Photo by Eric Kalet
Sally Mixon: “We’re in a mental-health crisis and we have tons of penicillin in the shape of 1,200-pound animals”
Horcery, Backstretch Designed Specifically for Horsemen
National HBPA Conference
SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — The annual National HBPA Conference concluded its educational presentations Wednesday morning first with a session on how retired racehorses are transforming the lives of first responders and military members, as well as school children of backstretch workers.
The final presentation showcased products using cutting edge technology to provide 24/7 security for stables and state-of-the-art software to help trainers do their jobs. The details:
Sally Mixon: “We’re in a mental-health crisis and we have tons of penicillin in the shape of 1,200-pound animals”
Sally Jane Mixon is a Canterbury Park backstretch chaplain, exercise rider (which she calls her “Christmas every morning”) and mental-health counselor with a BS in Human Development Studies and an MS in Professional Counseling. She has certifications as an equine specialist and mental-health professional, with more than 20 years working in the field, including the last decade while incorporating off-the-track racehorses.
Mixon has intertwined her counseling skills with old horses, some cantankerous and unable to do little more than walk, to help military and first responders suffering from stress, anxiety, coping struggles and other mental-health challenges including addiction.
“The thing about talk therapy is it doesn’t work for everybody. It didn’t work for me,” she said. “I almost died of anorexia in my college years, a long time ago. I never half-assed anything, being the daughter of a Marine, so I was a really good anorexic…. So much therapy when you’re talking with people, if you don’t trust people, it’s not going to work. For me, the horses saved my life at a really young age. I grew up riding. I was 5 years old, fell off my first horse and I was hooked. Horses have an innate ability to heal.”
Mixon said Abijah’s is Hebrew for “The Lord is My Father” and which also was her first horse’s name. Now it’s also her name for a therapeutic model that includes a mental-health professional at a Master’s level and an equine specialist with a minimum of 4,000 hours per dynamic. Front and center are the horses using their mystical powers to connect with individuals in a downward spiral.
“Abijah’s is the bridge between a racing industry and community wellness, pairing off-track thoroughbreds with professional counselors,” she said. “We meet the mental health needs on the backside communities of the tracks to the front lines where our first responders and military serve…. These incredible animals are so intuitive. They’re going to pick up what’s going on internally and they play it out. This works, and it’s completely mind-blowing. My job is to watch miracles.”
Indeed, Mixon believes the program’s results are so powerful that it will transform not just participants but the image of horse racing.
“We’re going to do it at racetracks or farms around racetracks,” she said. “That’s going to give incredible PR for racetracks. It’s going to become known for saving lives, horses and humans. We’re not going to be talking about breakdowns. We’re going to be talking lifting people up, lifting horses up. We’re meeting the need in a really unique way.”
Mixon told the story of a Marine veteran, now in law enforcement, who faced an internal battle because he didn’t feel bad about what happened overseas, when half his squad was killed in action and more died at home from suicide. His anxiety was sky-high, she said, with his very strong Catholic background causing angst over his lack of feeling.
When the big Marine was sweating profusely during his counseling session, the horse Rocket Wrench began walking alongside him. Even after the lead rope was disengaged, the old gelding kept pace, “puts his nose on this Marine’s shoulder and walks with him,” Mixon said. “Rocket doesn’t do that. Rocket bites. But he has his head rested on this Marine and they’re walking step and step. He goes 200 feet and all of a sudden Rocket just lays down at this Marine’s feet. And the tears come.”
The Abijah’s program expanded a youth component at Canterbury Park when it joined forces with Furlong Learning as a summer program for the school kids of backstretch workers.
That program started after a young girl kept asking Meghan Riley — working as a groom because of her love of horses but who has a BS in Education with certifications in Science and Language Immersion — for help with homework. That became a daily occurrence, and when Riley learned the girl had two siblings, she asked the Minnesota HBPA in 2020 to help launch a tutoring service. The program grew each year to 24, 37 and 54 students last year, with the activities expanding to include an athletic component, outside excursions and an emotional-learning curriculum.
Mixon said there can be commonalities between the backstretch population and first responders and military population.
“They tell themselves they’re not worth it,” Mixon said of struggling individuals. “That’s mental health stuff. When a 1,200-pound animal chooses them and says, ‘No, you are,’ that experience transform them. It’s a win for the backside community, a win for horses, for the surrounding community and for the industry. Abijah’s has been able to get legislative funding, and we’re saying this is happening at the racetrack.
“Canterbury Park is helping people learn how to run their race. We’re trying to open the eyes of the community and public and let them see that racing is so much more. I am 100 percent so convicted that I’m willing to look like a fool (believing) this could help transform the industry. We’re in a mental-health crisis, and we have tons of penicillin in the shape of 1,200-pound animals. And it’s freakin’ awesome.”
Horcery, Backstretch Designed Specifically for Horsemen
The concluding session titled Helping Horsemen Through Today’s Technology featured Jeff DeAngelis, head of sales for Horcery, and Michael Novak, a technologist and software engineer entrepreneur who founded Backstretch, a web-based management platform for horse-racing stables.
Horcery, a new National HBPA corporate sponsor, produces the Stall Monitor, a cutting-edge system that provides 24/7 monitoring with AI-enabled cameras and real-time alerts. Horcery bills the system as helping to protect equine investments, improve stable management and ensure horse safety while empowering horsemen to reduce risks and optimize performance.
Anyone in the barn who shouldn’t be? Stall Monitor is your security force that never needs a lunch break.
Want to know what time of day individual horses typically eat, drink, sleep, poop? Stall Monitor can tell you by watching your phone or by using the search function.
“It’s an AI that learns your horse’s behavior from the minute they step in the stall,” DeAngelis said. “If there are any deviations, any anomaly, it will actually set that off and you will get a customized alert to your phone to let you get out there before an accident turns into an emergency situation.
“With everything going on, regulations changing, there’s more of a need than ever to have something like this in all of your stalls… The traditional CCTV cameras were fine in their time. They simply record and you can go back and view data, but it doesn’t actually help you get ahead of a problem. Now this is a real solution. We built it out of necessity. It’s there to protect the welfare of the horse, as well as to protect the horsemen who care for those horses.”
He said Stall Monitor, which hangs 9 feet up in the back of the stall, is hard wired, making it more secure than operating on wifi. Horcery is a division of Tavistock Group, a $20 billion private-equity firm based near Orlando, DeAngelis said.
Backstretch, Novak’s name for his management platform designed for race-horse owners and trainers, is up and running with much more to come, he said. The basic cost is $10 a month, with the option for additional ad-ons. Features include delivering real-time notifications for entries, results and workouts and post times on a single account. The platform is designed for efficiency, including to provide convenient communication between owners and trainers, he said.
“There is a stable management aspect to it, but my goals for this product are much bigger than that,” said Novak, a tech entrepreneur with a Microsoft background. “I’d like for this to be the digital platform, the portal to get any information that you need about your stable. You’re getting all your information in one spot.”
Among the enhancements in the works is the ability to add a customized stable website.
“You’ll be able to pick and choose which stable updates that are part of your platform, that will show up on your public page,” Novak said. “You can add a domain name. It gives you an opportunity to have a web presence without too much effort.”
Future options will include expenses and billing management and tax-form generators, he said.
