clean stalls of the Secretariat Center and then the Bluegrass pastures beyond, destined to be re-educated on how to accept a human rider and prove adoptable because of it. The initial redemptive capital they were identified with at Putnamville had granted them passage into a new realm of capitalization and redemption. And new names. Reallyneedn’ahalo became “Halo” as a barn name used by MMSC. Marlin My Darling became “Marlin.” Robin’sonaroll became “Robin.” Classic Order became “Odie.” When it came to Cazador de Suenos, however, Susanna and Melissa could never see eye to eye on the same name. Susanna wanted to call him “Lee” after Robert E. Lee, a general in the Confederate army during the U.S. Civil War, whereas Melissa thought Chase was less romanticized and more akin to his racing name, which translated from Spanish meant “Chaser of Dreams.” Recall Sahlins’ argument that I covered in the Introduction in reference to his consideration of horsemeat taboo in the U.S. in the 1970s. Shalins mused over how by giving horses names, people make them subjects closer to human society, kinship, and caring, thereby decreasing their edibility via taboo. If prior to rescue and accession into the TRF herd, these horses were instead the “isolated individuals” living in “desocialized” conditions of private enterprise as Levi-Strauss (1966, cited in Cassidy 2002:124) imagined racehorses to be, changing their reference and knowability from racing names to stable names worked to efface their supposed desocialization and, as I would further argue, the commodification these horses once knew in the racing world. Furthermore, by giving them such familiar names, this act also worked to defy the utter anonymity horses gain when they are consigned to slaughter, in the sense of Agamben’s (2004) “bare life.” But what new kinds of 355 meanings, socializations, and commodifications would fill the Putnamville Five’s new lives were only beginning. 8.2.1 A “beauty parlor day” One spring day in late March, the first order of business for the Putnamville Five was to clean them up and begin a beautification process that aligned with the equine aesthetics favored by the English riding world that the Secretariat Center participated in. If these horses were to be adopted out as show prospect horses within the context of the Rolex Three Day Event at the end of April, they needed to at least start looking the part. While Marlin, Halo, Robin, Lee/Chase and Odie had made it to the Ivy League of MMSC based on their initial redemptive capital - soundness, favorable movement and conformation, and special favored quirks such as Lee’s intelligent eye (despite the injured third eyelid) and Halo’s crooked facial strip that veered over her left nostril - they were still a mess physically and, as was to be discovered when their training began in earnest a few weeks later, some were also a mess mentally. The “beauty parlor day” as it came to be referred to, also happened at the same time the Drape Article was published and the fallout from it was starting to happen. So as the Putnamville Five horses were led out of their paddocks in to the barn to begin the process, I was asked to take “before” photos of the condition they arrived in so as to document it for the then-president of the TRF, George Grayson, in reference to the growing controversy over the article. Given this context, I will briefly detail each horse, their racing and rescue history as I could discern it, and the particular physical conditions they arrived based on notes and photographs I took, as well as gaining open and frequent access to their baby books because I was consistently present throughout their entire journey through the MMSC program. I will then follow up this profiling 356 with a discussion of how the Drape Article and the TRF Response debated the general physical condition of the horses under the TRF’s care. The bodies of the Putnamville Five horses thus become figures by which to read and test the accusations made against the TRF. 8.2.1.1 The condition of the mares At the time of my research, Marlin was a seven year-old, dark bay (brown) mare who stood at 15.1 hands. Originally bred in Kentucky, she was surrendered to the TRF by owners who lived in Indiana. Both her sire and dam were mediocre earners, with her dam, Brilliant Eagle, earning more from her offspring’s winnings than her sire’s, Grindstone. Both parents’ bloodlines carried the names of some well-known stallions – Mr. Brilliant, Unbridled, Mr. Prospector. Physically, Figure 19: Marlin (photo by TVS McKee) 357 from a distance Marlin was almost indistinguishable from Halo except that she had two very short white socks – almost just white hooves – on her back feet, and a wider, white blaze that finished between her two nostrils. In terms of physical blights, she came in with a scar inside her right leg, and when we lifted her upper lip to get a glimpse of her teeth, she had an abscessed front tooth. As a testament to her retired life in a pasture, her hooves were unshod with ragged edges, her mane and tail long and dull colored, her neck skinny and under-muscled, and patches of rain-rot242 dotted across her body. Figure 20: Halo (photo by TVS McKee) Halo was a six year-old dark bay horse who stood at 15.2 hands. Originally bred in Florida, she was surrendered by an owner in South Carolina, but this was facilitated through a consigner 242 A skin infection caused by a combo bacteria/fungi called D. congolensis. 358 based out of Hoosier Park, a “racino” (racetrack and casino) just north of Indianapolis, Indiana. Halo had raced in 14 races had won one, placed (won second place) in five, and showe” (won third place) in three, with a lifetime total earnings of $25,800. As she was sold at the Ocala Breeding Sale as a two-year old for $20,000, this meant that the owners who bought her only “made” $5,800 from their investment – much, if not all, of which was probably used to pay for her basic expenses, covering anything from trainer’s fees, racetrack boarding, vet and farrier expenses, and so forth. It was probably the slab facture of her knee (I never got the details on which one) that was treated with a screw insert that ended her racing career243 and, given how relatively little profit she produced for her owners (that, combined with a sire whose French and British bloodlines were not as in demand in North America), led her to her retirement with the TRF. As previously mentioned, Halo had a quixotic mark in that her white facial blaze veered off over her left nostril, and she also had one short, white sock on her back left leg as well. Her body type was more lithe than Marlin’s so that you could almost still see what she might have looked like in her race-fit days. This made her under-muscled neck look even scrawnier, and like Marlin, her mane and tail were long and thin, and her body patterned with rain rot. 8.2.1.2 The condition of the geldings Robin, at seven years old, was another dark bay horse, but was distinguishable in that he stood taller than the mares at 16.2 hands. He was bred and born in Indiana. He had 20 starts, winning 243 Such fractures do not necessarily end a horse’s riding career, it is just that they can no longer endure the heavy riding of racing and race training. 359 two and showing in two, for lifetime earnings of $18,800. His last race was a claiming race244 in October 2008 at Hoosier Downs. His bloodlines speak to some of the most well-known champion sires in North America: on his dam’s side was Wild Again, Alydar, and Native Dancer; on his sire’s side was Storm Cat, Seattle Slew, Secretariat, and Northern Dancer. Robin had two white socks on his hind legs, with a white snip on his front right, a white blaze that widened between his nostrils, a forelock so long and stringy it fell across his eyes. He arrived at MMSC also under-muscled and spotted with rain rot, but 244 This is a kind of race where all horses are for sale at the relatively same price and can be “claimed” for that price after they finish the race. For some trainers and owners, this is a way to off-­‐load a horse they no longer want, and for others this is a way to get horse for less expense who might still have some competitive edge left in them. Figure 21: Robin (photo by TVS McKee) 360 in addition to that he had severe hair loss behind his ears that in some places his halter had rubbed the skin raw and into scabbing wounds. Lee/Chase was a seven year-old chestnut horse (same color as Ferdy and Fly) standing at 15.3 hands. He was bred in Kentucky, had eight starts in his career where he placed – the number of times is not indicated in his Equineline.com listed bloodlines. On both his dam’s and sire’s side he had Northern Dancer bloodlines (such as Danzig and Nureyev) – making him a lineage holder of one of the most successful Thoroughbred sires in the 20th century. Lee/Chase’s Spanish-origin racing name – Cazador de Suenos (“Chaser of Dreams”) was most likely inspired by the Argentinian roots of his sire, Gentleman, who was born in 1977 but never raced. Lee/Chase had a very short white sock on his back right hoof, with a little snip of white on the back left as well, and a white blaze that streaked down his face and between his nostrils. I already mentioned his damaged third eyelid, and in addition to that he also came pock-marked with rain rot, though not as skinny or under-muscled as the previously mentioned horses. Figure 22: Lee / Chase (photo by TVS McKee) 361 Odie was an eight-year old chestnut horse standing at 16.2 hands. He was bred in Indiana, and out of 35 career starts he had won three, placed in three, showed in two, for lifetime earnings of $43,592. Though his racing name was Classic Order, he was called “Lucky” at Putnamville, perhaps because he was found and pulled from a “ship to kill pen” at the Sugarcreek Livestock Auction in Sugarcreek, Ohio, by Bright Futures Farm, Inc. – an immediate rescue organization based in Spartansburg, PA. I only know this information because his “baby book” contained a photocopy of the fax correspondence between Bright Futures Farm and Barb at the TRF farm at Putnamville. I will address Odie’s immediate rescue situation later on in this chapter when I examine the redemptive capital of each Putnamville Five horse and their adoption experiences. Odie had no markings on his feet, and had one, almost crescent-moon shaped feathery white swirl (typically called a “star”) between his eyes. When he came in to MMSC, he had a bald spot just above his Figure 23: Odie (photo by TVS McKee) 362 start revealing dark gray skin and residue scabbing, indicating a wound well on its way to healing. He too was marked all over his body with rain rot, in some spots more pronounced than any of the other horses. He was so under-weight, under-muscled you could see the beginning of his rib cage and the protrusion of his hip bones. 8.2.1.3 Debating the marks on horse bodies Given the condition that the Putnamville Five came in, one of the major accusations leveled at the TRF was that the organization neglected certain horses to the point of starvation and death. This accusation was based on evidence that, upon further scrutiny by the TRF, appeared more subjective and variable than originally presented, such as how Body Condition Scores (BCS) are assessed and understood. For example, in an officially released response, the TRF contested both Huntington’s and Drape’s interpretations of how the BCS of its herd were determined: “In Dr. Huntington’s summary, she said that she examined approximately 860 horses and ‘twenty five horses had a BCS of less than three245’” (Response 2011:2). When the TRF examined her reports, they instead found “16 horses, not 25 horses, with a BCS of less than three.” Furthermore, while Huntington claimed that these 25 horses were nearing emaciation not because of age246, the Response notes that in fact eight of the horses were getting up there in age, ranging from 16-29 years247. 245 The Henneke System, which Huntington used, uses a scale from 1 to 9 to evaluate the body condition of a horse. A BCS of “9” indicates a horse is obese. A BCS of “1” indicates a horse is emaciated. 246 It should also be mentioned that as horses age their ability to keep weight on diminishes due to a variety of factors (such as teeth wear and gastrointestinal system issues from agedness). With this in mind, when Huntington goes on to further state that these low body scores “were not correlated to age” this means that the 25 horses she claimed were nearing emaciation were doing so because of starvation, not age. 247 The average lifespan for a horse is considered to be 30 years old. 363 The TRF Response also questions Huntington’s evaluation of what constitutes a “less than ideal body condition [score]” (2011:3) for a Thoroughbred. While “normal healthy horses, in general, have a body condition score from four to seven” it is recognized by “veterinarians familiar with thoroughbreds” that the ideal BCS for Thoroughbreds is “four to six” (ibid). Upon further review of the reports, the TRF also found “only 75 additional horses with a BCS under four” – as compared with the 380 she originally claimed (2011:3). The Response goes on to acknowledge that the horses were thin, but “not starving or emaciated” and represented only 10% of the herd. The Response goes on to add the final level of contextualization as to why the conditions of the horses looked weathered: “the TRF has an aging population of horses who live outside 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” I have already addressed how this minimum care regimen was evident with the horses at Putnamville, but this circumstances also extended across the TRF herd. Over the winter of 2010/2011, living outside was harder in some regions that others, particularly in Oklahoma at the now-ironically named 4-H Farm where the worst conditions were found. Here, only 47 of 63 horses on the TRF roster for this satellite farm were found, and the “survivors,” as Drape called them, were “in such poor condition” that “photographs of the malnourished horses” showed “three of them considered starving” and “[n]early all of them needed urgent care.” Though I did not see these photographs, TRF staff members that I interviewed did, and commented on them: “For me, it is kind of shocking to see photos of the horses in Oklahoma,” one told me. “They all look so weathered.” This staff member, however, then went on to relativize his impression by acknowledging that he might be judging these horses by Bluegrass standards: “I think they’re fine, they just don’t look like horse here, all shiny and clean. Even the horses turned out here look like in five minutes they’d be ready to show.” 364 When I inquired to various MMSC personnel about the condition that the Putnamville Five arrived in, I found their perspectives of the horses and the TRF operation from which they were extracted to be shaped by the high standards of care and appearance that permeated the Thoroughbred culture of the Bluegrass. I expected there [of the Putnamville farm] to be no grass, I expected there to be lame horses. It really did not surprise me the quality of horses we were looking at. But what did surprise this MMSC affiliate was how bare bones the operation was, and what impact that had on the horses: Just because they’re getting hay doesn’t mean they’re healthy. Hay bellies, full of worms, all sorts of stuff. But what can you expect? They’re minimally funded, no help from the state. Another MMSC affiliate also observed how impacted prison horses’ appearances and health were by minimal funding and resources, but also pointed to a more crucial difference between the standards of care and aesthetics between the prison horses and MMSC horses: The difference between the correctional facilities and the Secretariat Center is similar in that there are very few resources and the conditions are more similar to feral horses. That does not mean that they are not cared for and loved by the people at the correctional facilities, with their limited resources, but it is not the standard that one would expect of an athletic show horse – which is what we aspire to at the Center. So on that beauty parlor day, the Putnamville Five horses were to begin their transformation from feral-like horses (as described above in each horse’s particular condition of arrival) to “athletic show horses” so that they could embody the standards that MMSC held forth for their horses. 365 8.2.1.4 The redemptive capital of mane pulling This initial physical transformation, however, also served another purpose in the larger scale of transformation for these horses. As part of its trademarked “horse centered reschooling program,” MMSC has generated a list of what horses actually learn – or are at least taught - in the reschooling process, which ideally lasts each horse between 30-45 days. (This time duration, however, was significantly challenged by the myriad issues the Putnamville Five brought with them, which I will discuss more in-depth later on.) This reschooling list is organized into five categories: “general handling,” “health care,” “conformation,” “round pen,” and “training.” Under general handling, horses would be reschooled in terms of feeding (such as new nutritional diets and new routines); being loaded onto a trailer (woe is the horse who cannot safely load into a trailer without incident for it makes for great difficulty in finding an adopter who is willing to take on this basic educational task); and “grooming, clipping, mane pulling, bathing.” It is these last lessons that the Putnamville Five were subjected to on the beauty parlor day, thus constituting their first lessons as part of the reschooling process. Depending on how they reacted to all the grooming, bathing, etc. the redemptive capital evaluation of these horses by MMSC standards would also begin on this day. Susanna described the process of beautifying the Putnamville Five: It is like taking a used car, and no used car dealer would sell a car without detailing. It is like that scene in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy gets her hair curled, Tin Man gets buffed, Scarecrow gets stuffed – and that’s what we do here. We’re buffing and stuffing, pomading and curling, so that the horse assumes a more show-ready attire. As indicated by Susanna’s metaphors and cultural references, the transformation of the Putnamville Five began literally at the site of the horses’ bodily aesthetics. So after I finished 366 taking the “before” photographs, the “buffing and stuffing, pomading and curling” commenced in earnest. Each horse was assigned a grooming bucket with their own brushes, hoof picks, etc. so as not to transmit bacteria to other horses. I helped with the basic grooming of horses, but the more experienced interns “pulled manes”– meaning they took the overgrown, thin, broken manes of the Putnamville Five horses and thinned them out through a process of first teasing the hair until they held a few select strands in their fingers, and then wrenching those hairs out of the horse’s mane by wrapping them around a comb and forcefully pulling. Some horses did not blanch at the process, which was looked favorably upon because it meant they would accept this treatment from adoptive owners and it would not be listed as a vice or an obstacle to care and maintaining the show horse aesthetic. Allowing their manes to be pulled also further developed their redemptive capital: a horse that would submit to the grooming practices required to fulfill the role and appearance of a show horse would be more valued in the specific context of the show horse world (or think “field” here as well with its attendant structures of power and qualifications of membership) than a horse that would not submit to such practices. This value would be reflected economically in the adoption fee, albeit often in conjunction with a retinue of other redemptive features that could either help or hinder the value of the horse. For example, even if a horse did not like his/her mane pulled, if s/he had an amazing jumping form, then this might help mitigate the obstacle an adoptive owner might have with grooming issues and thus MMSC could still command a substantial adoption fee for the horse despite the persistence of that which was considered a vice. Beyond the more economic forms of redemptive capital a horse’s submission to grooming techniques might generate, a horse’s acquiescence to the beauty regimes of the show horse world would also implicitly mark this horse as human-oriented and “willing” – that is, that 367 this horse could control his/her natureculture as I discussed in the previous chapter. This meant that this horse’s personality, or, as MMSC’s horse centered re-schooling program would put it - “horsenality” - was further valued because the equine habitus aligned with human intentions and expectations instead of challenged them. These were, quite simply, horses that were easier to adopt out and keep adopted out, and, furthermore, their success stories would become testimony to the effectiveness of MMSC’s re-schooling program. 