The Tenacious Thoroughbred! Throughout the month of May, we are featuring Thoroughbreds and Thoroughbred crosses.
Did you know… Dressage riders who compete with a member of this speedy breed are eligible for special awards through the Adequan®/USDF All-Breeds Awards program, as The Jockey Club is a participating organization!
After entering a lease on an off-track Thoroughbred with an unknown history, this rider from Region 9 made it her mission to find out who he was before her.
By Crystal Drury
“There it is. There’s the Thoroughbred.”
The thought cracked through me as I tipped forward in seeming slow motion. Before my body even hit the ground, I was struck in the head, both by my horse’s long swinging jaw and by abrupt clarity. Thus, I began my descent; the reckoning literally knocked the wind out of me, hitting me harder than the ground itself.
I lurched forward pressing my hands into the thick wet sand, shifting weight off my already aching tailbone. After all that talk of how he didn’t have it in him, there it was. I sat quasi upright in a puddle of my new soggy reality, in the mud-soaked arena that afternoon, with my legs bent off to my right. I struggled to collect myself and forced a big inhale.
Moments prior, Soto, my exacting dark bay mount, had taken decisive action to dislodge me, successfully decoupling us. In fact, to add insult to injury, he had completely abandoned me afterward, making a clear dart for the arena exit.
My trainer was attempting to head him off before he escaped, but I couldn’t concern myself with that; he was someone else’s problem for the moment. Both my feelings and my body hurt. I leaned forward, attempting to get my legs under me, making my first effort to get onto my feet. Immediately realizing the attempt was premature, I let myself sink gently back into the sand. This felt a little different than other falls, and I was mixed up on how exactly I had gotten on the ground to begin with. I wasn’t having an adrenaline dump; it had all happened so quickly that there hadn’t even been time to anticipate the spill.
I thought I was getting to know this horse, but really, I didn’t even know his real name. Whatever Soto had been trying to tell me up until this point, it was clear that I hadn’t been listening.
My trainer and I had been negotiating a type of lease situation that would ultimately result in us being co-owners of the gelding. Horses are expensive, and sometimes, it’s necessary to get creative – I knew full ownership of a whole horse was not in the cards for me. Everything seemed to be falling into place, as if it was meant to be.
But the truth was that Soto was an enigma, as a lot of off-track Thoroughbreds are. Soto’s last owner, an older woman, felt at times that he was “too much horse” for her, and so had handed him over to my trainer. After my fall, any sense of “destiny” was shattered, and I didn’t even know whether I could muster the confidence to sit on Soto again. I was sick over it.
All we knew of Soto was that he was approximately nine years old and had been a racehorse. No one knew when, where, or for how long, let alone how many times he’d changed hands or why. But, when it comes to Thoroughbreds who came from the track, there is always one way of trying to understand who they are, and it is directly linked to learning who they were. It wasn’t long after my little mishap that I became obsessed with getting to know the story of who this horse really was.
In Spanish, Soto is a surname meaning “grove,” “small wood,” or “thicket,” while in Japan, Soto is a Zen Buddhist school characterized by the practice of sitting meditation leading to gradual enlightenment. It is also an Indonesian soup.
It could be that the name we know is shortened from something longer, or that we had it spelled wrong. For instance, if you add a “T,” then it becomes “Sotto,” which translates to several things in Italian, including “beneath,” “undercover,” or “whisper,” depending on the context. Adding the extra “T” also becomes “doing something gently, quietly, or softly” in Japanese. Could it be that this horse had come from somewhere overseas?!
Q15642. That was the number I left the barn with the day the vet finally made it out to float Soto’s teeth. I had been waiting weeks for the winter weather to clear, then for a break in the rain, and then finally for a day when Dr. Brittany could make it out to the barn. The appointment had to be rescheduled three times.
Eager to assist, I had the pleasure of propping Soto’s large, bony head on my shoulder while she worked. Apparently, he had one of the worst ramped teeth she had ever seen; she was grinding down the angles with her tool for what seemed like an hour. I could feel the vibration of the metal equipment in his head as it rested against mine. I adjusted my grip on his tongue, making sure I wasn’t squeezing or pulling too hard for fear that it might make him sore afterward.
My shoulder began to hurt under the weight of his tremendous jawbone; he kept leaning heavier on me as the drugs took their full effect, sinking his thick bony skull onto my collarbone. I ignored the pain, knowing it was worth it. I planned to ask Dr. Brittany when she was done drilling if we could flip his lip so I could take some pictures of his tattoo.
