Anna Baigent and Sexabeel, a son of Zabeel and close to Anna’s heart.
Nestled in the back roads of Thames sits the small township of Miranda. The town is known for their farm land, the phenomenal scenery and their hot pools. It’s about to be known that Anna Rehab has come to town.
Taking refuge inside from the chilly afternoon outside, the 25-year-old Cambridge-native Anna Baigent, sat on a plush green sofa watching her one-year-old son play while she reminisced about how Anna Rehab – Taking the race out of the race horse came to be.
“I started Anna Rehab because I was asked to,” Anna recalled.
Anna used to work in horse racing stables based in Cambridge before departing to use the Large Animal Vet Technician and Masters’ in Animal Science degrees that she had worked hard for many years prior.
After her departure, she received a phone call from a track work rider she used to work with that had adopted a retired race horse from the track.
“She said the horse needed a bit of Anna Rehab,” Anna said. “The name has just sort of stuck.”
The horse was Honourable Dragon, Sirca to his friends and Bow to the neighbours two little girls. He came to Anna Rehab with a multitude of problems, but his main issue was that he had suffered a broken hip that occurred from a paddock accident. Anna worked with Sirca and rehabilitated him, while the neighbour’s girls doted on him at any given opportunity.
“Most of rehabbing a horse from racing is hooves and teeth,” Anna explained, adding that the hardest thing about working with horses is that not all of them can be rehabilitated. “Sometimes they are not fixable, and they have to put down, or they would live the rest of their lives in pain.”
Anna has been around horses all her twenty-five years of life and started working with them in 2013 after she graduated as a large animal vet tech.
Since the start of Anna Rehab, there have been some high profile and well-bred horses that have graced the Baigent farm, including the former Shaun Ritchie trained Glorious Lad.
For more information visit their Facebook page: Anna Rehab – Taking the race out of the race horse.