8.3 Re-Schooling the Putnamville Five After starting at square one with the outward bodies of Putnamville Five on the beauty parlor day, MMSC moved into a second phase: evaluating the depth of the horses’ health from the inside out in order to determine how and when their re-schooling should begin. As Susanna put it, this kind of evaluation meant “that they are not only sound but that the coats they gleam, their teeth are balanced, their feet are good, because a horse only performs its best when it is physically at its best.” This evaluation entailed any number of techniques, from putting them on more nutritionally balanced food, to taking fecal samples to test for the presence of intestinal worms and placing horses on an appropriate deworming regimen, to having an equine ophthalmologist come out to MMSC to evaluate the horses’ eyes (Lee’s in particular), to various visits by veterinarians, dentists, farriers, and even acupuncturists and chiropractors (all of which fell under the “health care” category of the reschooling program). Also at this time, Lara was brought officially on board to help start training horses for MMSC, thus helping implement its emphasis on “horsenality assessment, movement assessment, response under pressure” and “right brain/left brain” intelligences in the horses. Given the extensive responsibilities of the reschooling program alone, Susanna and Melissa were also 368 increasingly pulled by administrative responsibilities, so it was determined they needed someone to exclusively oversee the re-schooling program. This was the reason Lara joined the scouting trip to Putnamville and soon began driving up weekly from her farm outside of Nashville to help with the re-schooling program. When on campus at MMSC, Lara would ride the horses and start putting “buttons” on them; that is, she started teaching the horses basic riding cues and signals from the English-style of riding, attempting to over-ride their previous race training and habitus. Each horse was eventually assigned a training regime according to Lara’s read of their abilities, strengths and weaknesses. On the days when Lara was not at MMSC, interns and volunteers could continue with the re-schooling of the Putnamville Five according to the lessons that Lara, in consultation with Susanna, ascertained the horses needed in order to become adoptable. Lara’s addition to the MMSC staff was also fortuitous because as the re-schooling of the Putnamville Five began, it became apparent that after shucking around for a few years in Putnamville’s prison pastures these horses were going to take a lot longer to re-school than horses that, for example, had just come off the track and whose athleticism hadn’t grown dormant. In years past, when the Rolex Three Day Event came to the Kentucky Horse Park, MMSC had horses well into the re-schooling program to offer for adoption. The Putnamville Five horses would challenge that typical timeframe in which MMSC could turn horses around. Furthermore, as “one of the purposes of [Huntington’s] herd evaluation was to identify horses that are good candidates for re-training and adoption” (TRF Response 2011:7), the Putnamville Five demonstrated that when pulling horses from the herd, even those with the most present and promising redemptive capital took a long time and many resources to reconfigure as adoptable riding horses. 369 8.3.1 Natural Horsemanship: paradoxes of history, gender, and ethics When it came to the actual transformation of former racehorses into newly minted riding horses, one way the Secretariat Center claimed to make headway was through the training principles of natural horsemanship (hereafter NH). Indeed, the NH aspects of MMSC’s “reschooling” program was one way it was considered (and trademarked as) “horse centered.” As Haraway observed, “Training together, a particular woman and a particular dog, not Man and Animal in the abstract, is a historically located, multispecies subject-shaping encounter in a contact zone fraught with power, knowledge and technique, moral questions” (2008:205), this next section will not only historically locate NH, it will also provide some orientation to how fraught it is “with power, knowledge and technique, moral questions.” As constructed by those who subscribe to NH, the cultural roots of natural horsemanship are often located in Greco-Roman western history: first with the Athenian soldier, historian, and student of Socrates, Xenophon (430-354 BCE), who recognized that if a horse’s needs were taken care of by man – “while food, drink, and relief from pain come from man” – a horse would “not only love men, but even long for them” (2006 CE[350 BCE]). What is key in Xenophon’s approach is the recognition that horses can be handled and trained by care (if not some form of kindness) attuned to both the horse’s physical and emotional needs; cruelty, in the form of violent domination and submission techniques, need not be the basis of human-horse relationships. As Xenophon demonstrated, such gentle techniques would encourage a horse would form an attachment to its handler to the point of longing; there was no need to force a horse into a relationship when it could be cultivated as such. The genealogy of NH proceeds through European traditions of horsemanship, each credited with “an ability to understand what the horse is thinking and feeling and to act 370 accordingly with sensitivity” and not with unmitigated violence and cruelty (Birke 2007:219). Such traditions are usually linked with a (male) figurehead and include French riding masters Antoine de Pluvinel (1555–1620) and Robichon de La Guérinière (1688–1751). While retrospectively drawn into the genealogy of natural horsemanship, none of these forbearers knew their approaches as such. The actual term “natural horsemanship” was first coined to describe a “revolution in horsemanship” emerging from U.S. cattle ranches in the 1970s (Birke 2007 quoting Miller and Lamb 2005). This connection drawn between 20th century U.S. NH practitioners (also referred to as “horse whisperers”), French masters and Greek scholars might be what Appadurai would call “constructed primordialism” where “the act of reading things together sets the stage for movements based on paradox” (1996:28) if not highly suspect cultural hybridity. By giving name to horsemanship practices that have existed for centuries, if not millennia, “natural horsemanship” has been criticized for presenting what was old-and-known as new-and-revolutionary (Birke 2007). One of the most salient ways NH has done this is through a new generation of (again, mostly male) figureheads that have turned their training techniques into a marketing empire, such as Monty Roberts, Pat Parelli, Buck Brannaman, and John Lyons, who in turn were taught by mentors like the brothers Tom (1910-2003) and Bill Dorrance (1906-1999), as well as Ray Hunt (1929-2009). NH is complicated by further gendered paradoxes, such as its association with the inherent masculinity of “cowboy” culture while garnering a predominantly female following, and still-present claims of equine cruelty within its “natural” techniques. Birke and Brandt (2009) elucidated how NH traditions, such as those of Roberts and company, carry fundamental and questionable gendering forces. Even within the name “natural horsemanship” male gendering is evident – though like Birke and Brandt, however, I continue to use the term “horsemanship” 371 because “it is in such widespread use” (2009:191). For Birke and Brandt, “horsemanship” is a term that “refers to the high levels of skills required to know and manage horses – something which has been culturally associated with male gender (ibid). They further argue that because the “figure of the cowboy predominates,” NH carries with it implicit “associations with masculinity” such as machismo, toughness, and “’masters’ of animals and the land” (2009:189;192). However, this romanticized legacy of the cowboy has become tempered with “traditionally feminine values – of gentleness and caring” (2009:192). The effect has thus been that while NH garners a huge female following, it still has the structural effect of men as the masters of horsemanship teaching ignorant and impressionable women: “The horsewoman’s consumption of the cowboy and his248 methods situate them decidedly within a heteronormative, traditionally gendered framework” (Birke and Brandt 2009:195) Furthermore, some of the techniques employed by NH have been criticized as still being cruel and harsh to horses, perhaps as an implicit legacy of the unquestioned sense of mastery that comes with the culture of the cowboy. Roberts’ technique of sending a horse into flight and tapping into its “prey” instincts and response has been criticized for harnessing fear and threat in the horse249. Indeed, Birke and Brandt observe this as well through the work of Noske (2005), pointing out that in the “prey/predator binary” that NH presents as the foundation of the human-horse relationship “not only ignores horses as subjects, but also creates knowledge based on domination,” and, furthermore, “reinscribes gender powerfully” (2009:194; cf. Patton 2003). Paradoxically, however, once students of NH accept and acknowledge this epistemology of horse 248 There are some exceptional natural horse ”women” out there, such as Julie Goodnight, Karen O’Connor, and Linda Tellington-­‐Jones, just to name a few. 372 training, they are then asked “’don’t think like a predator,’ to learn to prove to the horse that ‘you are not a predator in your thoughts and emotions as well as your actions’” (Martignier quoted in Birke and Brandt 2009:194). Birke and Brandt identify this new level of interaction as a “goal oriented relationship” where “the human can help the horse override its instincts” (2009:194). However, they then call upon the insight of Despret and her concept of “anthropo-zoo-genetic practice” to illustrate how in this new, instinct-transcended relationship horses still have agency in that both humans and horses are constantly shaped and responding to each other – “becoming with” – in the training process (ibid). In this way, we come to understand another level of their criticism of NH: that horses are not all instinct but co-agentive actors as well. In a separate essay, “’Learning to Speak Horse’: The Culture of Natural Horsemanship” Birke (2007) examines the almost cult-like following NH masters like Parelli has engendered (pun perhaps intended). While many riders and trainers become practically evangelical about the transformation they have experienced in their relationships with their horses (some even extend this into their human-to-human relations) by taking up Parelli’s methods, others have voiced concerns that the “Parelli club” just becomes another form of human social exclusiveness250 that already predominates in the horse world (Birke 2007:225). Furthermore, there are concerns on the horses’ behalf, that some get labeled as “not smart enough” and that NH training can be as rigid as conventional training, thus creating misunderstandings between humans and horses because owners have not grasped the techniques thoroughly enough (Birke 2007:224-226). Indeed, even Parelli too has met his own form of public controversy when the ethics of his 250 See Latimer 2007 and Cassidy 2002 for more about how horses are used for human social stratification. 373 methods were questioned during a demonstration with a horse that refused to be bridled.251 Key to all this discussion is that NH is a highly diverse form of horse training whose methods stretch a spectrum of cruel to gentle based not only on the personalities and capabilities of NH figureheads and their followers, but also on how “cruel” and “gentle” are interpreted and questioned. Furthermore, it is noted time and time again that NH succeeds when it is comprehensively understood and practiced, and fails when it is adopted and evangelical-ized with cursory engagement and understanding – to which the mass marketing of various NH methods and schools of thought contributes. A subscriber to NH methods and, moreover, nostalgic for the classical era of horse training as exemplified by Pluvinel and the like, Susanna’s appropriation of NH was to go to “soul to soul” with horses. She considered that horses were talking all the time, loquacious with distinct personalities and a “sense of humor” - echoing Monty Roberts’ (1996) observations on the language of horses, but blending her unique form of highly anthropomorphic discourse with scientific, ethological conclusions. And like Roberts and other NH practitioners, Susanna fundamentally recognized that the relationship between horses and humans was not a “natural partnership,” that there were predator and prey dynamics to overcome in order to make the horse a “willing partner.” Susanna believed that it was the moral, ethical, even spiritual responsibility of humans to put themselves in the horses’ “hooves” so to speak. Perhaps based on her own multicultural, multinational upbringing, when someone – be it an intern, a volunteer, a potential adopter, or an anthropologist attempting to practice more than observe - engaged with a horse, she believed they went into the “foreign country of the horse” 251 See http://eventingnation.com/home/the-­‐pat-­‐parelli-­‐and-­‐catwalk-­‐saga-­‐a-­‐week-­‐later.html for more information; accessed 3/3/2013. 374 and had to respect and learn the customs and language there. “It puts the ball back in the human being’s court, being more humble and saying this is my fault for not explaining this clearly enough to this animal,” Susanna explained to me. “It is my lack of communication skills that is upping the emotional ante,” she further stated in reference to the outward demonstration of frustration both horse and rider can exhibit when training sessions go awry. 8.3.2 Reschooling the mares I was able to observe Susanna in action one day with Halo and the intern Jill. Situated in the reschooling ring, Susanna first had Jill work with Halo on the ground with a long line clipped to the horse’s halter and wielding a carrot stick252 to usher the horse to respond, bend and flex her body, in relation to the cues Susanna guided Jill to make. Starting on the ground and relating to a horse on this level was a way to both physically and mentally level the playing field – a technique that would not only help a horse over-ride his or her “flight” (prey) instinct, but do so by understanding that the human applying pressure (predator) was doing so benevolently (or at the very least, patiently and calmly) and looking to be responsive to the horse’s temperament and physical condition on that day. Once satisfied with Halo’s groundwork performance, Jill was given a leg up by Susanna and was in the saddle atop Halo. Susanna still kept the long line clipped to Halo’s bridle and began to lead Jill around the schooling ring. They practiced the connection between the reins and body movements from the saddle position some more, and then Susanna had Jill and Halo stop and asked Jill to stroke Halo’s mane in praise and reassurance. As a former racehorse, this 252 A light, flexible fiberglass rod with a soft cotton rope on the end as used in (and sold by) the Parelli method, as opposed to a hard, stiff leather whip. 375 might be a familiar sensation to Halo as I witnessed many jockeys and exercise riders calm and connect with their horses by stroking their necks. As the neck line – called the “crest” – is also full of nerves from the horse’s spinal cord extending to the brain, it is an incredibly sensitive and energetic spot on a horse’s body (it is also the first spot a predator will bite once jumping on a horse’s back). It can thus become full of physical tension, and touch and massage of this area can help horses relax physiologically (cf. Tellington-Jones 1995). Susanna also had Jill take the time to stroke Halo’s crest reassuringly because this technique was demonstrative of Susanna’s approach to training horses, which was its own blend of technical and philosophical approaches to horses that demonstrated her own interpretation and adaptation of NH. On the day that Susanna guided Halo and Jill through their first training ride together, she was thus bringing a specific background of perspective and approach to the event. After leading Jill and Halo around the schooling ring – a space that demonstrates Haraway’s idea of a “contact zone” in Mary Pratt’s sense that “a ‘contact’ perspective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other” (2008:216) – Susanna unclipped the lead rope and proceeded to watch and give counsel to Jill as she navigated Halo around the ring first at a walk, then a trot, and eventually a soft, short canter. The goal was simply to give Halo a positive, non-traumatic experience of riding after so many years turned out to pasture. This approach reflected Susanna’s additional understanding of a horse centered approach was to heed the psychological dimension of horses (and humans) as much as the physical. Thus, this first ride was intended not to condition Halo’s muscles or physical fitness but to begin to give her the mental and behavioral tools to “excel elsewhere” – that elsewhere being the desired, ultimate outcome of the reschooling process: a new adoptive home. 376 In this sense, the redemptive capital cultivated for Halo on that day was of the embodied and objectified elements of Bourdieu’s cultural species of capital. Embodied in the sense that she was exposed to new ways of moving her body – to “go forward” and “bring her under and find her four feet - by accepting a rider and her commands (often framed as “questions” in MMSC parlance) and thus build mental and muscle memories for future response to such methods. Objectified in the sense that she was exposed to new objects – the carrot stick, a snaffle bit, an English saddle as opposed to a racing one – and how to operate in relation to them, a savvy that would only grow in the time investment she would be given as a student in MMSC’s reschooling program. In contradistinction to Halo, Marlin was a different kind of mare. While Halo embodied the delicate, willing, more feminine attributes of a mare, Marlin typified the stubborn and opinionated mare – Susanna went so far as to call her a “trickster” and “girly.” While Marlin’s redemptive capital assessment started off well by the fact that she fell asleep while having her body clipped253, was calm about blanketing, stood quiet for the vet, and had good strong teeth (all attributes noted in her baby book) she had a lot of quirks when it came to riding. She was reluctant to go forward, one of the most basic foundations of a ride-able horse, and was extremely flighty and uncomfortable on trail rides, which would make it difficult to adopt out to someone who wanted a horse to ride on trails and not just in a ring. Marlin’s return to riding after being turned out in prison pastures was additionally hindered because she lacked the motivation to bond with a human and “do her job.” Not knowing her exact history before she was surrendered to the TRF, her behavior and body language nonetheless hinted that somewhere 253 Clipping a horse is taking an electric, buzzing razor and shearing off long fur around the face, ears, feet, as well as cutting off facial whiskers and shaping the dock [root] of the tail. 377 during her race training she had had a disappointing and perhaps even dispiriting experience with riding and relating to humans to the point where she was reluctant to engage with either when re-introduced to her at MMSC. This “baggage” that Marlin came with is similar, I would argue, to the cultural capital Bourdieu attributed to familial upbringing – capital that either helped or hindered children in their educational pursuits and successes in the sense that “scholastic yield from education action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by the family” (1986). In Marlin’s case, “family” would include not only her formative experience with equine “mess mates” (as Haraway [2008] would put it) from her broodmare mother, to her weaning and yearling bands, to the horses she trained with and raced against, to those she was retired in the prison pastures with, but the deep, ontological impression made by the human interlocutors in her life: from the broodmare manager and veterinarian that helped her birth into the world, to the owners who decided to sell or buy her, and so on. All of the Putnamville Five horses (indeed, ALL of the horses that passed through MMSC’s reschooling program) came with cultural capital shaped by the investment of a multispecies family – or “connections” as they are commonly referred to in the racing world. In Marlin’s case, her embodiment of pre-MMSC cultural capital created resistance to how much and what kind of redemptive capital she could accumulate in the reschooling program. While she had good marks in general handling (the grooming, the blanketing, etc) she did not take as swiftly to riding training as Halo and some of the other Putnamville Five horses. As the cultural capital of ride-ability was prized above all else in the reschooling program, Marlin did not initially possess enough nor the highest quality of this species of capital – and thus there was concern about how long – if even – it would take to train her and adopt her out. 378 8.3.2.1 The curse and blessing of being a mare In the horse world, mares are both appreciated and despised. Appreciated because they can reproduce, despised for the very same reason. While in Chapter Five I spelled out the privileging of stallions, during my fieldwork I also talked to many a horse person who was much more content with a champion filly254 (recall my discussion in the Introduction of Zenyatta “beating the boys”) or a herd of broodmares than those who possessed the prize stallion. In consideration of a herd of broodmares (mares in active reproduction mode), owners can produce a foal crop consisting of as many potential profits as stallions bred to each mare; unless stipulated in a contract, stallion owners do not get ownership of the foals from their sire, just monetary payment in stud fees, and many times only if the foal stands and nurses. With mares, owners can make more money than what stud fees command by selling foals as weanlings or yearlings at prestigious auctions, and their mares can also gain a reputation for themselves – becoming known as a “black type” mare - either by passing along their racing prowess and/or coveted bloodlines to their foals, or for mothering winning horses even if they did not do so well in their racing careers. Furthermore, in the show competition world of Hunter-Jumper, Dressage, and Eventing specialties as I became acquainted with during my fieldwork, some riders and trainers are particularly fond of mares because of the intelligence, leadership, and loyalty they cite as coming from mares’ instincts “in the wild” to command a band as an “alpha” personality and protect her offspring. But the trick is to first get the alpha personality of the mare to submit to or “join up” 254 Female horses are called “fillies” until they reach the age of four or, if earlier, begin reproducing – then they are called mares. 