Days before, he had let me flip it for just a second, long enough to get a glimpse and confirm that there even was a tattoo. I was just able to read the center two digits – 56 before he quickly snatched his lip back, almost as if he’d known what I was after. There was no chance of Soto letting me get a hold of his face again after that, but it was enough to satisfy me for the moment. At least I was able to confirm that he actually had been a racehorse. After all the prior speculation that he didn’t at all act like one, at least I knew, without a doubt, that we had a lead into his past.
Finally, the moment of the tattoo reveal arrived. The vet flipped Soto’s lip up, and I began frantically snapping photos with my phone. No one was rushing me, but I felt like I only had a brief moment to see what I could see. The glare of his glossy saliva made reading the already faded and blurred tattoo even more strained. I could see that they were illegible in my photos, and my heart began to sink. What if I couldn’t decipher the numbers? What if I could never know what they meant? Why was this so important to me?
Dr. Brittany took a crack at trying to determine the markings, “To me it looks like Q1584… and I think that’s a 2?” My trainer, Meghan, walked over and added her thoughts: “That looks like an 8 to me, not a 6”. I saved all of their suggestions in my phone, then I reopened the notes and took a screenshot of what I had just typed so that I would have them saved in two places, just to be sure.
That same afternoon, I sat down at my desk to crack the mystery of who Soto was by learning who he had been. I was convinced these six digits were the key. A stream of “What if’s” started to run through my mind. What if he never raced and there was nothing to see? What if ‘Soto’ had just been a barn name this whole time and his real name was something totally different? Maybe he had some catchy but corny racing name, like “Turbo Joe,” or “Hells Bells”? What if he’d suffered an injury? What if he was a descendant of Thoroughbred royalty? What if he was inbred?
I registered for a free account with The Jockey Club first, to see how far that would get me on my quest for information. Once my account was set up, I clicked the “Research a Tattoo” link and navigated to the “Tattoo Identification Services” tab. This was it, I was in. I typed the tattoo digits into the search bar, feeling my excited energy starting to bubble. I clicked “Search”.
What Q15642 rendered on the next screen seemed wholly anticlimactic. There was no picture, not even a bold text. It read exactly as follows:
Horse Name: Knust
Tattoo: Q15642
Year of Birth: 2013
Dam Name: Relaxing Rhythm
Color: Bay
Sex: Gelding
Knust. Soto’s name was Knust??
Knust: A German surname, or term which refers to the endpiece of a loaf of bread (the heel or crust). Knust is also a Norwegian word for broken or crushed.
What a terrible name for a racehorse! I will admit I felt disappointed.
Still processing my findings, I noticed a clickable link for the Equibase Horse Search, and below the link, it advertised more information, like breeding, racing stats, and videos of past races. Perfunctorily, I clicked – naturally, this additional information came with a paywall.
I clicked, I entered, I paid, and I clicked again. It looked like Knust had some success as a racehorse; he had earned over $92,000 in his racing career! He had sold for $60,000 as a two-year-old in training. I was both impressed and shocked. Scrolling a little more, I found a link to a video of his most recent race, an August 2019 claiming race at Golden Gate in Albany, California; he had finished fifth. Was Soto from California? How in the world had he ended up in Ohio?
I clicked the play button. Soto/Knust was in post position three in a small field of seven. The horses broke from their starting gates and, hawk-eyed, I tracked his position among the field as the horses made the turn in the first bend of the track. Then it hit me, this horse had a large white blaze down the whole front center of his face. This wasn’t Soto. Soto could not be Knust. I’d gotten the numbers wrong!
I sank with discouragement, but immediately picked myself up again. That’s ok, surely there must be an email or a phone number to call for situations like this one. I could play with the numbers, re-arrange and re-enter them until I found him. I would go back to the barn and plead with Soto to let me take another look under his lip. I had to try again – I was too invested at this point, knowing the answers were just a few more clicks away!
There was another link on the Equibase website that offered help with identifying a racehorse. I knew there had to be some type of assistance out there for this! Tattoos under the lip tend to fade rapidly, leaving many owners and trainers finding them illegible. The form asked very detailed questions, including naming the type of markings found on the head and face, in addition to uploading pictures. Pictures of Soto were something I had no shortage of; I dragged and dropped, uploading several more photos than what was required, just to be sure.
