Saved by a haircut: the Little Cliff story

The race of his life came down to the wire for Little Cliff.
In his short career, Little Cliff was a relatively successful thoroughbred racehorse.
The descendent of horse-racing royalty, he was trained by Nick Zito, a giant in the Sport of Kings, and the gelding ran with some of the best in his class.
Zito won the Kentucky Derby in 1991 with Strike the Gold and again in 1994 with Go for Gin. He won the Preakness in 1996 with Louis Quatorze.
The trainer and his wife, Kim, were taken with Little Cliff and before they parted when Zito finished training him, Kim placed a sticker on Little Cliff’s Jockey Club file that read: “If this horse needs a home when he retires, please call.”
But when he had run his last race, rather than being put out to pasture to meander away his golden years on the Zitos’ property near Louisville, Ky., he was put into a pen in late March at a Lancaster County animal brokerage, destined for someone’s dinner table in France, Japan or Belgium, or some other horse-eating country.
Little Cliff was about to be sold to a slaughterhouse operation that ships horses overseas, said Christy C. Sheidy, co-founder of Another Chance 4 Horses.
There Little Cliff would have been unceremoniously shot, butchered and eaten, she said.
Sheidy runs the all-volunteer, nonprofit equine rescue agency out of her North Heidelberg Township home.
“These horses are not going for dog food or glue but for human consumption abroad,” Sheidy said. “I call it America’s dirty little secret.
“Rich people in foreign countries like to eat American horses.”
In the broker’s pen, Sheidy said, Little Cliff caught a staph infection and was becoming emaciated.
To the untrained eye, Little Cliff resembled a worthless nag.
A spy in the horse-rescue network noticed how well Little Cliff was groomed, took a photo of the thoroughbred and e-mailed it to Sheidy.
“I could tell the way he was groomed that he had been well cared for by someone,” Sheidy said. “I didn’t know then who he was, but I could tell he was a thoroughbred.”
Sheidy contacted Diana Baker for help identifying Little Cliff. All thoroughbreds have a tattoo inside their upper lip.
“If you can read that tattoo, you can trace their ownership and race record,” Sheidy said.
Baker, a former director of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation and head of the thoroughbred division of Another Chance 4 Horses, said many horses with royal racing breeding lines and who have undergone expensive training are quietly being sold for slaughter.
“People will take these horses to what are called direct-to-slaughter pens where they are sold for about $350 to $500 per horse,” said Baker of Casanova, Va.
Thoroughbred horses come with credentials and often the original breeder or a trainer will enter a notation in the file.
“They’ll say that when this horse is retired and no longer wanted to contact them and they’ll come and get the horse,” Baker said. “That’s what Kim Zito did in Little Cliff’s case.
“People want to get rid of these horses under the radar rather than getting involved in contacting people interested in giving the horse a place to retire.”
Kim Zito said she can’t understand the reasoning behind slaughtering such pedigreed horses.
“That’s the question of the year,” Zito said. “It’s not like Little Cliff was so broken down he couldn’t be saved.
“Little Cliff will make someone a fine riding horse for years to come. I don’t understand what’s behind these decisions.”
She said when she and her husband get Little Cliff back, they will either keep him themselves or give him to a worthy home.
“Millions of people have come forward offering to take him in,” Zito said.
Sheidy said all together that AC4H rounded up $680 to buy Little Cliff from the slaughterhouse and bring him to Berks County to recover.
After a 30-day quarantine period, Sheidy will make arrangements with the Zitos to send Little Cliff back to them.
“Our veterinarian will issue him papers saying he is fit to travel and he’ll go,” Sheidy said.
And when Little Cliff goes back to his old Kentucky home, Sheidy said, he’ll free up a stall for another thoroughbred at Another Chance 4 Horses.