Sickly Racehorses Recover After Rescue

MARY ESCH

COXSACKIE, N.Y. (AP) — On March 3, 2004, a 3-year-old chestnut filly named Theonlyword won the first race at Aqueduct and her steel-gray stablemate Coconut Martini won the second.

Today, the two horses bred by Ernie Paragallo are barely recognizable as the gleaming, galloping thoroughbreds shown in photos carrying jockey Richard Migliore in the red and black colors of Paraneck Stable.

Rescued from a kill pen where they awaited transport to a Canadian slaughterhouse, the two mares are at a Pennsylvania farm — crawling with lice, infested with worms, ribs showing through patches of scabby skin between clumps of sparse, dull hair.

The farm has two other skinny, parasite-loaded Paragallo horses rescued from the same kill pen. There's a 5-year-old unregistered filly with a festering leg wound and a torn vulva, and a dark bay mare named Finely Decorated who suffers from strangles, a highly contagious throat infection. She may be carrying a foal.

"They're doing pretty well, considering," said Christy Sheidy, co-founder of Another Chance 4 Horses in Bernville, Pa. "We've had them for two weeks, and you can already see them gaining weight. It's been a real struggle with their skin; they had such horrible sores we couldn't even groom them at first. We couldn't even comfort them with a stroke. They'd flinch if you touched them."