379 with the ultimate “herd leader” – the human. This process can take time and savior-faire that neither trainer nor rider might have in extended supply. While mares can thus be appreciated for their reproductive and leadership capital, they can also be disdained for it as well because in the androcentric, heteronormative world of horse racing, female horse sexuality – and the accompanying attitude - is an additional, messy trait to be managed and monitored. When mares come into “heat” (that is, when their estrous cycle arrives, making the mare hormonally ready for breeding) some can exhibit behavior that makes her harder to handle than usual, like irritability, squealing, kicking, biting, absent-mindedness, while others are not as affected. Of those very demonstrative of their heat cycles, this can mean they are very sensitive in their flanks where their ovaries are generally located, and for some mares, ovulation can be painful enough to warrant pain medication and a hiatus from riding. Perhaps the most sexually messy trait of heat, however, is how the horse’s reproductive organs react: “holding the tail elevated, "winking" (opening and closing) the lips of the vulva and variable amounts of squatting and squirting of urine and mucus.”255 While the visibility of a mare’s vagina (and her reproductive propensity) becomes most pronounced during heat, its promising and problematic presence never fully goes away, leading to a constant surveillance and management of it. For example, when fillies begin racing their vaginas are sewn up so that they can only excrete urine; otherwise they run the risk of collecting too much air (called “pneumovagina”) and/or bacteria in their vaginal orifice, creating health issues that might sideline them from competing and require money for care that otherwise might act as a profit instead. In response to this, mares will also be stitched to prevent from becoming 255 From http://www.equisearch.com/uncategorized/managing-­‐heat-­‐cycles-­‐mares/; accessed 11/29/12 380 “dirty mares,” that is, mares that get reproductive tract infections that might impinge on their capability to reproduce due to contamination from manure passed from the anus that lies just above the vulva (Cassidy 2007: 82-83). Cassidy explains that the trend to stitch fillies and mares - what is called the Caslick procedure – stems from a preference of “round-rumped” mares over “angular-rumped” mares (2007: 82). This preference has grown over the past 35 years, for as mares “became more commercially significant” and their racing careers more valued, “breeders began to select for masculine qualities in female horses,” which included a more rounded rump (ibid). With more angular rumps, “mare’s droppings fall to the floor, bypassing a vertical vulva,” whereas with the new fashion of rounded rumps the threat of fecal contamination is greater because of the changed morphology of the horses’ reproductive organs (ibid). While racing fillies were selected for rounded rumps, they ran the risk of becoming a “barrener” mare when tapped for reproductive potential post-racing (ibid). Cassidy helps explain the stigma – both symbolic and economic - that falls on to such mares: It leaves them [breeders] with nothing to sell and with their investment tied up in a high-maintenance animal, an outlaw “barrener.” The breeder loses capital from the sale of the yearling that has not produced. The mare depreciates, as she would every year, and a barren year increases the rate of depreciation. (2007: 82) Returning to the mares of Putnamville Five: given their ages – six and seven, respectively – and the fact that no record was made in their TRF intake forms or in their MMSC baby books that either had been consigned as broodmares, we can assume that Halo and Marlin never met the fate of becoming "an outlaw ‘barrener’” and were thus surrendered to the TRF because their value had depreciated so. Nevertheless, notions about what it meant to a “mare” as both a blessing and a curse followed them throughout their training and eventual adoption. 381 8.3.3 Reschooling the geldings If mares like Marlin presented problems with her riding training and thus adoptability, the first gelding I will talk about, Robin, was the complete antithesis. Perhaps due to his prestigious bloodlines (perhaps another element to consider in the cultural capital “family” can invest), or that he was retired early enough (his last race was when he was four years old) and did not have significant baggage (such physical, in the form of high testosterone levels that intact male horses would have) that hindered his post-racing redemptive capital, Robin was very quickly redeemed from racehorse to adopted horse. Just two weeks after the Putnamville Five had arrived, I showed up at MMSC to find Robin standing in cross-ties being groomed by a woman I’d never met before. As we introduced ourselves, I came to find out that she, Liz, was here to “try” Robin – meaning she was interested in adopting him and was there to meet and work with him. Per MMSC’s adoption process, they required all interested adopters to come and meet the horse or send a seasoned trainer in their place to evaluate the horse. Referred to MMSC via a “fellow dog owner” (Liz breeds and shows AKC registered Hounds) living in the Lexington area, she began following MMSC on Facebook and soon felt that “the horses at MMSC may have been a bit more ‘inspected’ than some of the other adoption experiences.” She then added: “I was prepared to pay a bit more for the experience.” While I go into further detail about Robin’s adoption and new home later on, I can report that Liz came to like Robin so much that she decided to adopt him that very same day. Because he was still so early in the reschooling program, and Liz was returning to riding after years of abstention – “perhaps it’s a mid life crisis,” she joked with me – Robin would finish his education under Laura’s exclusive tutelage for one month at her farm in Tennessee because she could “bring him along further” than Liz could. Robin was thus adopted out quickly and, 382 furthermore, afforded a more exclusive educational opportunity because his redemptive capital was augmented not only by previous cultural capital (the bloodlines, the lack of riding trauma) but also by the investment MMSC made in its horses, as indicted by Liz’ impression that the horses there were more “inspected” and that she was willing to herself invest more in adopting a horse from this organization. Lee/Chase (hereafter “LC”) presented the most challenges both out of the geldings and the Putnamville Five in total. In this case, his scarred left eye was a window into past trauma that made it exceedingly difficult to train him to ride. If you stood back from L/C and regarded his face and head in full, you saw that the damaged eye was just one element to a general caved-in deformity of the left side of his face. I was there the day that the equine ophthalmologist examined his eye and determined that, in addition to his having “nictitans cartilage deformity,” and scheduling surgery for May 19th, she noted that he had clearly sustained a significant injury to the eye socket and upper left side of his head earlier in his life. But it wasn’t just the physically visible remnants of this injury that impacted L/C’s riding training, there were significant tendrils of fear that he associated with merely having a bit in his mouth. “He thinks there is pain when there is not,” Susanna told me one day as she attempted to work with L/C from the ground. She wanted to lunge line him, meaning she wanted him to move forward and “bend to pressure” in a circle around her while attached by his bridle to a long, flat cotton line. But instead of going forward, L/C panicked and went “up,” rearing onto his hind legs so forcefully that he almost flipped over, an extremely dangerous situation for horse and human. If a horse comes to respond to pressure, whether administered during ground work or riding, by acting dangerous s/he runs the risk of making this an ingrained (read: embodied) 383 habit. Such habits make for unrideable horses, and unrideable horses are extremely hard to redeem if the most-favored capital is rideability. With such physical and psychological contingencies, it was clear that L/C’s education needed to proceed more slowly and specifically to overcoming his trauma. This not only meant that it would take longer to adopt him out – thus requiring MMSC to invest more sustained resources than other horses to keep him in the program – but that he could not be showcased at all for the upcoming Rolex Three Day Event. 8.3.3.1 The redemptive capital of bareback jumping Out of all the Putnamville Five horses, Odie came with the most documented past in the form of paper records. Yet while the story revealed in those documents was a harrowing one, he took to the reschooling program more successfully than any of the other five. As previously mentioned, Odie was pulled from the “ship to kill” pen at Sugarcreek Livestock Auction on October 4th, 2009. He was identified by a representative of Bright Futures Farm, a self-described “equine charity” that acts in both the immediate rescue capacity as well as provides “permanent sanctuary to elderly and disabled horses that former owners had callously discarded”256. According to a fax I found in his TRF file, “Classic Order…allowed our representative to read his lip tattoo” indicating that Odie was docile and willing enough to allow his upper lip to be flipped up and examined – a small act that offered him salvation instead of slaughter, calling into reflection the fate of horses who do not possess the demeanor to be inspected as such. 256 From https://brightfuturesfarm.org; accessed 3/5/2013. 384 The Bright Futures representative then contacted an official at Hoosier Park, a racino just north of Indianapolis, “asking if he would assist with purchase of this horse as he had raced at Hoosier.” The official agreed “to pay the sum of $350 to secure Classic Order’s safety,” but even in the presence of financial incentive it still took some negotiating to get Odie out of the auction. While the fax from Bright Futures to the farm manager at Putnamville, Barb Holcomb, was typed on official letter, an additional handwritten note scrawls along the margin: “Sorry it took so long – we had to convince the owner of the auction to pull him.” I also have a copy of Odie’s “Application for Retirement with the TRF” as completed by Bright Futures Farm. In addition to basic identification information – his registered racing name with The Jockey Club, tattoo number, coat color, and so forth – it also notes his temperament, “medium to calm” and “current physical condition of horse” which details “many cuts and abrasions – appears to have arrived at auction in that condition. Scabs from cribbing collar.” Once Odie tested negative on his Coggins’ test257, he was sent to quarantine for further health assessment, and then on to Putnamville. From these details we can glimpse the cultural capital that Odie arrived with as he became part of the TRF herd. He had favorable temperament – an attribute that not only saved him from the auction but soon also proved fruitful in the MMSC reschooling program – despite the fact that he had sustained some injuries; this temperament would also help mitigate his vice of cribbing in that if he had been a high-strung horse and difficult to train, his cribbing would have been seen as one more undesirable trait. Because he presented himself as a good tempered, highly-trainable horse, the cribbing vice could be overlooked. 257 Meaning he was not a carrier for equine infectious anemia, a retrovirus that is transmitted via bloodsucking insects that can cause fatal anemia in horses at the acute stage. 385 I was there the day Odie showed MMSC what a remarkable horse he was and could further become. It was a mid-April day and Rolex was fast approaching. Laura was up from her farm in Tennessee and riding one horse after another. Because MMSC was in such a time crunch to produce adoptable horses for Rolex, Laura was just hopping on one horse after another while interns and volunteers (including an inept anthropologist) saddled up and cooled down horses for her. On hold was natural horsemanship, and implemented instead was a production line of in-saddle training. There was no time for the round-pen or groundwork, Laura was proceeding immediately to how each horse “felt” underneath her. Once she got a feel for their unschooled movements, she began teaching them cues (also commonly referred to as “applying buttons” as in operational functions), such as how to start trotting with a opening of her upper thighs from the saddle and finding their jumping legs by first leading them over Cavaletti poles laid out on the ground of the schooling ring. Laura was an extremely vocal rider with her horses, and while she was not afraid to admonish them – “think, don’t just react!” she would hiss to the likes of Marlin – the days I saw her ride Odie were full of her delighted extortions: “good boy!” she would purr and “yessir!” she would congratulate whenever the horse would respond favorably (“provide the correct answer”) to the cues she just taught him. On the particular day in question, Laura had just led Odie through her typical diagnostic and teaching routine of walking, trotting, and cantering around the schooling ring followed by a select number of jumps (nothing more than 1-2 foot high) before she sensed the horse was either physically tired or was growing the slightest mentally sour. I was observing at a distance so I did not quite catch the conversation and logic that went into the next decision to unsaddle Odie completely and ride him bareback with just the bit and bridle Laura had been using. Before Laura moved into eventing, she competed as a vaulter, performing balancing and gymnastic acts, 386 many times in teams, atop a cantering horse. Her balance and command atop a horse was therefore impressive, and even more so when she rode and jumped without a saddle. But it wasn’t Laura’s skill that showed the most in that ring that day, it was Odie’s too, for not only did he accept the no doubt alien sensation of a rider on his back without a saddle, but he allowed Laura to re-navigate him over the jumps over which he sailed effortlessly and without incident. During my fieldwork at MMSC, I never saw a horse ride and jump the way that Odie did that day. Given his saved-from-slaughter story, now coupled with his bareback jumping prowess, Odie presents us with a most unique case of redemptive capital. While all OTTBs represent salvation from slaughter to some degree on a spectrum of threat, some have been closer to the visceral possibility than others. Fly exemplified this in Chapter Six, and now Odie has in this chapter. Thus, while the redemptive capital of all OTTBs is symbolic of salvation from slaughter in a collective sense – what Bourdieu might indicate as what is “at stake” or meaningful and thus most valued in a field of “objective relations” (1992:97) – there are horses like Fly and Odie that demonstrate how critically inflected their new value in their “second life” can become because of how close they came to not being saved. In Odie’s case, his immediate rescue from Sugarcreek illustrates how far he had fallen from the ideal Thoroughbred stereotype that masks the fate of the majority of Thoroughbred racehorses: physically wounded and scabbed, and reluctantly released from his value as a slaughter-bound commodity, his demise was highly marked on his body and in his paper records. Yet, his redemptive capital originated with his medium-to-calm temperament that allowed him to be identified. Odie was “lucky” that he was amenable to human relationships even in a dire situation. 387 Odie’s redemptive capital only continued to accrue from there. Despite his lackluster physical appearance when he first arrived at MMSC (recall the rain rot, the overgrown hooves and hair, the scabbing wound on his forehead) and his unfortunate cribbing habit, he soon responded to the highly nutritional feed MMSC placed him on and made up for his vice by not only being a good pasture mate but an very trainable and talented horse. It is this last attribute, exemplified in the day of bareback jumping with Lara, that sent his redemptive capital soaring. Yet his success in the reschooling program was made all the more extraordinary because it was paradoxically resonant with how decrepit he once was. That is to say, Odie’s redemptive capital, only further augmented by the riding prowess he demonstrated, was dialectically defined by how close he had come to slaughter and by how much life and promise he still had in him. The logic goes: if this horse had not been pulled from the ship-to-kill pen, think of all the yet-developed talent and worth that would have died with him. 8.4 A Redeemed Life In this last section, I will consider the adoption outcomes of the Putnamville Five horses. As such, this section will demonstrate the third level of redemptive capital, whereby the redeemed, as exemplified here by the Putnamville Five horses, go on into the new field of a life reborn. At stake here is how the redemptive capital they picked up first from their immediate rescue situation, and then what helped them be selected from the prison pastures, plays out in this new field. Are these horses continually honored as slaughter survivors, vaunted Thoroughbreds, or for their calm dispositions, for their kind eye, for their uncanny riding abilities? Or, do other traits come to matter more? 388 Here, we also see the redemptive capital cultivated by MMSC’s reschooling program come full circle – a perspective I was unable to obtain fully at Blackburn because my research was limited to just understanding the men’s and horses’ experiences in situ at the TRF farm and not after, especially as the men were paroled. This section will contain a two-fold analysis of the responses I obtained from questionnaires administered to four258 adopters of the Putnamville Five. I will first consider what made these adopters, all women, choose their particular horse out of the Putnamville Five in order to explore what element of each horses’ redemptive capital appealed to them the most. I will then examine what kind of “new life” these adopters intend for their horses, be it for show, pleasure, companionship, and so forth, and how they perceive their own human, species-specific responsibility for caring for these horses. In this way, we can see how the adoptions of the Putnamville Five are inflected by moral and ethical belief and practice systems specific to the women who adopted them. I will begin by analyzing the horses in the same manner I have throughout this chapter, beginning first with the mares and concluding with the geldings. In this review of the Putnamville Five’s adoption questionnaires259, I pay special attention to the case of Odie as the 258 While L/C’s adopter was approached for research, she never responded. 