Earlier this month, I relayed the story of an Arizona regulatory vet, Victoria Lowe, allegedly suggesting to trainer Chip Woolley that he send his 10-year-old mare, Piper Rose, to slaughter. Well, the “investigation” (actually multiple investigations, as both the Arizona Dept. of Gaming and HISA were involved) is complete and, surprise, Lowe has been cleared of any malfeasance. Reporting on this Tuesday, the Thoroughbred Daily News (TDN) provided more detail.
According to Woolley, the paper says, Lowe’s suggestion went like this: “I’ve got a guy’s number. He crosses a load a week to Mexico. And if you want his number, I can give it to you.” How else to interpret that? Indeed, that was Woolley’s thought: “Everybody knows what crossing to Mexico means.”
But Lowe denies saying that, and then, after this became the talk of the Turf backstretch, sent a follow-up text to Woolley: “I think you are mistaken as what I meant. When you said you were going to shoot the horse in the head because I scratched it. I said you can call this guy. He buys horses people want to kill as he gives them a 2nd chance in life. He uses them in movies and is very well-known. I thought it would be cool if you knew him as you have a cool story too. But anyway.”
Who exactly is “this guy”? One Jesse Bell, owner of Bell Livestock – which in itself should be a giveaway. The TDN thinks so, reaching out to Bell, then writing: “Bell told TDN that while he finds homes for ‘99%’ of the horses he purchases, some of them end up for slaughter.” Then this from Bell: “A general horse always has a home. Unless he’s one that will bite you, strike you or chase you out the corral. He goes to slaughter.”
And get this: Bell, the central figure in this story, says that no one in either investigation reached out to him. “You’re the only person [TDN writer] who has ever called me.” But that’s not it. Apparently, Woolley, in an attempt to provide more evidence for investigators, had others contact Bell under the guise of looking for a slaughter outlet for spent racehorses. From the TDN article:
“According to Lee [an ‘OTTB advocate’ who was leading the ‘sting’], she contacted Bell via text through an associate of hers. Through a series of text messages – shared with the TDN – Lee and her associate explain to Bell that they have three or four horses at Turf Paradise that they ‘just want gone.’ Lee and her associate make clear the horses are worth little money. ‘Lame af just need em gone,’ they write in one text. In another text, they write ‘can you get them outta the country that is the main priority.’ Bell answers, ‘yes.’ Lee and her associate then ask, ‘Canada or south.’ Bell responds: ‘Presidio Texas.’ The Texan town of Presidio is a hub of the Southern border trade in horsemeat.
“In one text, Bell claims to have started exporting horses when he was 13 years of age. In a separate set of messages shared with TDN, Lee and her associate converse with the driver of the truck sent by Bell to Turf Paradise to pick up the horses. After the truck arrived at Turf Paradise, Lee and her associate messaged the driver to say the original horses had already been sold but suggest there could be others to take their place. ‘There might be a couple others if you can wait like 5 mins?’ they write. ‘We got 5 minutes and I’m going to take off,’ the driver of the truck then responded.
“Before the truck driver left Turf Paradise empty-handed, Woolley took a picture of the vehicle and its license plate, which he shared with investigators. In HISA’s report, the investigator includes several of the aforementioned text messages with Bell, but not the entire conversation that Lee shared with the TDN, which includes the passage that mentions Presidio, Texas.
“Lee said she believes the truck driver was familiar with Turf Paradise because the gate they sent him to is difficult to find using normal GPS navigation. When Lee directs new OTTB buyers to the Turf Paradise backstretch, she provides them ‘a paragraph of instructions,’ she said. ‘He didn’t ask for any instructions,’ said Lee, about the driver. ‘He pulled right up to security and told them he needed to go in.’
“Initially, Bell told the TDN he had no memory of this aborted deal at Turf Paradise. ‘There’s so many phone calls a day that go in and out,’ he explained. After sending Bell the cache of messages shared by Lee, he said he understood the horses to be ‘recipient’ mares – those intended to host embryonic transfer pregnancies. Bell denied that he intended to purchase the horses for auction at Presidio.
“‘That’s the God’s honest truth. If I can find a place for them, I re-home them,’ said Bell, adding how he sometimes tells frustrated owners who have fallen out of love with their horses that he will purchase their horses for slaughter as a ruse. ‘I tell people I buy horses for slaughter, and most of the horses I buy don’t go to slaughter. I just fix them, whatever’s the matter with them, and I sell them back to the public.’
“According to Bell, there’s a financial incentive to finding horses new homes, as opposed to funneling them into the slaughter pipeline. ‘You’ve got to get them over there. And the cost of getting them over there is [more] compared to if you just sell them here at the house. People need companion horses, so, I just sell it to them for what I’d get as a kill price and it breaks even,’ said Bell.”
If not for the gravity involved – beautiful, intelligent, sensitive animals being shackled by their hind legs, hung upside down, slashed through their carotids, bled-out, and butchered – Mr. Bell’s verbal contortions would be worthy of an SNL skit.
And what of poor Piper? Proving that we are not all on the same side here, Lee, the “rescuer,” has found a “home” for her in Washington State: “She’s going to be a barrel horse and have barrel babies. They [the family of barrel racers] love her to death. She’s out there…living her dream.” In other words, there’s plenty of vile to go around.
