Bob Bull Saved From Slaughter

This is the story of Bob Bull, my husbands race horse.

I am telling this story with the facts that I have. We have most of the information but some of the time line has holes that we cannot fill and will not without the facts.

Bob Bull is a 4 yr old Thoroughbred race horse who originally made his debut with Tom Schell of McSchell Racing Inc when he was 2 yrs old. He was born in March of 2005 and hit the track when he was 2. This is the age when Thoroughbreds start racing.

Tom ran him in a claiming race in the 2007-2008 racing season and Bob was claimed by another trainer. Bob raced 4 races in 2008 under this new trainer and then ended up in Pennsylvania. We are not sure how or why he was in Pennsylvania but anyway, he was eventually found in a field starving. He was then brought to a slaughter house to be slaughtered. Yes, it is true, people from all over the world eat horse meat!

Just a little information before we continue on. All race horses have tattoos on their inner lip that identifies them with the Jockey Club, this is where all names of race horses are registered. If your horse has a tattoo, then you can track their pedigree, race records, past owners, sales history etc. It is just like Carfax (in a way). Tattoos are made up of a letter and numbers. They start with a letter (every year is assigned a letter) followed by the year in which the horse was born and then followed by the last 5 digits of their Jockey Club registration number.

A wonderful organization called Racefund dedicates everything to finding home for race horses and helps provide funds to help race horses in retirement. They also go regularly to the slaughter houses looking for horses to save since a lot of race horses end up at the slaughter houses due to injury or retirement, Sad! On a day that Racefund was at the slaughter house, they found Bob Bull in a "Kill Box". The kill box is a box that is just big enough to fit the horse in it. The horse is not able to turn around or move much in this box. In a slaughter house this is the last place that a horse, or any animal will see. The kill box lives up to its name so I am not going to go into further detail. Usually once an animal gets into the Kill Box they will never walk out on their own.

Racefund found Bob, found his tattoo and traced him back to Tom, who was one of his past trainers! Thank God for tattoos!! Tom was then contacted by Racefund and the rest is history.

Bob Bull has spent some time in Ocala FL resting, putting on weight and getting ready for his trip back to Miami FL. He was reunited with Tom a few weeks ago at Calder Race Track in Miami FL. He has starting his training to get ready for his first run in April!

This story just amazed me! You always hear of cats and dogs being thrown away like they were nothing...did you ever think a horse? Bob is one lucky horse and has a very kind and caring owner. My husband could not ask for a better person or horse to be partnered with. We have so many animals that we saved and Bob just fits into our family!

I know people don't like to read super long posts so I have tried to keep it short and I will be filling you in more on Bob Bull and his race history and personality. I will also be filling you in a little more on how Tom got into racing and how he cares about all his animals.

If you you are thinking of donating money to a great organization, please consider Racefund.org! You can find there site on the right hand side of my page to make a donation!

If anyone has any other information on this story or has anything they would like to add please feel free to contact me through my profile email. Thank you