259 I will only review four out of the five Putnamville horses because I did not receive questionnaire responses from Lee/Chase’s eventual adopter. Yet while I did not receive a questionnaire, I can report that he was adopted in late summer 2011 by a college-­‐aged intern who was a devotee of the Parelli method of natural horsemanship training. While I have illustrated the social critique of NH, and of Parelli in particular, it is not analytically sound to wholly discount how NH can be an effective, “gentle” method for very troubled horses – such as L/C – if implemented by a committed, experienced practitioner, as I observed and interacted with L/C’s adopter to be. As Birke (2007: 226) also observed about NH practitioners: their relationships went beyond just riding a horse as a form of physical exercise and became “more part of a continuum of ways of relating to the horse” (also quoting Brandt 2005; Game 2001). That is to say, via some NH approaches, the horse could be valued for more than just riding. For a horse that possessed potentially dangerous responses to riding such as L/C, such an approach suited his unique situation. By de-­‐emphasizing riding, human attitudes in the NH school of thought additionally changed: “They felt that the horse’s well-­‐being was paramount, insisting that humans must learn to ‘speak horse’ and to communicate better” (Birke 2007: 226). L/C’s adopter was thus poised to continue the work in the technique that Susanna had first approached L/C with. Lastly, specific to the Parelli method, Birke quotes a practitioner as saying “we can all unlock 389 full circle of his redemptive journey brings this dissertation full circle as well, for it highlights how redemptive capital is fundamentally about how lives are understood as meaning and given additional worth because of the moral and ethical – if not spiritual – imperative they pose. 8.4.1 Halo Halo’s reschooling had progressed enough that she was adopted out during Rolex 2011. Her adopter, Stephanie, was in her early 30s and while originally from Canada where her parents “owned a boarding/training stable while I was growing up,” she now lived on a horse farm in Wisconsin where she was the horse trainer and riding instructor. She had seen MMSC’s booth at Rolex the previous year and began following them online as she was “specifically looking for an OTTB because I have a love of thoroughbreds and have purchased OTTBs in the past.” Thus, when she drove down to Kentucky to attend Rolex she “brought my horse trailer with me with the hopes of buying horses.” In addition to adopting/”buying” Halo (whose adoption fee went for $2,500), she also adopted another horse from MMSC, Victor260, a gracile, dark bay gelding who was actually the first horse I ever handled as part of my participant-observation research at MMSC. Unlike the other adopters who participated in this questionnaire, the language Stephanie used in her responses demonstrated an undercurrent of continued commodification of the horses. For example, she didn’t “adopt” the horses, they were “purchased through MMSC.” our potential with horses.” In L/C’s case, the Parelli method might offer him a way to unlock his potential with humans, especially given that he was adopted by one so equipped and willing to work through his past traumas. The NH approach of this particular adopter allowed her to see redemptive capital in L/C beyond his mental and physical scars, perhaps in the sense that in each of his challenges she saw potential waiting to be unlocked. 260 Victor came to MMSC withdrawing from performance enhancing drugs as part of his training regime inflicted by the infamous, now-­‐banned-­‐but-­‐appealing trainer Rick Dutrow. 390 Furthermore, she stated only that she had “plans to show both horses competitively” when asked what she planned to do with them. This approach perhaps stems from her growing up in a family that made training and selling horses a business first, and questions of companionship second. She did however give hint at her horsemanship philosophy and approach to preparing these horses for competition: “My hope is to build a solid relationship with both horses that is based on trust.” She went on to further detail how she saw her moral and ethical responsibility to the horses in her care, tempering economic exigencies with the needs of the horses: I feel that it is my moral and ethical responsibility to treat the horses with respect and to address any physical issues they may have. By purchasing these horses, I have taken on the sole responsibility of caring for them both physically and emotionally. I think that humans should treat all animals with care, love, and respect. I feel that animals are often mistreated and many people do not have the means to care for them. The financial responsibility of owning a horse is a huge responsibility. When asked a more general question about what she considered to be the most meaningful contribution horses have made to human society, Stephanie responded: “For me personally, they are simply a part of me and a part of who I am. Horses do something for my soul.” Thus, in an illustrative example of the idea of “becoming with,” Halo went on to a new life where she would not only assume a new identity as a competition horse, but would assist in the continuing identity formation of her adopter. 8.4.2 Marlin I was specifically looking for a Bay Mare and she [Melissa] had two: Penny Black and Marlin. I emailed her that night and filled out the [adoption] application. She let me know that Penny was spoken for, but that Marlin was available. I LOVED Marlin’s “eye.” She has a very large, deep, intelligent eye. You can tell that she is a thinker. 391 From the above passage I wish to illustrate how Marlin’s adopter, Tori, was not prejudiced against adopting an opinionated mare but, rather, was specifically looking for a mare that appealed to her as a “thinker.” Originally from southern California, Tori now lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and made the trip out to Kentucky try Marlin in late May (after Rolex had come and gone) after first glimpsing her on MMSC’s website. Now in her late 30s, Tori had ridden horses since she was five and “rode hunters and jumpers on the A-Circuit through the middle of high school” before her family fell on hard times and could no longer financially support Tori’s riding. She then went on to a life of working in offices, and it was not until she and her husband relocated to Virginia Beach in 2010 that she finally had the time and money to return to horses. “Horses fit into my life as a life-long love of animals,” Tori wrote me, “but also as a sport and for exercise.” Tori’s adoption of Marlin signaled a return to a childhood passion, albeit with an added emphasis on exercise and fitness for Tori in order to help her “shed baby weight” after giving birth to her now (at the time of my fieldwork in 2011) two-and-a-half year old son. But when Tori arrived at MMSC to try Marlin, the adoption audition, as it were, did not fit her Internet impression of the horse: “It was absolutely burning hot and she was TERRIBLE! I don’t mean misbehaved, or marish or acting like a pill, she was absolutely horrible. Nobody could believe it.” Tori then went on to give an exact illustration of Marlin’s bad behavior: “Every time we passed the gate she would stop and not go forward. When I kicked her to go, she turned around and bit me on the foot.” Yet, in the midst of all this turmoil, Marlin’s redemptive capital did emerge in key ways. “The odd part was,” Tori recalls, “the minute I turned her towards a jump, she pulled herself together and was a jumping bean.” So Marlin began to impress her with her jumping prowess, and it did not end there. “Even though she was being 392 awful, the ‘big’ stuff that I cared about didn’t phase her,” and she went on list how Marlin “didn’t move a muscle” as her son “ran under her belly and behind her legs” as she was tacking the horse up, how she “didn’t even flinch” when a horse went crazy in the paddock next to where she was riding in the ring, and how she “never spooked” as her son flailed his red blanket “around like a crazed-matador” while she was riding as well. Because of this kind of redeeming behavior, Tori saw that “all of the stuff related to her ‘mind’ was really good” it was just that “she was in a really bad mood.” Perhaps because of her formative equestrian experience, Tori could see Marlin’s penultimate redemptive capital lurking behind distracting surface misbehavior. As I came to learn by witnessing the adoption processes of horses other than the Putnamville Five, not all adopters of MMSC horses possessed such nuance, and Marlin was fortunate in that she had been presented to one who could. While Marlin continued to bring challenges with her when she arrived in Tori’s care in Virginia – “she had extreme separation anxiety when I got her and she only identified with other horses” and “her feet were almost flat from being turned out without shoes for so long,” Tori was not discouraged. This had as much to do with her horse knowledge as it did her moral and ethical approach to caring for Marlin. “I think that they are a family member,” she wrote in general about the horses she had owned in her life. “It is our responsibility to take care of them because they can’t take care of themselves.” But to Tori, Marlin also had to reciprocate the care and responsibility of being kin: “She is a part of our family – that has responsibilities. She has to be nice to my little boy, but he has to be kind and gentler to her as well.” And while Tori wanted to eventually show her, she felt that Marlin “can be whatever she tells me she wants to be.” Tori recognized that she was still “rusty” as a rider and therefore did not expect Marlin to advance disproportionate to her pre-existing physical and mental conditions, rather “she just need to know 393 that I will make mistakes and that I need her to take care of me as well…And, she needs to know that I’ll never put her in danger. Once we get there, we will be unstoppable.” 8.4.3 Robin As previously mentioned, Robin was the first of the Putnamville Five horses to be adopted. After checking MMSC out on the Internet, Liz came down from her home in Michigan to try Robin – and that is how I came to find her grooming Robin that day. We conversed as she did so, and I also accompanied her as Susanna taught her how to “drive” Robin from the ground using two long lines attached to his bit much like you see horses wearing as they drive a carriage or a wagon. I even participated in learning how to drive Robin, which was very hard but, as testament to the embodied and objectified aspects of Robin’s redemptive capital, he did not protest, fight, or grow agitated by the mixed messages I gave him but rather patiently tried to understand me and negotiate his body in response. Based on Robin’s performance that day Liz came to try him, she knew she wanted to adopt him then and there. But this decision also came from history Liz brought to the relationship as well. Originally from the Westchester County suburbs of New York City Liz “grew up a horse crazy girl starting to take lessons [in] Western Pleasure at around 10 years old. Quickly I switched to English and started with Hunter Jumpers.” While it was often pointed out to me during my fieldwork, either in conversation or by observation, that there was a phenomenon of “little girls” gravitating towards horses, Liz’s turn towards horses had a special inflection: “I grew up with a physically handicapped older brother; I was always in his shadow…Going to the stables every day was the first time I was independent of him and his legacy. At the barn I could be myself.” Liz’s mother endorsed her seeking refuge in horses 394 because she “always said I was headed in the wrong direction, and she’d rather have me on the back of a horse, than on the back of a Harley, so horses saved me and my future.” Now older – “somewhere between baby boomer and Gen X - and wishing to make a return to horses, Liz mused that “perhaps it’s their time to save me again.” In this case, we see the redemptive capital of horses, specifically Robin in this case, once again flowing in the direction of human salvation, as suggested in the previous chapter with the Blackburn student-inmates. Liz thus gravitated towards Robin because she was looking for a horse that would help her return to riding, particularly jumping, and all the benefits she associated with it. But she was also conscientious of what she could expect from Robin: “He’s a stunning animal and I believe he’s got the ability. But if he only does WTC [acronym for “walk trot canter”] and basic dressage elements, I’d be happy with that too.” While Liz was also interested in possibly showing him she wrote “but not too often” and instead “I hope to just have a nice easy relationship and a way of riding.” Her Robin-centric expectations were also tempered by a specific sense of moral and ethical responsibility to him shaped by her experience breeding and showing dogs: As with all animals that rely on us for care, we have a responsibility to feed, water and keep them clean, healthy and happy. We have to have the funds to feed them the best food and provide them with necessary vet care. It’s incredibly sad to see animals of all types but horses and dogs in particular that have been left for dead starved of the basics including companionship. They are attentive and crave human attention to different degrees they are companion animals, and to deny them that is cruel itself [sic]. I don’t know why people are so cruel, perhaps it’s a misunderstanding of their needs or the costs. Perhaps it’s a sudden lack of time to devote to their needs. 395 She also summarized what she was feeling after the first few months of “owning” Robin: “I love Robin, he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been able to share my life with. Should he live up to his potential, he’s the most incredible horse I could ever own and I never would have been able to afford him261 except for adopting him from MMSC.” 8.4.4 Odie: “Emmanuel” He didn’t feel like an “Odie” to me. He needed something that expressed how he was a survivor! He needed a name with how God was watching over him to bring him to me. His new name was “Emmanuel” meaning ‘God is with us.’ God WAS with him. For a barn name we now call him Manny for short. The above quote is an excerpt from the questionnaire response I received from Christine, adopter of Odie – who I will now refer to by his new “barn name,” Manny. Growing up as a “military dependent” throughout the U.S., Canada, and Germany, Christine eventually settled in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, where she now lives with her husband and daughter. “Horses were not a part of this family other than admiring them from afar,” wrote Christine, “until 2007, when my daughter…who had turned 7, finally wore me down to let her take lessons.” The riding instructor they found was Lara, and it was Lara who invited them up to Rolex and to take a look at the horses MMSC had to offer at that time. Christine recalls that, “we had absolutely no intention of buying a new horse. None!” But when she [Lara] introduced me to ‘Odie’ back then, I immediately had this connection I can only describe to other horse lovers and be understood. He put his sad face over my shoulder and in the only way I know how to describe it, he hugged me. At that moment, he was inside my soul, searching for a way to be saved. I didn’t even know his story at the time. 261 Robin’s adoption fee was $2,500. 396 I emphasized her last statement – “I didn’t even know his story at the time” – because it illustrates that while Christine did not know the full, political story behind Manny’s “sad face,” her empathy and connection with him was attributable not just to the collectively assumed symbolism of all MMSC horses to be representative of “cast off” Thoroughbreds, but also, unique to Christine’s personal interpretation, that Manny had “chosen” her, that is, had the agency – both equine and divine - to identify his savior. That Christine also chose to frame her interpretation of her first encounter with Manny in Christian-like terminology also indexes her identity as an active Christian. As Susan Harding’s work on evangelical Christianity in the U.S. helps contextualize this: Christine knew “conversion talk” as her own inner voice, and it further helped her make sense and meaning of Manny. This profound moment of response between Christine and Manny was also shaped by further factors of Manny’s redemptive capital: “Lara said he was a good mover, and would make a good ladies horse.” Thus, Manny was not just a horse that needed saving, he was worth saving in a way that made sense in the equestrian riding world because of his extraordinary riding abilities and human-oriented disposition. Though both Manny and Christine were both “green” and inexperienced to the kind of riding style he was being marketed as being suitable for (English riding, with a particular emphasis on Dressage and jumping) Lara would help train him back on her farm in Tennessee; this arrangement, plus Christine’s ability to pay his final adoption fee - $5,500 – made it possible for Manny to “graduate” from the MMSC program and into a new life. As such, we see how Manny obtained the third element of Bourdieu’s cultural species of capital – institutionalization – in the sense that his reschooling had resulted in the “conversion of 397 economic capital into cultural capital” so as to establish “the value of the holder of a given qualification” (1986). Yet even more so, Manny’s successful reschooling stint and adoption also granted him social capital in the sense that he was now a member of “a durable network” with the “backing of collectively-owned capital.” Indeed, any horse that matriculated, so to speak, into MMSC’s reschooling program would become a benefitting member of MMSC’s social capital – and this ranged from having food to eat to the larger perception and reputation that MMSC horses were “more inspected” as Robin’s adopter stated. In Manny’s case, he took his membership a step further by not only benefitting from it himself, but also by bringing benefit to MMSC (in the form of an adoption fee, but later on as a saved-from-slaughter success story) as Bourdieu observes that an ability to bring “solidarity” to one’s social capital network is key in acquiring and maintaining the “competence” required for membership, replication and adaptation of that network. By adopting Manny, Christine too was incorporated into MMSC’s network of social capital. This was most evident in how, through her adoption experience with MMSC, Christine now saw herself as a “lifetime supporter!” of MMSC specifically and horse rescue and adoption in general. “Too many are there waiting,” she wrote. “Too many need a good home and are ready for one. Too many have the ability to change professions and be someone’s dream horse.” She recognized that not all horses had Manny’s saved-from-slaughter story but that “most are closer to just a ‘retirement, not racing anymore’ situation.” Nevertheless, “Some do desperately need a home, good treatment, and quickly.” And in a statement reflective of her allegiance to MMSC: “I would consider these horses at the center [sic] before I would ever consider searching anywhere else for one. Thus in the midst of all the preparations she made to welcome Manny into his new life – “I bought a halter and a lead, special shampoo and conditioner, found spare 398 towels to wash his face with, and new softer brushes (his skin is more tender than our Quarter Horse). Furthermore, she wanted to further make a more permanent home for Manny: “We plan not too far in the future to build our own home with a barn so we…can spend much more quality time together.” Christine felt that there “is this mutual relationship we have developed that will prevent me from ever, ever, getting rid of him for any reason!” Figure 24: Odie, now Manny, after his first show (photo by TVS McKee) 8.5 Parting Thoughts Having traced the transformative journey of the Putnamville Five from prison pastures to show rings and, furthermore, explored the various relationships these horses can have with human significant others along the way – from the care of inmates as exemplified in the last chapter and 399 complicated in this one, to the re-imagining of life’s circumstances with adopters in this chapter – we can now look back and see how this process brought these horses the highest form of redemptive capital: human otherness. I would further argue that in proving so ride-able, adoptable, and thus human amenable, these horses also demonstrated another keystone component to redemptive capital: they proved themselves as morally reciprocal to humans; that is to say, instead of causing injury or being otherwise too caustic to even handle, the Putnamville Five horses – despite their initial physical and mental challenges – were ultimately able to join up (in the words of Natural Horseman, Monty Roberts) into a new network of human significant otherness that promised them “forever homes” where new stalls, bridles, and close, protective relationships awaited them. Such outcomes for the Putnamville Five are put in distinct contrast when we consider the fate of other TRF horses that came to light via Huntington’s assessment and the NYT article. At the now-infamous 4-H Farm, where only 47 of 63 horses were accounted for, what happened to the 16 horses that went missing? Of these horses, the TRF Response began by admitting that “the TRF’s inventory list of its large herd is not perfect262,” but qualifying this admission by pointing out that the TRF “has been rescuing horses for 28 years, long before it had a computerized inventory and tracking system” (2011:7). Furthermore, in addition to receiving inaccurate and late paperwork from the satellite farms, the difficulty of maintaining an accurate database of its herd was further exacerbated by the problem of identifying horses whose only “paper trail” is the ephemeral registration number tattoo that is inked on the inside of their upper lip when they are registered as racing horses with the Jockey Club of North America: a 262 The Response shares that “The inventory list by farm is probably 95% accurate.” 