ratherrapid wrote:my take is that a "successfull" OTB is much more than adopting horses out. everyone I've "adopted" out or attempt to sell--two months later they call me to take it back. there is simply zero demand for retired race horses. that's the reality. any retirement program is doomed to failure if the goal is to place horses in long term non-neglect homes. Unlikely to happen for any particular horse, and would guess if anybody ever bothered to trace these "adoptees", dogs and horses, the results would be other than pretty.
The greyhound group I've worked with has a very high percentage of successful adoptions. They do home visits upon application, they are very big on educating potential adopters about the breed, including special needs (like always in a fence or on a lease), and they work to match up personality of dog with personality of adopter/family. If there's a problem, the organization WILL take back a dog, but they try to help the owner work through the problem first. And they do follow up after adoptions. It's a lot of work for an all-volunteer group, but it seems to be pretty successful.
I'm not naive enough to think that dogs don't fall through the cracks, and I know there are a lot more OTTBs than there are homes for them. But, I think OTTB adoptions are probably much more likely to be successful when they go through groups who make a start on letting down and working with the horses to see what their aptitude really is, who try to be careful about matchmaking the horses with the adopters, and who educate and work with the new owners until they're really comfortable with the horse and vice versa.
Fantasy, mostly, but there are probably some groups out there who have decent success rates.
The main greyhound groups are very good at placing the dogs successfully. At the time, there was apparently a lot of dogs coming out of Woodlands, so several were transported by volunteers to other states where they had a better chance of adoption...which was how I ended up with Simon. Thoroughbred re-homing and rescue organizations could probably learn a lot from the greyhound folks. 
