Taking on an off the track horse with the goal of re-training them for a new and rewarding life is rarely a linear process and often takes you on a twisting and turning road that may not lead to where you thought.
As most people who know me realise, I don’t just write stories about horses, I also live and breathe them with Daybreak Farm home to four horses, two of which are off the track thoroughbreds.
Daybreak Del Pietro aka Pie is the love of my life and has been with us since he left the stable of the late Bede Murray and at age 18 has done pretty much all that an off the tracker can do in terms of his post life career as a showjumper.
With both of my adult children now left home, a year ago I decided to take on New Mandate (IRE) as a new project, a horse hand picked for me by my daughter Jasmine, who works for Chris Waller.
New Mandate was a boom 2YO in the UK back in 2020 for the Ralph Beckett stable racking up a hat-trick of brilliant wins in top company that earned him a crack at the Group I Breeders Cup Turf Juvenile in the US.
He was unsuccessful on that occasion and ultimately ended up finding his way to Australia where he won another couple of Group and Listed races for the Waller stable before he found his way to me.
Long story short, New Mandate or as we call him Dan the Man is a horse that has done a lot in his life and it shows in his character, Dan is a glass half full kind of guy.
By the end of his two year-old year, Dan had stamped his passport in four countries Ireland, the UK, France and the US before then adding Australia to the list.
While some horses might be world weary and tired of people and life, Dan stepped off the float at Daybreak Farm, took a look around and decided he liked what he saw.
Gelded early due to his overly colt behaviour, Dan is now the perfect gentleman and quickly mated up with our pony Friendly and in the last few months has finally cracked the inner circle and become mates with Pie which is not easy to do.
His life was cruising along swimmingly and a couple of shows early in the year went to plan and then in April he became very ill with what turned out to be osteomyelitis of the jawbone.
I cannot thank the vets at Willinga Park enough for their care of Dan during a very challenging time as he had surgery to resolve the abcess on his jawbone and then my friends who came to help me at home when he had to have twice daily flushing out of the wound which was a two person job.
He made a good recovery (unlike my bank account!) and over a long, cold wet winter we gradually resumed training and at Camden last weekend we took a baby step back out into the world of competition.
Dan thoroughly enjoyed his day at the Hara Equine competition day and was one of loads of thoroughbreds in action at this great grass roots training show.
He jumped a clear round to the delight of Jasmine, who came strapping with me for the day and straight after she made a quick post to Instagram about Dan and his happy day!
Later that night she rang me.
“Mum, do you want to know something really interesting?” she said.
“I got a direct message from the guy that used to strap Dan in the UK as a 2YO. He loved him, always thought he was a fantastic horse and he took him to the Breeders Cup.
“He said to me ‘I’m so happy, reading this has made my day’.”
It made my day too!
Footnote: Dan retired in September last year so is ineligible for the Equimillion New Stars class which is only for horses retired from racing within the preceding 12 months of the show, so he missed the cut off by a month.