400 “significant number of the horses are very old and their tattoos are illegible” (Response 2011:8). Consequently, according to the Response, “if a horse dies that cannot be identified properly, it remains on the TRF inventory list.” Hence, the implication is that 16 missing horses lacked the identification to confirm their deaths - which only begs the question why they were not known by other means. The Response somewhat addresses this – “If their identification band falls off, which has happened on many occasions, it is difficult to identify the horse” (2011:8). But having considered throughout this dissertation how these horses, once rescued, come to be re-known in their relationships with human significant others, the anonymity of these deaths is striking in relation to the life stories of Ferdy, Fly, Shooby, and the Putnamville Five. The anonymous deaths of the 4-H Farm horses are also revealing of how different forms of rescue practice create different forms of human-horse relationships, with varying consequences for the horses; that is, the literal “warehousing”263 of the 300-plus in Oklahoma created a care environment where there were too many horses to care for with too little resources (both in terms of money and committed human caregivers) that there was no structure in place to facilitate more interpersonal relationships between horses and their caregivers. The 16 horses died anonymously on the 4-H Farm because there was no one to know them beyond institutionalized forms of identification, like a lip tattoo that could fade or an identification band that could fall off. Their anonymous deaths also echo unsettlingly with what I illustrated in Chapter Six: how stripped of identity and identifiablity horses are when they go to slaughter. As such, perhaps the most unsettling element of the controversy that enveloped the TRF upon publication of the NYT 263 A term that was used by many people I talked to in the aftermath of the Drape Article that implied criticism towards the TRF and what had become of its rescue operations. 401 article was that even rescued Thoroughbred ex-racehorse were still capable of joining up with the ghost herds. 402 Chapter 9: Conclusion In October it was determined that Ferdy was too unsound to serve as a schooling horse at the Secretariat Center anymore. This also meant that he was relinquished as an official mascot. He was sent to live at Blackburn. There, he became a teacher and a friend to many of the men. When I asked some of them what they thought of “Ferdinand’s Star,” I received a variety of responses. “Isn’t he the one we wrap all the time and he just stands like a stone? A lot of horses flip out and not want to move. He’s just, stays there, he’s so relaxed.” “His mane’s really short! [laughter]” “He’s a purty horse, I like a chestnut anyways.” “There’s a spirit about him…I pay attention to him.” One man in particular - whose life had been crippled by drinking, drugs, depression, unemployment, and homelessness before he ended up at Blackburn – had particularly bonded with Ferdy: “I will remember ‘my’ horse, Ferdinand’s Star264…the respect and learning experience of these fine animals, and to know these horses really trusted me and looked forward to seeing me daily.” Therefore, on the day that representatives from the Secretariat Center showed up at Blackburn to accompany Ferdy’s shipment to a new home, it was Dan265 who held the horse in the cold corridor of the TRF barn waiting for the van to arrive. As part of the TRF sponsorship program, Ferdy was being sponsored by a man and his mother, and they had struck a deal with Old Friends farm266 to care for him there where he would be more accessible267 to visit. As I came to find out when I tagged along on this transfer of Ferdy, his sponsor’s desires complimented that of Old Friends’ founder, Michael Blowen, in that he had always wanted to bring Ferdy to the farm based on his father’s, Ferdinand’s, tragic story. Once at Old Friends, Ferdy’s life would once again carry the symbolic resonance – and burden – of his sire. Once Ferdy was loaded into the horse van, bound for a new home at Old Friends, he characteristically (and heartbreakingly) raised his left leg, asking for one last treat. Dan 264 He also listed Sea of Red and Phantom On Tour as “his.” 265 Pseudonym 266 A Thoroughbred ex-­‐racehorse retirement farm in Scott County that specialized in showcasing stallion / male champions, as these can be some of the more difficult ones to re-­‐home after their racing or stud careers because of their ramped up masculinity and aggression. 267 It wasn’t that they minded coming to a prison to visit him, I was told by Linda, but that they could only come on the weekends after a work week, and because the TRF program was only a weekday program, no one was at the farm on the weekends to receive visitors. 403 pressed a peppermint into my hand as I made my way to my car to follow the van. “Please give this to him when he gets there,” he asked me, and then walked away. When Ferdy arrived at Old Friends he was greeted by Blowen and a camera crew to document the occasion. Susanna was there too with an intern who was taking photographs for MMSC’s own documentation as well. The horse was led up the lane to a paddock that already had a sign with his name on it, done up in Old Friend’s stable colors of green and gold: “Ferdinand’s Star.” Ferdy was led into the paddock and released with two other horses who immediately put the pressure on this newcomer. They galloped and bucked raucously around the muddy, late November paddock – so much so that Ferdy was too worked up to take the peppermint from my hand that Dan had given me no matter how much I cajoled him. As I watched him run around the paddock, evading the other horses’ kicks and bites, I thought back to Linda’s observation of Ferdy’s separation anxiety and his particular fondness for mares. “Wasn’t weaned properly,” she surmised. As Ferdy had been shuffled around to three organizations in just the short time I knew him, I wondered how humane this all was, to subject a horse with separation anxiety and bad legs to an ongoing peripatetic life for the continual cultivation – and perhaps exploitation – of his particular kind of redemptive capital. Ferdy’s retirement predicament came towards the end of my fieldwork year in the Bluegrass, but I had started to discern it in October when he was first relinquished as MMSC mascot and sent to Blackburn. It wasn’t just that he was too unsound and required more wrapping and care of his legs than what he could deliver in the schooling ring for clunky riders such as myself – what he had symbolized was, quite simply, falling out of vogue with some of trends I was seeing in relation to the practice and meaning-making of Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue in the Bluegrass. At that time, Ferdy was essentially replaced as a mascot by a horse, “Gunner,” who was valued not only for looking more like Secretariat (he was chestnut with a white blaze running down his face, but no white socks like Secretariat), but also had traces of him in his bloodlines. 404 Furthermore, Gunner had been taken to the Kentucky Dressage Association show at Masterson Park in August (the same show where Bubba colicked) and had earned a sixth place green ribbon with Melissa riding him. In this way, Gunner showed that he was still competition-fit and, furthermore, could win ribbons at his first show. This presented a positive image for the MMSC not only at such shows, but also at that year’s Secretariat Festival. Instead of Ferdy travelling to impart the mission of the MMSC and his particular anti-horse slaughter message, Gunner made the trip to the festival, and by presenting him like the second-coming (if you will) of Secretariat, a neat triangulation of symbolic power happened between the Center, the festival, and Gunnar. In my modeling of redemptive capital, we can now say that Gunner’s traits of being more akin to Secretariat morphologically and genealogically, his ongoing athleticism, which in turn provided evidence for success of MMSC’s horse-centered reschooling program, were what moved him into a new field from an OTTB looking for a niche, to the new mascot of the Secretariat Center. Compare this to an unsound, sour Ferdy, who bowed stubbornly and repeatedly when in his stall and whinnied frantically whenever he was separated from Fly. Compensating for his uneven ways by joking that he was like “Sherlock Holmes on opium” had essentially run its course. 405 9.1 The MMSC and TRF part ways Another reason why Ferdy was phased out and the more visually and symbolically congruent Gunner was brought in, I would argue, is because of how the MMSC reacted to the fallout from the Drape Article. As I covered in the last chapter, the Drape Article ran around the same time that MMSC had brought the Putnamville Five on campus. While their bodies and behavior were already marked by differing standards of care and equine aesthetics as I have previously discussed (“feral” horses vs. show horses, Ohio Quarter Horse culture vs. Bluegrass Thoroughbred society, and so forth), the condition of the horses became further remarkable, were re-marked, in fact, in response to the Huntington reports’ and Drape’s allegations of substandard care and feeding of horses. Suddenly, the Putnamville Five became evidence of what the TRF’s Figure 25: Susanna flipping Gunnar's lip to show his registration tattoo at the Secretariat Festival 2011 (photo by TVS McKee) 406 $3/day, 24 hours/day outside system of care begat, and this “evidence” was now under scrutiny like never before. These circumstances thus made the transformation of the Putnamville Five all the more salient, demonstrating how the MMSC program could efface some of the consequences of the TRF’s minimal care standard after a particularly harsh winter. But as we know from the last chapter, the Horse Centered Re-Schooling curriculum could only make so many strides in this direction, and was significantly handicapped when trying to produce adoptable show-worthy horses in 30-45 days (or, as was the historical context for the Putnamville Five, in time for the Rolex 3-Day Event) from horses that essentially had been let out to pasture for the rest of their lives. 9.1.1 Reschooling the pasture ornament? This point about how MMSC taking on the Putnamville Five horses is also noteworthy because MMSC went to Putnamville as part of the TRF’s herd evaluation process, whereby “One of the purposes of the herd evaluation was to identify horses that are good candidates for re-training and adoption” (TRF Response 2011:7). The logic went that a horse adopted from the TRF herd was one less mouth to feed and, the wake of the Drape Article, one less problem to face. Huntington went on to make recommendations in her reports that the TRF could pursue re-training and adoption more vigilantly than they already were. The TRF responded to her recommendations by stating that some of the horses she marked as potential re-training prospects were questionable and inaccurate: “Dr. Huntington’s re-training prospects include a 20-year old that has big fetlocks and is not sound at the walk and trot” (TRF Response 2011: 7). Yet, as we have seen with the Putnamville Five horses, even those that are sound enough still took a lot of time and other resources to re-train for adoption. It not only then becomes a 407 question of resources, for as the TRF Response states, “we could significantly improve our re-training and adoption programs if we had additional funding” (2011:7), it also becomes a question of what is more humane or human-oriented. Is it humane to drag horses out of pasture retirement, away from potentially critical herd relationships at that, and subject them to riding re-training and adoption just so that a non-profit can reduce its herd size and rebound its reputation? Of course the argument could be made that freeing up the money from an adopted horse could go toward the care of a unadoptable, permanently retired horse or towards better funding for re-training programs – but when any of the Putnamville Five horses were retired, were the mechanisms and expectations in place to eventually re-purpose them as adoptable show horses, or was it enough to just find them sanctuary and retirement from racing? Through the figure of the Putnamville Five, we learn that horses should be evaluated for the specific redemptive capital of soundness and adoptability from the moment they come off-track, not after years of pasture retirement. Once it was realized that the Putnamville Five horses were exactly the kind of horses Huntington was paradoxically not only fingering for neglect but also as re-training prospects, MMSC’s board of advisors began questioning how much MMSC wanted to be associated with the TRF in terms of finding quality candidates for the their program. Board members were additionally jittery at remaining associated with the TRF because their reputation had been sullied so (recall the disparaging comments, nigh “hate” mail and blog essays, I addressed at the 408 end of Chapter Three) and it truly looked like the organization was going to fall apart; “the TRF will not survive this” opined one racing insider and columnist268. 9.1.2 Suing in the name of the horse In addition to the public relations disaster the TRF faced in the wake of the Drape Article, which also threatened to hurt the organization financially as there was concern that funding would dry up out of disgust and protest269, a lawsuit was brought against the organization. In May 2012, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit against the TRF in the aftermath of the Huntington herd evaluation and NYT article, alleging that the organization had “mistreated animals in its herd” (Hegarty 2013:1). What allegedly brought this to the attention and action of the attorney general of New York (where TRF was founded as a non-profit) was information supplied by Frederick A. Terry Jr., executor of the Mellon endowment, to the attorney general’s office regarding the mismanagement of the TRF. The TRF fired back with a countersuit, not against Schneiderman, but against Terry as “Individually and as Executor of the Paul Mellon Estate” as stated on the summons and complaint to the New York Supreme Court (01/05/2012) I was able to download from the Internet. The TRF accused Terry of “false and defamatory allegations of impropriety” (Summons and Complaint 2012:2) against the TRF in light of the Huntington reports. It appears, however, that the pivotal issue in the suit was not 268 Bill Finley “Who Will Save the Horses?” 23 March 2011 http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/horse/columns/story?columnist=finley_bill&id=6247743 269 Overall, while my research participants worried greatly about this (as one CEO explained to me in an interview, “Any time you get the New York Times speaking badly it is going to hurt as far as giving, and trying to explain to those in not in racing why the article was written.”), it seemed that while a few donors and sponsors deflected, others stepped up their support for the TRF even more. Upon an interview with one of the then-­‐CEOs, he also mentioned that the TRF annual Saratoga Gala, held every August to correspond with the race meet at Saratoga Racecourse in Saratoga Springs, New York, had brought in the most money of all the galas. 409 pure humanitarian concern for the horses, but rather it “centered on the [Mellon] estate’s objection to a complex arrangement in which the TRF used disbursements from the endowment to secure a loan when the TRF was running a deficit in 2011” (Hegarty 2013:2). Furthermore: “A portion of the loan was used to repay a loan the Mellon estate had provided in 2007” (ibid). It appears as though in the TRF’s attempts to become financially solvent in the wake of the 2008 recession, and then in the midst of a herd assessment scandal, the best decisions were not exactly made and, moreover, the ultimate power holder in the TRF, the Mellon estate, was insulted and looking to withdraw its support. In the end, the New York state attorney’s suit was settled and the TRF dropped theirs against Terry270. The TRF acceded to “make several changes to it board and hire a new chief executive” (Hegarty 2013:1), including placing on its board “a veterinarian appointed by the attorney general’s office” as well as “one director nominated by a ‘reputable animal-welfare organization’” and another as “an associate or member of a national horseracing institution” (Hegarty 2013:2). Diana Pikulski, especially maligned throughout this time (as she was during my fieldwork year when the Drape Article broke) was required to resign “as vice president of external affairs and begin service as director of external affairs with responsibility for fund raising” (Hegarty 2013:2). Out in the pastures, changes were also seen. According to a release written by Schneiderman upon announcement of the settled legal disagreements, “as a result of the lawsuit, the size of the herd had been reduced by one-third” (Hegarty 2013:2). Based on my interview with the then-CEO of the TRF, I assumed such programs as the enhanced foster care 270 In 2014, people affiliated with the TRF are still very upset and sensitive about this lawsuit in the follow-­‐up correspondence I have had with them. With the lawsuit having been dismissed, it seems as though organizational protocol and mentality is “that was then, this is now” and there is no need to rehash this troubling time. In Gordon’s words, then, it seems as though the TRF is working to prohibit anymore “haunting” of this controversy and all it laid bare. 410 and virtual sponsorship (which I will explain in the following section) were helping in that herd reduction. Furthermore, I additionally observed the TRF put a lasting freeze on bringing new horses into the program in the aftermath of the controversy to the point where Linda told me she was working with the smallest herd at Blackburn than she ever had before as a result of the depreciation in numbers271. 