According to the article I read, Victoria Lowe had done vet work for Jesse Bell. I think she did know that Jesse Bell could have shipped PIPER ROSE to slaughter. To the best of my knowledge and belief, most killbuyers do sell some horses to the public instead of using them to “fill a contract” with the meat packers. Sometimes, some of the horses they offer to the public are shipped to slaughter whenever it’s convenient to fill a contract.
Agree: she did what she was paid to do. I just doubt she had any idea what kind of bullying monsters she’d have to deal with daily when she took her practice to the track.
Did she know this Bell dude could send Piper Rose to the border for slaughter? Probably. But did she think this Chip dude would follow-through on his threat to kill the poor mare? Also, probably.
So, I suppose the whole thing is a wash; just another sickening, sleazy story in the smarmy world of horse racing.
It appears that the people at HISA/ HIWU were more than willing and very quick to go with her story of attempting to find a good home for the mare. In this morally challenged industry where running horses to the point of physical injuries and doping & drugging them and forcing them to run anyway, this particular veterinarian did what she was paid to do. She most likely prevented this mare from having a catastrophic breakdown on the racetrack during a race. Who cares about the mare though, seriously! It saved the commissioners/ stewards from having to admit to another kill in Arizona. Mission accomplished.
Agree 100% about your 99.999% of racing vets being and doing all the wrong things for their patients. But, I’m not sure Doc Lowe was a regulatory or track vet, at least until HISA came along and tried to hijack all the Equine DVMs for their own cause. (Don’t know if she did any work at the Arizona Death Tracks before then.)
But I do know they were finding it nearly impossible to hire anyone qualified (willing) to contract with the AZ Gaming Commission to help make them “HISA-compliant.” Especially at Turf Pairo’Deaths; HISA or no HISA, the place is a toxic waste dump.
Either way, sounds like she learned her lesson: There is no honor among Racing Creeps. So you’d better keep your referrals to the Meat Man to yourself.
Anyone with an ounce of sense more than this trainer would not purchase a lame horse for competition – and most people now, with the economy being in the toilet, wouldn’t take a lame horse at all. And “barrel babies” – what a cheesy thing to say, like really, you’re trying WAY too hard, dude.
As for Victoria Lowe, I think it’s been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that 99.999% of people working as veterinarians at the track are simply sadists and butchers with a license they don’t deserve and an oath they violate without a second thought.
Yet another disgusting example of a trainer who ruined a young, innocent horse and then wanted someone else to make his self-made problem go away.
This story illustrates the race-to-the-bottom mentality of the creepy characters involved in horse racing — that they’ll do just about anything to their Throwaway Thoroughbreds if they think it’ll help ’em make a buck.
So it’s doubly weird that HISA and AZ Gaming were dragged into this whole debacle. It’s their job as (haha) “regulators” to keep the economic realities of racing hidden away, out of the public eye. (Can’t do that if your contracted staffers are facilitating and expediting your worst-kept secrets.)
Wanda, you know the old expression “they lie like a rug”.
That doesn’t sound realistic to say that she’s going to be a barrel horse and have barrel babies. Saying “barrel babies” sounds so ignorant to me.
If they want to run the barrel pattern on this mare, they’re going to need to spend a significant amount of time with her to acclimate her to the difference between flat track racing and doing the clover leaf pattern. She is already not able to race thanks, but no thanks, thanks to Chip Woolley who used her up short of killing her at the racetrack.
If they want to exploit her as a broodmare, they will have to wait until she’s around 12 or 13 if they actually force her to run at any competitive barrel racing event.
She can’t be used as a competitive barrel racing horse and a broodmare at the same time. It just sounds so stupid and most likely it’s not even true.
Nobody who wants to be competitive at barrel racing would buy a lame horse with the intention of forcing her to compete.
IF it is true that someone outside of the slaughter pipeline got her and want to use her as a broodmare, that’s somewhat believable. But to say she’s going to be a barrel horse AND have barrel babies sounds like a lot of bull manure like most of the rest of this messed up story.
There are so many to blame, and so much soulless, money-grubbing, going on here, that it’s hard to make a brief comment. I will say, however, that becoming a barrel racer is not any horse’s “dream.”
Chip Woolley wanted to race a lame horse and then threatened to do harm to the mare when the veterinarian scratched her and he wants people to think he’s the good guy in all this mess.
People like Chip Woolley make it possible for people to be killbuyers. When people have horses they either don’t want anymore or can’t afford to take care of anymore, the people who see a profit to be made are there waiting to pay the lowest price possible for a horse.
Killbuyers can buy low and sell some horses at a higher price making would-be rescuers think they are doing a good thing to pay that higher price. It’s a vicious cycle that puts horses out there as commodities like crazy. It’s sickening and it never ends.
When I read this update in paulick report, I couldn’t help but feel so much anger. Not so much about the fact that it happens, because I knew it happens. I knew who the “meat men” were at the tracks where I was.
I was angered at the fact that pro racing folks say this isn’t happening much anymore, and that most horses find second career homes. They always trot out the “people get banned and lose stalls if they are found to be selling (usually just GIVING because they want them gone, fast!) horses to slaughter”. It’s such bullshit. And here, a vet – a REGULATORY vet, no less!!- doesn’t even get a SLIGHT punishment for coordinating slaughter – out in the open! – and obviously, it IS happening frequently! It just proves that the majority of the horses do not find second career homes! Because this IS happening at EVERY track in America, and pro racing folks should be ashamed of this! But nope! It’s business as usual!