After arduously filling in each blank box and clicking “Next” to the point of fatigue, I came to the final question: “Are there any other details you can give about the horse to help us identify them?” I paused, then began to type again: “We call him Soto, but have no idea if that’s his real name.”
After I submitted the lengthy form, I received another anticlimactic response of “Thank you” in unremarkable and unpunctuated text. It was done. All I could do was wait…
The website had given no indication of how long it might take for someone to get back to me, and I simply couldn’t stand the wait. I navigated back to a previous screen, where I had entered the potential tattoo numbers and stared at the “Search” button. I was ready to Wheel of Fortune this out if I had to. I didn’t care if it took all afternoon.
First, I tried swapping the “Q” for a “J”, but this put Soto as being much older – too old. The first digit of the tattoo is always a letter, and the letter corresponds to a birth year. J was either 1980 or 2006. 2006 would make him 20. Not a J then.
Next, I experimented with the blurrier numbers, but that search returned a few mares. I was not deterred; this was a numbers game that I was going to win!
Eventually, I switched the “6” to a “3,” and clicked search one last time. The screen returned the same plain, matter-of-fact text, the way it had for all the clicks prior, but this time it read:
Horse Name: Soto Speaks
Tattoo: Q15342
Year of Birth: 2013
Dam Name: Peg
Color: Bay
Sex: Gelding
Soto Speaks… Well, now I’m listening.
There was no denying that this was him. I had found him, and now I knew his name, but I was immediately struck by more questions. My need to know more had instantly grown. I poured over what little information was listed in his Equibase profile, contemplating calling one of his previous trainers. I managed to look up his business number, finding that he was a well-established racehorse trainer still operating in Louisiana.
I drafted a short blurb of what I might say that would hopefully encourage some response, but I wondered what the chances were that he’d even remember Soto. What if he answered the phone? I abandoned the idea as soon as I tried to play out the conversation in my head; it was a ridiculous plan. But what about another previous owner? I remembered there was a woman that my trainer had mentioned who had said Soto was “too much horse” for her.
The woman who had taken me to the emergency room the day that I came off Soto, Neha, had become a good friend. Neha was a social butterfly, keeping in touch with anyone she met in our small, local horse community. I recalled her mentioning that she had passed along that I was entering a lease agreement for Soto to the woman, Elizabeth, who had owned him previously. I asked Neha if Elizabeth would be willing to chat about Soto sometime. Elizabeth responded with an instant yes.
In our 15-minute call, I learned that, overall, Elizabeth had a great experience with Soto, but she confirmed that he was indeed “too much horse.” She also gave me the name of a woman who had surrendered Soto to the local horse rescue from which she had gotten him. Soto had been at a rescue?! The rabbit hole I found myself down had just deepened.
It turned out that Soto had been given up to Fighting Chance Rescue in Hamersville, Ohio, by a young mother of two whose husband had come down with serious health issues. Her name was Ashley. With her husband needing a major surgery, she found herself out of money and out of options. She had surrendered Soto, with the hope that he would find a soft landing.
Ashley had pulled Soto from a kill pen in Louisiana after he had finished last in both of his two career starts. He couldn’t have known that he was running for his life, and they didn’t even give him a chance.
Ashley found Soto as a three-year-old, extremely underweight, and sick with strangles. When I spoke with her, she said that she had put everything she could into nursing him back to full health, sharing photos of his journey. Ashley confided in me that she was heartbroken having to walk away from him, and that she had not even touched a horse since. That had been nearly four years prior.
I finally felt like I had learned Soto’s story and was satisfied. There is a part of me that believes I had to fall and hit my head for the journey of learning who this horse was to begin. The past shapes who we are, but of course, it does not define us; Soto’s past certainly speaks to who he is today.
Soto has racehorse royalty in his pedigree, with names that include Secretariat, Storm Cat, Northern Dancer, and Nijinsky. But he is not a racehorse. He has needed a friend, and a second (and third) chance, but he has maintained his identity filled with dignity and self-respect. Soto is not a pet; he needs a job, but he will let you know when he feels love and respect for you. Finally, Soto is a horse that needs to be listened to when he speaks.
On the first Saturday in May, the day of the Kentucky Derby, Soto and I rode our first dressage test at a show. The show, hosted at Majestic Farm in Batavia, Ohio, is called “Ride for the Roses,” and we won our first blue ribbon together.