9.1.3 Autonomy achieved In retrospect, it seems as though the board members of the Secretariat Center anticipated such fallout and did not want to be associated with the TRF should such developments as the aforementioned lawsuit take place. Though no one foresaw the TRF being sued by the New York attorney general at the time, from my vantage point sitting in on many discussions at board meetings, concerned was repeatedly voiced how MMSC might be judged for sub-par horses and, by extension, horse care / horsemanship. Concurrently, Susanna lobbied the TRF to start taking in non-TRF horses not only to avoid the challenges and slow-process that the Putnamville Five horses presented as indicative of the majority of the TRF herd, she also did so because she just needed horses, period, to reschool and keep the MMSC afloat272. Her request was granted, and soon I was 271 It was claimed by John Moore, the then-­‐TRF chairman and chief executive (he was asked to resign as well), that the herd was undergoing reduction (from 1350 in 2008 to 1080 in 2011) “before the controversy arose and a year prior to the suit being filed by Schneiderman” (Hegarty 2013:2). 272 However, as the year went on, Susanna became determined to retrain and adopt out fifty horses. By the time MMSC closed up for the winter at the beginning of December, she had achieved that goal. I must go on to report, though, that three years later at the time of writing (May 2014), I have seen many of those horses up for adoption once again – three in a row just last week. Adoption recidivism, if you will, happens a lot with OTTBs for a variety of reasons both circumstantial (divorces, job loss, etc) and behavioral, as many times the horse that performed perfectly (or at least admirable) while being looked at will come undone under different trainers or get “hot” (high 411 accompanying Susanna on the occasional horse scouting trip to the backstretch at Keeneland or local farms. Some horses were recommended to her, especially those we visited on farms, while others she attempted to find by making connections with their trainers and owners at the track. Should the MMSC have remained reliant on horses supplied by the TRF as was the case in years past, the cherry-picking from a herd of questionable horses would have continued, and an investment in time and money out of proportion to what Susanna saw as the vision for MMSC, the “Tiffany’s of off-track-Thoroughbreds” was a slogan she used a lot, would have persisted. The days of flipping feral horses into show ponies were soon to come to an end, and I will go on below to describe how this happened. As I mentioned, the board of advisors for MMSC, themselves made up of illustrious horse people of the Bluegrass (such as veterinarians, owners and breeders of both champion race and show horses, and retirees who directed their wealth and time towards charity), began by expressing consternation over the TRF controversy affecting the reputation and operations of MMSC at board meetings following the publication of the Drape Article. Discussions thus began about how to distance MMSC from the TRF both in image and as an organization. This began a new era for MMSC, not only in terms of how their horses were sourced, but also in terms of the quality of horse. As evidenced by Gunnar, bloodlines, conformation, movement, and ability (already important components to evaluating a horse for re-training and adoption outcomes) became of even greater importance and they aimed for the standards set by the elite equestrian worlds of both Thoroughbred racing and showing (such as Rolex). No longer would a grandson of Storm Cat be discovered in the TRF herd like a diamond in the rough; such tempered as only Thoroughbreds can be) as the quality of care improves and the horse grows healthier and stronger. 412 horses were now actively sought out and their desired identities promoted for adoption by MMSC. This helped move Susanna’s vision of MMSC as the Tiffany’s of OTTBs closer to reality; this new system also helped her obtain her goal of adopting out 50 horses in 2011 because she was able to find horses that were not nearly as encumbered physically (and in some cases, mentally) as the Putnamville Five horses were and could thus be re-schooled faster. This shift from TRF horses to post-TRF horses (if you will) also signaled a significant ideological shift MMSC took: one away from promoting their program as an anti-horse slaughter rescue, and more toward “just” a program for promoting the athleticism of Thoroughbreds whose racing careers happened to be over as part of what I call the “aftercare” paradigm shift in the wake of the TRF scandal. I will pick up analysis of this shift when I consider the Thoroughbred racing industry’s creation of the “aftercare” concept toward the end of this Conclusion. Once MMSC gained autonomy from the TRF in terms of the horses it could accept into its program, the next step was to gain more financial self-determiniation. Already outfitted with its own chequing account, Susanna and the board of advisors discussed the possibility of retaining money that was donated specifically to the MMSC instead of sending it to “National” – that is, into the TRF’s account before being redistributed back to MMSC. Via ongoing conversation between Susanna, MMSC advisors, and executive members of the TRF, the arrangement was finally agreed upon in the fall of 2011. With this development, the secession of MMSC from the TRF was becoming evident. Toward the end of my fieldwork, I thus attended the first board meeting of MMSC as its own 501(c)3 designated non-profit organization. This meant that MMSC had completely 413 extracted itself administratively from the TRF273. It was its own organization with its own mission to promote and fulfill. This also meant that the TRF lost a crucial resource, one that could help the organization facilitate the re-training and adoption of horses and, consequently, help the TRF right its sinking ship functionally, by reducing herd numbers, and symbolically, by producing some “feel good” adoption stories that demonstrated the TRF was still capable of fulfilling its mission. 9.2 A Second Chance for the TRF 9.2.1 The redemptive capital of prison programs Yet with this loss of one of its most visible re-training facilities located in the prime real estate and social network of the Kentucky Horse Park, it appeared as though the TRF re-invested in its Second Chances prison programs. As we now know, this is a noteworthy development given my Putnamville Five analysis. In addition to continued financial support, I sensed that the TRF augmented its investment in this program’s cultural capital in the informational sense that Bourdieu (1992:119) further qualified it as, whereby the TRF’s marketing information and newsletters came to largely highlight these programs and the “win-win” stories coming out of them. For example, after a year’s hiatus of newsletters in 2012 (the year in which the TRF battled the lawsuit), the January 2013 edition signaled the 30th anniversary of the TRF and a 273 When I made a reconnaissance trip to MMSC in the spring of 2013, I also found that the split had been reflected spatially. Gone were the TRF offices and personnel, and in their place the Secretariat Center was sharing rent and building space with The Brooke, “an international animal welfare organisation dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules in some of the world's poorest communities” such as in Africa, Asia and Latin America (from https://www.thebrooke.org; accessed 05/19/2014). 414 renewed focus on its origin story with the prison programs, symbolized by a white gray horse274 floating mid-stride in a snowy field at the first prison program at Wallkill on the cover of the newsletter. Also in this newsletter and in response to the turbulent aftermath of the Drape Article, an announcement was made that a new round of herd reports conducted by the TRF “in partnership with licensed equine veterinarians” (TRF 2013:2). The next two newsletters, released in September 2013 and “Spring 2014” (the most recently released at the time of writing), both ran cover stories about the Second Chances programs with headlines like, “On the Path to a Better Life” accompanying an image of a inmate (with his back to the camera) in the beige prison jumpsuit of Blackburn leading a bay colored horse down one of the lanes between pastures. The caption on the inside of this newsletter gives homage to the relationship depicted – “A quiet moment between unlikely friends at the Blackburn Correctional Complex in Lexington, Kentucky” – as well as to Linda herself: “Equine Program Director Linda Dyer places a strong emphasis on natural horsemanship techniques, which the offenders utilize to develop positive relationships with the 57 horses who call the farm home” (TRF 2013:1). During my fieldwork at Blackburn, I really only talked to Linda about the controversy, and many times she simply volunteered her opinion about the Drape Article in particular in her own form of juxtaposition: such pointing out how good a horse grazing in BCC pastures looked and commenting on how she wanted to send photos to Drape asking him if this horse looked starved or neglected. While Linda, like many staff members that I interviewed, has some frustrations about the lack of transparency the pre-Drape Article TRF had in terms of 274 On the inside first page, the caption for this image reads: “Silver Safari floats across the snowy pastures at TRF’s farm in Wallkill, New York. The 1991 New York-­‐bred raced 72 times over 7 years, earning $351,979. When an injury ended his career in 2000, one of his longtime fans (and a TRF volunteer) bought him for $1 and retired him to the TRF.” 415 communication275, she stood up adamantly for what the TRF provided to the horses and the student-inmates: “I was shocked, because this is a foundation the really tries to do good things, and has done for years.” And it wasn’t just Drape’s inadvertent insult to her horses and standard of horsemanship that Linda also found great fault with; she also found that as the article “made people question the TRF” and not wanting to donate to an organization that is “supposedly starving horses or apparently not taking care of them like they should.” Linda saw this as resulting in people problematically curtailing their donations “and that’s what we run off of, so it was a really negative thing to do to a foundation, which I do not agree with at all.” But while there was a ripple effect of some people questioning the TRF and withholding donations, Linda also shared that she has “a lot of great sponsors who said: that’s just a bunch of hogwash. They said: ‘we will always support the TRF because we know you all do a good job and that the horses are taken care of.’” Linda went on to point out that this belief in the TRF was fostered by actually seeing the horses, especially those at Blackburn, for themselves when they visit. “They say,” Linda paraphrased, “we stand behind you 100%.” Thus, though the TRF lost one of its most well-known276 re-training programs with MMSC at a time when re-training and adoption were signaled as a crucial way for the 275 As one staff member observed, “We’re so large right now,” in terms of the geographical spread of farms and administrative offices, “that the communication between the farms, the TRF, the herd manager, it is just a struggle.” He then went on to say that “Getting the vet care, and getting everybody paid in a timely manner – there’s problems. People aren’t getting paid as quickly as they should be.” When I asked about why this was, he explained that while the board recognized that it needed to be more proactive, there seemed to be a lot of “red tape” associated with running as a non-­‐profit in terms of the process of procuring money, having the board approve expenditures, the treasurer signing off, and so forth. He then compared this laborious process with how quickly things were paid by MMSC because it had its own checking account; with “National” – meaning the headquarters in Saratoga Springs – “it’s a process for everyone for everything. Just because the money is there doesn’t mean it can be paid out right away.” 276 The TRF also has a farm in Virginia that focuses on re-­‐training and adoption at Montepelier Farm, which is situated on the grounds of the historic home and estate (re: tourist attraction) once owned by James Madison, the fourth president of the United States (1809-­‐1817) and, in more recent times (but before the TRF), served as “one 416 organization to bring its herd numbers and troubles down, the value and function of the Second Chances program was still intact and remains a program that the TRF proudly promotes as evidence of fulfilling its mission and moral/ethical stance on Thoroughbred ex-racehorse rescue. As such, the Second Chances program, with its lauded, rehabilitative relationships for both inmates and horses, helps give the TRF a “second chance” of its own, to prove that it is capable of fulfilling its mission and retaining strong supporters – as evidenced through programs such as Blackburn. In a way, these prison programs became the TRF’s redemptive capital after the ontological rupture created by the Drape Article. 9.2.2 Fostering and virtual sponsorship In addition to re-focusing on the prison programs, the TRF also rehabilitated its internal operations and financial solvency, and, subsequently, its public image, by stepping up its foster program and launching a “virtual sponsorship” one. Upon interviewing the then-CEO in October 2011, he shared with me that faced with a reduction in donations and an increase in criticism, the TRF was initiating some new programs to help reduce the cost of caring for so many horses as well as the vitriol being leveled at them: “That’s why we’re going through this huge foster program right now, which has been pretty successful,” the same CEO explained to me. He further explained to me that, “Within a week and a half we have been able to get about 30-50 horses fostered, which is pretty good.” Fostering horses, according to the TRF website277, meant assuming “physical responsibility for the daily care of one or more TRF residents without of the nation’s premier equestrian centers” run by Marion DuPont Scott (from http://www.trfinc.org/c10/Montpelier-­‐Farm-­‐c19.html; accessed 05/19/2014). 277 http://www.trfinc.org/Foster-­‐A-­‐Horse-­‐c36.html; accessed 05/19/2014. 417 permanent commitment of ownership.” The description of the program goes on to detail how much the foster program saves the TRF every year ($2000), what kind of redemptive social capital the fosterer will earn (“By joining our program, you will revel in the knowledge that you’re providing a wonderful life for a deserving athlete who otherwise might have faced a grim fate”), and what kind of redemptive capital the horses have to earn them a place in the foster program: “All Thoroughbred in the TRF Foster Care program are pasture-sound and carefully selected for friendly temperament as well as their natural desire to bond with their caretakers.” Additionally, in my interview with the former CEO, the TRF was working on “full sponsorship through virtual sponsoring for people who may not have a farm but can pay $5/day to take care of a horse.” This program now has its own website (www.thoroughbredsponsorship.org) where on the main page it explains what a sponsor will receive in return for sponsoring a horse (“a personalized packet about their selected horse, photos and updates throughout the year, and even the opportunity to meet the horse in person”) and, perhaps most saliently, promotes sponsorship as “great gifts to celebrate birthdays, holidays, and other special occasions” with a special nod to “’kid-friendly’ sponsorship packet for youngsters.” Here it seems, Beautiful Jim Key and Snowman live on, not as specters that haunt from the margins, but as friendly spirits (as it were) stepping out from the ghost herds and offering potential human significant others one last chance at retying some of the knots born from the entanglement of the TRF, the New York Times, the Mellon Estate, and the attorney general of New York (just to name a few) with threads familiar but patterns (hopefully) anew. As one staff member further summed up the transformation of the TRF in response to the Drape Article: I think the article has turned the organization around. Yeah, it sucks that the article came out, but it was a huge wake-up call to everybody. I think a lot of things were changed for the better. As 418 far as I’m concerned, I’m glad I came here right before the article came out because I’d much rather deal with this organization now, than if the article never came out because they were going no where good before the article. Now its at least shaken people and said “this is a problem, you’ve got to fix it.” 9.3 The Racing World Responds Response and respect are possible only in those knots, with actual animals and people looking back at each other, sticky with all their muddled histories. (Haraway 2008:42) Speaking of familiar threads retied in new ways, the controversy that befell the TRF in 2011 did not just inspire a sea change or, to re-invoke the multispecies philosophy of Donna Haraway that has inspired and itself threaded through this dissertation, new kinds of “world making” (2008:3) for this organization, but reverberated in the racing world as well. “The only chance that something good can come out of this [TRF] mess is if this turns out to be a watershed moment in horse racing,” opined the same columnist who predicted the end of the TRF in reaction to the Drape Article. In relation to the frustration felt over years of picking up after the racing industry combined with the criticism of those very efforts by the Drape Article, one TRF representative shared with me: “You almost feel that after all these years you’ve enabled an industry. We should have just let it go and let people get pissed off.” In this next section, I address some of the “watershed moments” I saw as happening in the wake of the Drape Article for the purpose of giving a sense how the racing world responded to this controversy, not necessarily for the sake of the TRF, but, I would argue, to cultivate its own form of redemptive capital – to redeem the industry from not caring enough about the horses in the first place before they started joining the ghost herds. 419 9.3.1 Thoroughbred Incentive Program “To encourage the retraining of Thoroughbreds into other disciplines upon completion of careers in racing or breeding,” begins the description278 of this program administered by The Jockey Club of North America, “the Thoroughbred Incentive Program (T.I.P.). T.I.P. offers sponsorship for Thoroughbred-only classes and divisions, high point Thoroughbred awards at open horse shows and competitions, a Thoroughbred of the Year Award and a Young Rider of the Year Award.” The T.I.P. was announced during my fieldwork year in 2011, and ran a pilot program in 2012. Based on the success of its first year, this program has been renewed every year since then (as of writing, 2014). Only Thoroughbreds who have racing registration with The Jockey Club can compete in this program by registering for a T.I.P. number, and as such, the website offers resources for OTTB owners to look up their horse’s racing tattoo (if still legible), pedigree, and any further assistance needed to identify one’s horse if these two methods fail (recall my discussion of the partial paper trail of former racehorses in Chapter Five). After their rough starts, both Fly and Melissa and Shooby and Lara have not only gone on to register and compete in the T.I.P. program, but they have received outstanding accolades and awards for their performances at competitions. For example, Fly and Melissa won a T.I.P. High Point Dressage Award in 2012, and in 2013 they were Division Winners in the Beginner Novice Combined test and Eventing. In addition to working their way up to CCI competition levels, Lara and Shooby won the Jumper High Point Thoroughbred Award in 2012. Additionally, Lara competed in the 2013 Retired Racehorse Project279 (not a TJC program) as a “makeover trainer” 278 http://tjctip.com 279 The Retired Racehorse Project was started in 2010 by Steuart Pittman and colleagues “who felt strongly that Thoroughbred ex-­‐racehorses were in need of advocates and educators in the sport and recreation riding 420 and taught her project horse, “Ari,” how to vault. Programs like the T.I.P. and RRP are examples of how the athletic-oriented, breed valorization redemptive capital of off-track-Thoroughbreds is being formally recognized in implicit effort to mediate the fatal liminality that has so haunted Thoroughbred racehorses after their racing careers were over. 9.3.2 Thoroughbred Connect On May 16th, 2011, The Jockey Club of North America announced the creation of “Thoroughbred Connect” (hereafter “TC”), the aforementioned “free online service designated to assist with placement of Thoroughbreds following the conclusion of their racing or breeding careers.” This program is set up to help place horses in two ways. First, “those interested in providing assistance or aftercare have the ability to attach their name and contact information to the electronic records of Thoroughbreds within The Jockey Club’s database.” This service is built upon one of the informal systems of rescue where fans of horses that follow them throughout their career and then buy/adopt the horse when their racing or breeding careers come to an end. Via TC, such fans can now supposedly indicate their willingness to care for a horse at the outset of that horse’s registration and racing career280. As James Gagliano, president and chief operating officer of The Jockey Club is quoted as saying: “This platform provides an easy and convenient way for those with means, capacity and desire to help any horse they have owned, admired, or connected with over the years.” Concurrently, “a person who is seeking placement for a Thoroughbred in his possession can log into [TC] and request the contact information attached to the horse.” From there, “the world”(from http://www.retiredracehorseproject.org/about-­‐rrp/about-­‐retired-­‐racehorse-­‐project; accessed 05/20/2014). 