How one Ohio family reimagined racehorse futures
Two alums help lead the nation’s largest racehorse adoption program, an ahead-of-its-time group founded by their mother.
Finding a need is the secret to success. In 1992, Dot Morgan wanted to find a way to rehab, retrain and rehome thoroughbred and standardbred horses once their racing careers had come to an end. The idea was ahead of its time, as it would take nearly two more decades for the aftercare movement to gain traction in racing.
Morgan’s New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program is now the largest organization of its kind in the country. It has placed more than 9,000 retired thoroughbreds and standardbreds into qualified homes. Seven are at Grenoble Stables, whose owner, Kathy Lloyd ’99, praises New Vocations. “I have tremendous respect for that program,” says Lloyd, of Granville, Ohio.
While Morgan, wife of Ohio harness horse trainer and driver Charley Morgan, started the program on her own in Laura, Ohio, her two daughters, both Ohio State graduates, have taken the nonprofit to new heights. In 2024, New Vocations served 600 horses while taking in animals from 75 tracks and having those horses adopted in 36 states. With facilities in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, Louisiana and New York, New Vocations carries an annual budget of more than $4.4 million. Today, eldest daughter Winnie Morgan Nemeth ’97 is the program director for New Vocations, and her younger sister, Anna Morgan Ford ’00, leads the thoroughbred program.
Nemeth started working for New Vocations by boarding and training standardbreds coming into the program in 2004. She worked in the main office on adoption applications, updates and putting on major fundraisers. Now living in north Georgia with her husband and two children, she oversees three standardbred farms, as well as the updates and applications side of New Vocations.
Ford is based near Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and daughter. She has trained and instructed internationally, and is masters-certified through the Certified Horsemanship Association. She was a founding member of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance and sits on its advisory board.
“Here’s what set us apart from the beginning, and I think it’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to be so successful: We knew racehorses from making our living with racehorses,” says Morgan, who still serves as executive director of New Vocations. “The girls were also equestrians. Anna was a world champion equestrian when she was 10 in saddle seat, and Winnie was national champion. We’re rooted in racing horses, so we understood the injuries and the issues racehorses face, and we understood what the equestrian world was looking for in a horse (to train and ride after a horse’s racing career). That’s significant.”
Nemeth grew up showing horses and rode on the University of Kentucky’s equestrian team, where she won her championship in open stock seat horsemanship in 1994. Ollie Griffith ’79, a longtime equestrian coach for Ohio State, approached her to ride for him. “I liked UK, but I missed Ohio, and the in-state tuition was nice,” Nemeth says. “I rode for the Ohio State team through my junior year.”
She graduated with a bachelor of science in family and consumer sciences. “The education I received at Ohio State has been huge for me every day since I graduated,” she says. “My job is to educate our adopters as well as educating the donors … telling the people who are donating their horses how their horse is going to make a difference in someone else’s life. It’s important to give that horse a second chance; that’s always a great conversation to have.”
Ford’s path was slightly different. “I did some college-level courses in high school and went to community college and then got a job as a youth director for a Methodist church in Hilliard,” west of Columbus, she says. “When I got the job, I decided to go to Ohio State and was there for three years [graduating with a degree in communications].
“I wasn’t involved in a lot of campus activities because I was working, but there wasn’t anything better than Ohio State football.”
Upon graduation, Ford spent six months with her husband in South Africa before returning to Laura to work with her mother. “Anna was the visionary from the very beginning,” Morgan says. “I never would have gotten out of my comfort zone. I would have stayed on my own farm in Ohio if she hadn’t said, ‘We need to expand.’”
By 1998, Morgan was rehoming and adopting out 75–80 horses a year by herself. With Ford’s push to expand and make New Vocations a charitable venture, the number jumped to 125 the next year and 175 the year after that. New Vocations has expanded a great deal since, and its central Kentucky home is a cornerstone of Horse Country, a nonprofit that offers behind-the-scenes tours at New Vocations and other farms and equine facilities in the area.
“What I learned at Ohio State was more about business,” Ford says. “It was important for us to get that education so you can build a business, or a nonprofit, and build it to the level we have. It would be hard if we didn’t have that foundation.”
