A Treasure Plucked for the Ruins
The following story excerpt is by Susan Salk for Off Track Thoroughbreds.
As seven dead horses lay strewn like garbage among the tall cane choking the desolate East Everglades property, Moon’s Treasure was lifted from hand to caring hand, as if on a magic carpet.
The Florida-bred chestnut stallion who was vanned off the Calder Race Track after a July 8, 2011 race was found wasting away on a putrid property where a paralyzed dog lay barking in the field, and a dead horse lay sprawled near the front door of a desolate farmhouse, says Laurie Waggoner of the South Florida SPCA.
Standing among the dead and the dying on a badly infected leg, the stallion, just six years old at the time, was emaciated and unremarkable in the overall picture of want and decay.
With the South Florida charity too swamped to accommodate the stallion, Waggoner shipped the starving animal, crossing her fingers he’d weather the ride, to Celia Scarlett, a horse rescue advocate who at the time worked for Florida TRAC.
Under Scarlett’s care, Moon’s Treasure filled out on a healthy diet, and his deep puncture wound healed with weeks of flushing and attention, she says. “He was in really bad shape, but he rebounded pretty quickly,” she says. “It’s a nice story. I knew him as a racehorse on the track; he was absolutely stunning. For him to show up like that a year later, it’s just sad,” Scarlett says. “Down here in South Florida it’s easy for a horse to wind up in a bad situation if you’re not careful. He definitely wound up in the wrong hands.”
But just as suddenly as his life fell in tatters, he was found and lifted by right hands.