From Michael…
Just before dawn, I woke up to howling winds, pounding thunder and brilliant flashes of lightning. In that sleepy haze, I half-dreamt
about my least favorite word – IF. What if everyone who saw Black Tie Affair go wire-to-wire in the Breeders Cup Classic donated 10 cents to Old Friends? What if every vendor sent a dime for every hot dog and every program seller a nickel? What if everyone who packed the Saratoga grandstand to see Hidden Lake’s unbelievably courageous performance in the Go For Wand or Commentator receive the key to the city of Saratoga Springs or Awad and Kiri’s Clown duel to the finish in the Sword Dancer sent in a quarter? What if everyone who bred to Gulch or Afternoon Deelites or Ogygian sent in onedollar? What if the owners of Sunshine Forever and Fortunate Prospect donated 1/10 of one per-cent of the money that these two brought to their operations? What if every friend of Old Friends on Facebook donated a -penny? What if every handicapper that scored when Prized won the Breeders Cup Turf sent in $2? What about the trainers and the jockeys that make their livings on the backs of these amazing athletes? Only a handful contribute to their after care or come to visit. (Big apologies to Bobby Frankel who left us huge donations through Dottie Ingordo-Shirreffs) (Apologies to Rusty and Kent and Chris and Jean and Mig and David and Calvin) And the parking lot attendants and the vets (apologies to Dwayne and Doug and Brian)? And the van companies (Sallee does all our shipping for nothing)? What about the racetracks? They are just abandoned theaters without these great stars. Are we to leave everything to a handful of owners such as Jerry Moss and Mary Sullivan and Samantha Siegel and Brereton Jones Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson? Are we to leave it to the thousands of Old Friends
visitors some of whom surrender hard-earned dollars so these great Thoroughbreds can live out their lives in dignity? Or to the ASPCA
that grantedfunds to help expand our facilities and helped to payfarrier bills over the past two years? Or to Georgetown/Scott County Tourism that understands how much Old Friends means to the local economy. As impressive as these statistics are, the great pleasure is to look deeply into their kind and caring eyes and realize that if it wasn’t for their old friends, life would be different for them and us. Where would Tansy Mullins’ Fayette County alternative middle school students go to see Dr. Fraley fit Bull inthe Heather with special shoes? Where would the deaf students go to learn that Clever Allemont shares their condition? Where would Kyle, our sightless friend from Cincinnati, go to sing The Star Spangled Banner on Memorial Day? In fact, where would any of us go? And, selfish as it sounds, where would Diane and I go? If we only had 30 retirees, I’d never need to beg. But we have 117 and a waiting list. We need more space for more retirees. Not less. We need to pay for Marquetry’s surgery and Stormy Passage’s recovery. We need to re-seed their paddocks and repair their fences and pay their feed bills. We need to provide the quality care they earned without ever skimping.
I hate begging for money on behalf of athletes that earned nearly $90 million on the racetrack and generated more than a billion dollars in sales and stud fees. It’s not beneath me, but it’s certainly beneath them. All of them came through the winter looking great and we plan on keeping it that way.
This appeal was inspired by the fact that we need to raise $50,000
by the end of March in order to re-financeour mortgage. We have
already paid nearly $150,000 over the past few months. Under terms of an agreement reached with the bank, instead of owing $1.9 million on a farm whose value had declined to $1.4 million, we’ll only owe $1.2 million. We are not in danger. The horses were never collatoralized. And I want to assure you that we’ll raise the money. Thanks to you, we always do. If you planned on donating anything this year, it’d be great to get it in March where it can be put toward paddock up-grades, medical bills and, of course, the bank. If everything goes according to plan, we will be able to pay off the entire mortgage in three years. But, there again, is that word…If.
I got up and fed the horses – who seemed a lot less worried about the weather than I did. Once again, I hate to beg and I fully
appreciate everything everyone’s done. There is a light at the end of the finish line..

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From Sylvia…
Our Facebook page has 48,646 fans and is growing FAST! I think we’ll hit 50K within 10 days.Vivian created our FB page on 12/1/08 and has worked diligently on it ever since. We can’t thank her enough. Interestingly enough, we have fans in 20 countries with18 different languages.Amazing to think that so many people all over the world care about our Old Friends.