280 I do not know how this is going and am curious to contact TJC / TC for a report. 421 possessor of the horse may then contact that prospective owner directly to perform due diligence and discuss potential arrangements to transfer the horse.” This process indexes a similar one for the TRF whereby the possessor of a horse is instead the one “surrendering” the horse, and the prospective owner is the TRF or a potentially future adopter/sponsor/fosterer. Yet, instead of placing the onus on the one looking to off-load a horse (possessor/surrender) by asking or attempting to require a sponsorship or donation, the exchange is of a total different nature: the horse is still a desired commodity / entity via the TC connection, and the person (prospective owner/etc) taking on the horse willingly takes on the cost of the horse. This point about the willingness of assuming the cost of a horse is a big one to make, for within the economic culture of Thoroughbred horseracing there is great aversion to imposing reciprocity and exchange without earning or competing for it. Being an inherently competitive sport might lead to competitive sociocultural relationships, but I would argue, moreover, that Thoroughbred racing as I experienced it in Kentucky is also an exercise, a culture of free-market economy and economic self-determination. Money, resources, fame and fortune go to those who earn it or want it. Hence, TC tries to match the willing with the willing. The TRF was (and still is) stuck matching the surrendered with the sympathizers. 9.3.3 Aftercare “Aftercare” started becoming a buzzword in the Bluegrass in the aftermath of the Drape Article. It was (and still is) a term, however euphemistic, coined by the racing industry (here represented by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association [NTRA] to give name to the programmatic 422 need to provide post-racing (“after”) life options (in the form of “care” based relationships) for Thoroughbreds. One way such needs have been met since the time of my fieldwork has been through the establishment of the “Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance,” an “an organization designed to serve as both the accrediting body for aftercare facilities281 that care for Thoroughbreds upon retirement from racing and a fundraising and grant allocation body to support these approved facilities.”282 Establishing a separate body just to handle the evaluation and accreditation of “aftercare facilities” can be read as a response to the calls for further oversight of such facilities given how discombobulated the TRF became in managing its own operations, and how publically this was revealed. I first encountered this concept over two days in mid-October 2011, when the NTRA hosted an “Aftercare” workshop in the Limestone Café where just a month earlier I observed people from all walks of life in the racing industry study horse sales catalogues over drinks and food during the Keeneland September Yearling Sales. Spatially ensconced in the hive of Kentucky’s elite Thoroughbred racing industry (Keeneland) this Aftercare workshop was a tentative, if not tautological, step towards formalizing Aftercare - albeit one that still clung to the problematic roots of charity and non-profit cultural practice. The fact that most Thoroughbred ex-racehorse care / rescue programs are run as non-profits or charities was heavily criticism in the wake of the Drape Article: “[placing] the burden on a handful of charities then largely step aside was never a good idea, was never going to work.”283 Therefore, when I attended the 281 Tellingly, the MMSC and the TRF are not on the list of accredited facilities as of writing, May 2014. 282 http://www.thoroughbredaftercare.org/Default.asp; accessed 05/20/2014. 283 Bill Finley “Who Will Save the Horses?” 23 March 2011 http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/horse/columns/story?columnist=finley_bill&id=6247743 423 NTRA Aftercare seminar, I was curious to see if strides were being made to rethink the non-profit, charity-based model of rescue. Moderated by Liz Harris, well-known in the industry for her foundational work with the Thoroughbred Charities of America (now currently running her own consulting business for the equine industry), this workshop featured guest speakers, open discussions with attendees, and an evening tour and barbecue at Old Friends284, the same farm where Ferdy was to be transferred a month later. On the first day, the workshop also featured a lunch-time presentation about Thoroughbred Connect and a keynote address by Donna Barton Brothers, a former jockey-turned-television reporter and analyst for NBC285 and TVG286 networks who is also an OTTB owner and enthusiast287. The rest of the guest speakers came from a spectrum of entities invested in Thoroughbred health, retirement, as well as legal and fundraising concerns. They spoke on a range of topics as well – from “Spending Your Horse-Care Dollars Widely,” to the “Psychology of an OTTB,” to “Preventative Veterinary Care,” to “Haltering the Power of Social Media for Aftercare Specialists” – but all had one thing in common: the majority of the discourse was formed around aftercare as a non-profit, charity endeavor. Having attended the workshop myself, I also recognized a lot of familiar faces in the audience – including staff from MMSC and the TRF. The majority of questions also came from people already running rescue programs and organizations, absent (or, at least, silent) were the owners, breeders, trainers, farm managers, and the like involved on the front-end of the racing industry. In this way, the workshop was effective in pooling the existing resources and audience 284 Website: http://www.oldfriendsequine.org/. 285 Website: http://www.nbcsports.com/horse-­‐racing 286 Website: https://www.tvg.com/learning-­‐center/about-­‐tvg-­‐online-­‐horse-­‐racing 287 Article: http://offtrackthoroughbreds.com/2012/02/24/donna-­‐brothers-­‐helps-­‐champion-­‐ottbs/ 424 for Aftercare discussion, but it was also a closed system, where rescue insiders were mostly just sharing and conversing with each other. But this last statement must be conditioned in two ways. First, I did not survey the attendees of the workshop – therefore I cannot state for certain that no one from the front-end of the racing industry (owners, breeders, trainers, etc.) was in attendance. Second, the “Aftercare” session was but one of four sessions going on over the two-day seminar, so there were other options for people to attend. Moreover, these other sessions were specifically labeled in the NTRA seminar agenda as being for trainers, veterinarians, and the Racing Officials Accreditation Program. Furthermore, aftercare-friendly talks were given in all these sessions such as “Developing More Durable Equine Athletes” for the trainers, and a veterinarian exploration of leg injuries ironically titled “In the Pipeline – Future New Treatment for Tendon and Ligament Injuries” because the type of injury that finishes the racing career of the majority of racehorses and potentially sends them into the slaughter pipeline are tendon, ligament, as well as bone, ones. Yet while there were talks that addressed issues related to Aftercare, they were not specifically framed as such and, in fact, competed with opportunities to attend Aftercare-focused talks (although all attendees were invited to Barton Brothers’ talk and got to mingle at the Old Friends tour and barbeque). Point is: while Aftercare was discursively explored in the space and company of the racing industry as represented by the NTRA and the seminar, it did so still in a facilitated niche that still reinscribed the charitable margins of the question Drape fundamentally posed: how to humanely look out for horses that no longer have any value at the racetrack or the breeding shed. The NTRA seminar thus illustrated how the industry began constructing 425 Aftercare in an educational setting – though without confronting the calls for reconsidering Aftercare as a charitable practice. When I had the opportunity of connecting with the moderator of the NTRA Aftercare session, Liz Harris, she shared with me a white paper she wrote titled, “Ex-Racehorses: An Exploration of Options to Improve Post-Racing Life.” Once involved in the foundation and operation of the Thoroughbred Charities of America (and having personally accredited hundreds of Thoroughbred rescues, including the satellite farms of the TRF) Harris wrote this white paper in order to take stock of her life’s work and where things stood now in the “post-racing life” management of Thoroughbred ex-racehorses. In particular, this paper provides insight and recommendations regarding two specific aspects of what Aftercare could become – especially in terms of transcending the burden of running this as a non-profit endeavor. The first recommendation is aimed at the front-end of the racing industry: first, to create a designated fund fed by racing profits and disseminated out to Aftercare organizations and horses in need, akin to a “Social Security-like” pension fund that many of my research participants, including inmates, wanted to see happen. The second recommendation of the Harris White Paper addresses the remaining post-racing athleticism (and redemptive capital) of horses and advocates re-imagining re-training OTTBs as a for-profit endeavor. Harris’ white paper also hints at a third solution, though implicitly and not exactly recommended, to managing the post-racing life of a Thoroughbred: “euthanasia,” in terms of not slaughter but, rather, chemical injections or gunshot. 426 9.3.4 Some Hypotheticals 9.3.4.1 Pension fund After laying out the current state of affairs, as it were, of the post-racing life options for Thoroughbred ex-racehorses – from the various “types of Thoroughbred transitions business specialties or missions” (such as rescue, The Jockey Club, and retraining facilities), to racehorse transitioning guidelines published by the AAEP (including recommendations for adoption and models for “best practices”) - the Harris White Paper then asks, “Could some of the Thoroughbred transition business’ model be reconfigured as for-profit businesses?” From there, the paper lays out a chart correlating “Who Derives What Value from Thoroughbred” with “Suggested Obligatory Iterative Fees for Fund.” This fund is described as anything from “one national fund, multiple regional funds, state-by-state funds or racetrack-based funds earmarked for the groups which service the individual track,” and would derive revenue from owners, trainers, breeders, stallion farms, jockeys, vets, vendors, racetracks, trade associations, investors in horse syndicates, auction houses, public and bettors, and, lastly, government “through various taxes on the industry.” What is key here is that the revenue would be derived from obligatory fees - not just voluntary, as it currently stands. As such, in addition to the already mentioned Check-Off Program sponsored by The Jockey Club, the white paper also considers what programs are currently available such as the voluntary check-off option the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association offers to members, as well as the myriad “Existing Examples of Racetrack-Based Funding Plans for Transitioning Racehorses” – of which, tracks based in Kentucky are conspicuously absent. The point of surveying the existing programs is to signal that, “Shared responsibility avenues exist for this to be achieved on a break-even or for-profit basis.” 427 “People are saying that every horse registered with The Jockey Club should have a savings fund,” as a TRF staff member told me, echoing something I heard time and time again during my fieldwork. “It’s nice in theory,” this staff member continued, but then characterized the “reality” as being that of a dominant cultural mindset where most people in the racing industry are “sorta like ‘this is not my problem, we’re in the business of breeding them not in the business of saving them.” Yet even still, “There just has to be some kind of accountability from the owners and from the breeders and the farms.” In this regard, the White Paper seems to suggest that while there is voluntary accountability, a shift needs to take place where accountability is an industry standard, not just an exception. Furthermore, as suggested from the insight gained ethnographically, this shift would have to take place not only functionally but ideologically. 9.3.4.2 Re-training as a business In addition to generating revenue via connections with the racing industry, Harris’ white paper also indicates that re-training could be reimagined as a for-profit business endeavor where funding could come from the sales of horses after they have been re-trained. An existing, albeit non-profit, example of this is MMSC, whereby the amount of adoption fees for a horse are levied in relation to how much has been invested in the horse in terms of training (or in the case of the Putnamville Five, rehabilitation), as well as how much talent and ability the horse has demonstrated (all of these traits and characteristics are the “stuff” of redemptive capital). Similarly, a trainer “flipping” horses for a profit will determine the cost of a horse based on how much has been invested in and cultivated from the horse. And similar to the for-profit model, 428 adoption fees from MMSC were re-invested back into the program and its facilities, effectively helping fund the non-profit model of MMSC. What is ironic about the suggestion that retraining become a for-profit business is that there exist farms and trainers that informally and less-politically specialize in taking ex-racehorses and retraining / flipping them for sale and competition. While in the field, I met a few trainers and visited a few boarding and lesson farms that participated in this informal economy and non-politicized culture of ex-racehorse retraining. Furthermore, this for-profit side of retraining racehorses existed prior to the historic rise and sociocultural self-consciousness of rescue – recall the biographical plaque at the Man O’War memorial in the Kentucky Horse Park, where it is stated that he would have been re-trained as a “hunter” if he did not prove a “racer” circa the turn of the 20th century. In more recent, but still pre-rescue times in the 1970s, Diana Pikulski shared that the “barn” she rode and trained at took horses from Monmouth Park, which was how she first learned that “horses were going to slaughter from the track” if not being swept up and retrained. In the era of Aftercare and the Harris white paper, retraining was recontextualized from an informal and defacto economic praxis to a deliberate one especially aimed at rescuing rescue, as it were, from the inherent challenges and obstacles of operating as a non-profit enterprise. 9.3.4.3 Humane euthanasia In the case where horses could not be re-trained and thus transitioned into new “careers,” or provided a pension upon which to live out the rest of their days, the white paper addresses the final option for dealing with horses out of post-racing life resources: the “development of humane and efficient euthanasia when this alternative is clearly indicated.” Thus, in lieu of 429 sending horses to slaughter, the white paper advocated a more preferred end-of-life option that would arrive via chemical injection or a strategic gunshot. In terms of this alternative being “clearly indicated,” however, it must be understood that humane euthanasia was seen as not only being for old or sick horses but, rather, used like it is for “cats and dogs” – that is, euthanizing horses when their numbers had exceeded the careers, money, space, and/or care available for them. The white paper recognized the problematics of this – “Are we comfortable with such a potentially large number of euthanasia candidates?” – but nonetheless brought the tactic into conversation with other more pro-life post-racing life options. “I believe in it,” one TRF staff member shared with me, but then went on to share some trepidation and qualifications to this stance: “I don’t think a good horse should be euthanized unless their not save-able or if they are going to be lame for the rest of their lives.” Another staff member, however, was not just pro-euthanasia – “Go for it. I’m all about it” - but conditionally pro-slaughter as well: “I wish we had slaughter. I’m opposed to the conditions of most slaughterhouses, but the amount of unwanted horses are [sic] never going to go away…You can’t just bombard all these rescue agencies with horses, there’s just not enough money out there to sustain it.” But another TRF staff member pointed out that the implementation of humane euthanasia (that was not slaughter) would have undesirable, unintended consequences for the industry: it would be “too heinous that incredibly wealthy people spend huge amounts of money to create a horse that they think might make them tens of million of dollars and then say ‘let’s put it to sleep’” resulting in “thousands and thousands of horses being put to sleep every year.” This method would only continue to besmirch the industry’s image and, as mentioned before, possibly 430 drive it into extinction like the outrage over greyhound racing did to that animal-based sport (cf. Jackson 2001). It seems that even in attempts to practice more humane methods of death, the ghost herds still haunt. Not because of the nature of their death, I would argue, but because of the circumstances of their life. Born into the world with a purpose defined and determined by a species other than their own, once that purpose has run its course, presenting death as a socially sanctionable solution seems to evade larger questions and issues such as if humans have the right to breed/overbreed horses and other animals. 