Anything But Standard

Recent events and comments made to us/about us have led to this post, and we feel it serves as a nice reminder in general anyhow :-)

When the website was first created 9 months ago, we started with a "News and Events" page ... It became obvious fairly early on that the pictures and data were accumulating quickly, and a better archiving system was needed so that older news updates were always accessible... As far as we are concerned, the information we share should always have an audit trail that is readily available to anyone who wants to read back far enough....But; it wasn't possible with the News page as it currently stood.

So... The news and events page was then replaced by this blog ..... (the following was taken from the original Blog launch post) The Blog aims to give you a bit of an insight into life at ABS, and welcome you our family (or Zoo, depending on which of us you talk to! haha) ... The Blog will feature stories of interest, daily happenings, pictures, show results, and anything else that takes our whims at the time!!

With that in mind, the Blog can feature stories from any aspect of our life here at ABS; show/race/trial results, our racing or breeding stock (and believe me, foal updates will be a-comin when our 1st racing babies hit the ground this season), our off the track retrains, or any other amusing/whimsical story from the ABS Zoo... (Or we simply got bored and tweaked a picture in Photoshop in lieu of an entry)...

However - some key points to note are:

• We do not exist solely for the purposes of rehoming off the track Standardbreds; though it IS our grassroots and it IS how we started our love affair with the breed .... It is important to the note that we also have racing stock, and have moved into breeding our own pacers. We exercise the full lifecycle here; Race, Retrain, Ride. We work the races with our trainer in Canberra, and we work the retrains here at home ...

• We are currently developing a "Welcome Home" policy, where we will encourage the return of any horse we have bred or sold in the past. We acknowledge we are responsible for any new racing or ridden stock we create, and will happily assist in bringing them home again. Sound, unsound, young or old, they are all Welcome Home.

• We are not a rescue organisation. Nor do we associate ourselves with such a term, nor have we ever done so. The word 'rescue' has become a 'romantic' way to view alot of horses (and we consider it to be a widely used throwaway term) these days. We. however, like to take a more realistic approach; Race. Retrain. Ride. We rehome our own horses, and we work with a number of reputatable trainers to help them rehome their stock. Why? Because we thoroughly enjoy doing so; and having the opportunity to work with great horses and great trainers.
  

• We will not comment on any other organisation or trainer actively involved in the rehoming of OTT Standardbreds. Our view is that we are all working towards the same goal; the creation of 2nd chances and 2nd careers for a worthy breed. We will comment on our training and our horses only. Period.

If you have any questions about what we do, how we train, or who we have for sale, we are more than approachable and even more happy to talk at length with you. (If you want your ear chewed off in standie talk, just come stand over here for a while!!!) ... 

We hope you will all continue to enjoy the Blog