9.4 Further Polishing the Thoroughbred Mirror At the outset of this dissertation, I proposed that by polishing the mirror of the horses I ethnographically foreground in this study – Ferdy, Fly, Shooby, and the Putnamville Five as leading examples – we can discern the production of “humanity” and inequity with our own species from a less species-monopolistic and myopic angle. I thus presented a cast of human significant others - Susanna, Melissa, Lara, Linda, and the student-inmates of Blackburn: “Nate,” “Luis,” “Stewart,” “Dan,” “David,” and “Darin” – whose lives were (and some still are) irrevocably entangled with the Thoroughbred ex-racehorses of the Bluegrass. I have been able to give updates on where Susanna, Melissa, Lara, and Linda stand in relation to their work with these horses (especially in the aftermath of the Drape Article), but as I mentioned in Chapter Six, I have not been able to trace any more of the arc of the Blackburn men’s stories due to ethical research limitations. That being said, what conclusion can I draw with the still-cloudy mirror through which I momentarily viewed these men’s lives in relation to the horses they were becoming-with at the 431 time of my fieldwork? One point that has haunted me throughout my research, and then the writing-up period is how it seemed as though the horses that came out of these prison programs, such as the Putnamville Five, had better “level three” redemptive capital positions than the incarcerated humans288 did. That is to say, the horses seem to more easily reincorporate into society than their marked human counterparts do – and even when horses do not stay in their “forever homes” but once again are up for adoption and a change in fields, they remain in the social network of OTTB enthusiasts and “rescue sluts” (as some of my research participants further explained their compulsion and dedication toward keeping horses from going to slaughter) and are thus looked out and continuously advocated for. What do former inmates have in comparison? Recall the PEW report that advocated that the Kentucky Department of Corrections provide for more postrelease programs – what if “aftercare” could extend to former “felons,” “ex-cons,” “offenders?” I do not pose this provocative question to replicate issues of paternalism and equating inmates with animals (especially when it comes to controlling populations with euthanasia!); but rather, in polishing the Thoroughbred mirror, I wonder if it could be possible that programs like the Second Chances and Groom Elite ones could move beyond the prison walls and help facilitate parolees’ reincorporation into society and not just thrust them into questionable socio-economic circumstances once again? To be sure, there are myriad activists and organizations that fight for better postrelease lives and recognition for prisoners, but I am haunted by how one inmate asked me during an interview: “do they have TRF programs for us on the outside?” 288 I use this general term here because the TRF Second Chances / Groom Elite programs also extend into women’s prisons, so I would like to make reference to them here as well. 432 In the first newsletter the TRF released after its harrowing 2012 year, it contained a story about how Eddie Rybolt, the first graduate of the Second Chances program from the TRF’s prison farm in Sykesville, Maryland, returned to the prison for an open house event for the Second Chances program. Normally, parolees are not allowed back on prison property, but an exception was made for Rybolt as he was an invited, featured speaker for the Open House. His story was one of the “win-win” stories, where upon release he went on to sustain the redemption in his life289. But on that Open House day, he double-backed into space and place of former liminality, sustaining his new, socially-acceptable habitus while revisiting moments of the former, more tenuous one: “Man, when I got back there,” Rybolt is quoted as saying, “I bypassed everyone, jumped over the fence and ran out to see the horses.” He goes on to explain how he sought out “his” horse, “Pappa,” not knowing if the horse would remember him or not. “I slowed down to approach hum and kept calling out, ‘Here Pappa; Here Pappa.’ He hadn’t forgotten me, and he came over and put his head right down to me. I couldn’t help myself. I started crying.” In a further testament to the redemptive capital this horse had for Rybolt, he shared: I know they are just ex-racehorses, but that really doesn’t matter to me. Because of them, I was able to finally do what’s right. To me, they are all God’s creatures. They have the right to have the freedom and live a decent life until their natural time is up.290 From this passage, coupled with my insights from Chapter Six, we get a sense of how differently valued former Thoroughbred ex-racehorses can be for inmates. I would argue that this is based on the different social positions former inmates / parolees occupy. They live in the aftermath of 289 Though he did not go on to work with horses, he successful runs his own landscaping business, applying the endurance and know-­‐how of physical labor and job commitment imparted by the TRF program into this position. 290 From “ReNews,” January 2013; page 4. 433 an ontological rupture that is not experienced, and sadly not often understood, by those who have never known such a social death sentence – and here I am talking about their human conspecifics. What does it mean to have former prisoners overjoyed to come back and see “their” horses who are still kept in prison pastures? Sometimes, however, the horses come back to them. In follow-up correspondence with Linda after I left the Bluegrass in December 2011, she informed me that Ferdy had returned to Blackburn from Old Friends. Turns out that his sponsors did not find Ferdy as accessible at Old Friends as he was at Blackburn, for the handlers at Old Friends did not catch Ferdy and bring him in for treats like Linda and the men did for them upon their visits to Blackburn (Dyer, personal communication). Furthermore, it was apparently too hard to give Ferdy treats with the two “alpha” horses he ran with dominating him so. So in May 2012, Ferdy was brought back to Blackburn where apparently he is liked just as much by the new men in the program as he was by those at the time of my study. And where Ferdy can once again bow, unrestrained, for treats – and get them. 434 Through the lens of multispecies ethnography, I have explored relationships between horse people and Thoroughbred ex-racehorses as I encountered them in Bluegrass Kentucky circa my fieldwork year of 2011. From this exploration, I have proposed the concept of redemptive capital to help understand what happens to “life” when it is spared death, and how this is a distinctly multispecies affair – from the “forms” of capital involved, to those creatures Figure 26: Ferdy bowing (photo by TVS McKee) 435 that become the subjects of redemption. Redemptive capital is relational in nature and, furthermore, emerges from a process that I have modeled in three, non-teleological “levels.” Level one is the moment of ontological rupture, when the threat of death (social / biological, nature / culture) separates human or horse from the previous social fabric that sustained and defined their life. This rupture not only changes the life course of a subject in a material sense, it also calls into question what remains of the value and purpose of such subjects in distinctly discursive ways. This is the moment when a ruptured identity is pulled into liminality, and the nature of this change of status is not culturally codified in an ultimately celebratory communitas for which Van Gennep’s and Turner’s are largely known. Rather, in the case of redemptive capital this rupture is one of violence and erasure to the core. No one is supposed to survive when this mark is made. Condemnation is fatal - until it is not. The moment when the seam of rupture is stopped in its tracks is level two of redemptive capital: when first intervention occurs (the moment of rescue), and then when the field of liminality (crucially unique to each subject) is assessed. This assessment I have called “the assessment of traits,” but it is much more dynamic, inclusive, and contingent than merely identifying what (individual) qualities qualify for redemption. Rather, what is re-valued depends on the context in which it is identified, who does the identifying, and where they get the power and motivation to do so. In Bourdieu’s conversations with Wacquant, the analogy is a card game: redemptive capital is akin to the cards a player holds, but as the value and effect of cards (and combinations of cards) varies according to games and their rules, so do the valences of redemptive capital. These valences are where identifying the economic, cultural, and social species of redemptive capital becomes helpful because this is where the local particulars of a “culture” are to be found and made analytically visible. In this sense, the cultures written about 436 in this dissertation are those found at the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center and the Second Chances program at Blackburn Correctional Complex, and how the people and horses collected at these zones of contact negotiate and strategize their positioning in relation to the species (and availability) of capital unique to their context of liminality. As such, redemptive capital is not necessarily something inert or symbolically-dependent (as one-half of objective cultural capital indicates), it is also emergent in the process of relating to one’s nature/culture circumstances. One’s ability to “get along” in a Haraway-an sense (2008), to “wield a power, an influence, and thus to exist in the field under consideration” as Bourdieu put it (1992:98), or to become ride-able or socially acceptable through non-criminality as this dissertation argued, are all species of redemptive capital in that they (might) help channel liminality into a more-re-incorporative outcome. And what that outcome “is” (and ever becomes and comes undone), is level three of redemptive capital: where we continuously ascertain where re-born, re-deemed, no-longer-liminal life goes after it is rescued. What species, values, and strategies of capital come into play at this point, now that the question of how to (re)integrate into a new field not as focused on rescue and redemption determines the course of one’s life? How does (or does not) redemptive capital play out in this new game, and why? With the cultural and social capital collected during liminality, does one have what it continuously takes to benefit and thrive in the new field of social networks, or do the old threats of rupture continue to haunt, not yet ameliorated or placated? Or has the world been remade enough, retied in new, more polite knots enough that the gains made with redemptive capital do not backslide into re-sustaining the systems and structures of rupture, violence, and erasure? When re-incorporation happens, is it just the body of the redeemed that is re-made, or are ripple effects felt throughout all entities that were 437 entangled in this process of transformation? Level three is inherently a place of continual questioning and evaluation, always open for diffraction and change, but keeping watch over that which tends towards re-incription, reproduction, and re-domination. In this dissertation, we have seen level one of redemptive capital illustrated in biographies equine and human, starting first with the Secretariat Center mascots of Ferdy, Fly, and Shooby when their statuses shifted from racehorse to off-track ambiguity. Each horse underwent their own particular kind and nature of rupture, either immediately retiring after injury or injurious racing career (as with Ferdy and Shooby), or cast into a progressive purgatory whereby the ontological rupture took many swipes until burrowing in via the field of kill auctions (Fly). In terms of the people to whom this model of redemptive capital applies, I focused on the student-inmates at Blackburn and their participation in the TRF’s Second Chances program. Through what they tentatively shared with me during our interviews, I pointed towards the circumstances of their ontological rupture: robbery, drug dealing, drunk driving, assault and battery – just to name a few. Inherent in all these forms of ontological rupture, is the question of what lead these beings to such a disrupting outcome, and what moral, ethical, social and cultural worldviews and power positions enabled such a path. For the horses, I identified issues over how animals have been distanced from humans (and then not) over the course of historical forces and debates particular to western culture (of which Kentucky is included), as well as how Thoroughbreds in particular are valued in terms of what they offer first as racehorses and then as slaughter fodder. For the men, I have pointed towards the struggling economy of Kentucky as it reeled from a global economic downturn beginning in 2008. I have also considered the role race, ethnicity, and class as unique to Kentucky play in structuring the potential for criminality and 438 imprisonment for certain individuals. That being said, there is still a need for future research and analysis to further elucidate the conditions that brought about ontological rupture for the student-inmates in this research – for come level three in redemptive capital, the question becomes whether or not these conditions persist upon parole and reincorporation into “free” society. As such, also important to consider in the context of ontological rupture is how it is further exacerbated (and thus further produced) by a dialectic of condemnation. It is not just that the fallen insider of human or horse has been structurally channeled towards demise, but that this demise comes with powerful and agentive social commentary and stigmatization that has to do with expressing disgust over failure to fulfill one’s socially sanctioned (and economically prescribed) role that is, in turn, dangerously-yet-powerfully rooted in a belief of biological destiny. For the horses this logic goes that because they do not live up (or anywhere near enough) to the ideal type Thoroughbred racehorse, once they are passed from the hands of those formerly-invested in sustaining their racing careers and identities, they are subject to a new field that discounts their former lives and value through methods and beliefs violent and violating. “Track trash,” is one way Thoroughbred ex-racehorses were described to me to indicate how de-valued and criticized they were for their failures and, moreover, general failed state of being because of how abused and / or traumatized they were by the system of producing racehorses. For the student-inmates, they faced condemnation in the form of “penal stigma,” that is, not only having their criminally-classified acts rendered visible by the judicial and correctional departments of the state of Kentucky, but also by becoming marked by the death sentence of imprisonment, a separation from society that is as spatial and material as it is psychological and moral for both prisoner and the non-imprisoned. As such, prisoners come to be seen as only deserving of their punishment and in need of social ostracizing; redemption is only possible (if at 439 all) through “enough” suffering and repentance – yet who determines this, and why, can be an ever-shifting, inconclusive question rife with legal and moral manipulations and unchecked prejudice and disgust. Having identified the moment (if not the source) of ontological rupture for the horses and humans in this study, I then engaged with level two of redemptive capital, exploring the various forms of intervention that occurred for each species (such as immediate rescue for the horses or self-selection for the men), and then what “traits” - as both objectively identified by an agent / redeemer in a position of power, as well as emergent in the process of relating to a new field of liminality – inspired and facilitated such interventions in the first place. These traits exerted power and influence over the position of the men or horses not just in the act and statement of intervention, however, but also relation to certain desired, post-liminal outcomes – such as adoption or sponsorship for the horses, and non-recidivism and legal employment for the men. That being said, I painted a rather celebratory picture of redemptive capital at this stage, indicating that what became valued in the post-rupture, liminal phase of rescue was inclined towards creating better, more humane and thriving “born again” lives for the horses and men where the stigma of prison and the specter of slaughter were eradicated. In contrast, alternative applications of redemptive capital might help us think about more problematic and troubling re-valuations of ruptured lives. What happens when the enchantment of economic capital comes to manipulate the emotional force of encounter value? One figure that has unexpectantly haunted me throughout the last few months of writing this dissertation is that of Tilikum, the bull orca whale who killed a Sea World trainer in 2010. In the documentary, Blackfish, which chronicles the (sadly murderous) life of Tilikum, there is a scene which shows the whale being essentially harvested for his semen (in ways that I have seen 440 horse stallions be “collected”) by a retinue of human handlers (in every sense of the word). This, after people in positions of power to call the shots on such questions of cetacean husbandry, knew this whale had killed previous trainers and, furthermore, had generally demonstrated psychotic tendencies. At stake was whether or not Tilikum possessed a gene that predisposed him (and his off-spring) towards violence – especially as brought on by less-than-enlightened forms of captivity (there was speculation that Tilikum turned homicidal because he was bullied by cow orcas when turned out with them, and then kept in solitary confinement to prevent the bullying). Should he possess that gene, then there were generations of orcas now bred and born in captivity that might carry such a propensity for violence and psychosis (which would take us to level three of redemptive capital and its questioning of reincorporation). Thus, even though Tilikum was slipping out of his socio-economically accepted role as a SeaWorld performer because of his diminishing ability to get-along with his human significant others, he was “kept around” as it were, because he was an impressive bull orca already in captivity and, furthermore, able to be disciplined (or pleasured) enough to harvest the biocapital of his procreative redemptive capital. With this figure of Tilikum in mind, further questions present themselves as it relates to the humans and horses in my study: what species of redemptive capital were valued in each so that - instead of bringing about redemption in the sense of ameliorating the haunting of animal cruelty, racism, or exploitation of biocapital - worked to further reify, reproduce, and at the same time mask the conditions of inhumanity and inequity that produced the problematic subject in the first place? In this sense, redemptive capital can become a tool by which (just for example) both the racing industry and the prison industrial complex can be continuously interrogated and held accountable for the so-called solutions and feel-good stories they proffer in response to crises 441 such as what was seen with the TRF controversy over the Drape Article, or the ongoing concerns over recidivism and the rising public cost of incarceration. This where the continuous questioning inherent in level three of redemptive capital become useful in terms of holding claims of reincorporation in check. Through the figure of Tilikim, I also wish to indicate how redemptive capital might be applied beyond the local particulars of this study and extend to subjects not just human and horse - or human and animal, for that matter. What would redemptive capital look like with artifacts such as those being currently debated over at the 9/11 Memorial Museum291, archaeological sites such as slave graveyards292, spaces and places like the DMZ between North and South Korea (which is apparently a defacto nature-preserve because of how untouched it is293), or even intangible cultural heritage, such as the ecological and spiritual role horses play in sustaining the nomadic way of life in the Tibetan grasslands? It is the hope of this dissertation to inspire further application and analysis of redemptive capital, even if the modeling and conceptualization of it as presented here is still nascent, still becoming. 291 Ironically, as chronicled by a recent New York Times article, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/arts/design/sept-­‐11-­‐memorial-­‐museum-­‐at-­‐ground-­‐zero-­‐prepares-­‐for-­‐opening.html?_r=0; accessed 06/01/14 292 Or historic sites, in the case of The Grange, a former estate now registered as a historic home in Paris, Kentucky, which I visited during my fieldwork and toured around the basement slave chambers where one could still see where the shackles had been connected to the walls. 293 See http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012213144630285786.html; accessed 06/01/14. 442 Bibliography Human-Horse Relations Group Facebook Page. 2012-2013. The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture.1996 Low, Setha and Denise Lawrence-Zuniga, ed. London: Blackwell. 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Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Anthropology
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
Graduate
Ghost herds : rescuing horses and horse people in Bluegrass Kentucky
Text