By Bill Heller
In just a few terrifying seconds, Amy Dowd’s life and future crashed from the hayloft on the second floor of her barn to the hard wooden floor beneath her. It was a day off, April 9th, at Tom Mina’s Five Oak Farm in Saratoga Springs.
“The day I got hurt, I pulled out a foal at five in the morning,” she said. “It was my day off. Instead of going home, I stayed in the barn to help the guys. This is who I am. The hay was on the second floor of the barn. We had to throw some hay down from the top. I’ve done that every week for 30 years of my life.”
Not this day. “It was a fluke,” she said, “The pile of hay avalanched below me. I hit the floor hard. Something that probably would never happen to somebody again.”
Her whole life has been like that.
She’s a city girl from Cohoes who became a parole officer for Saratoga County. “There are no horses in Cohoes,” she said.
Her introduction to horse racing came from her husband Colin: “My husband grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. I didn’t know anything when I got into the business. It was all my husband.”
She began hanging around a veterinarian and learned it so well she started birthing Standardbreds. “She’s a very smart woman,” Colin said. “She learned a lot of medical things about birthing horses. She learned it all. She got multiple offers from vets to work for them, but she never did.”
Instead, she began training and owning harness horses, and succeeding with them. One of them, Mugshots Bro, whom she co-owned and trained, won the $15,515 open trot at Saratoga Gaming and Racing several times in 2018.
Then she transitioned to Thoroughbreds, continuing to experience the joy of seeing a new foal start a life: “Watching the first horse give birth, me being the first person there, was a feeling I will never forget. I still feel that every time. I kiss them on the forehead and welcome them into our big world. It’s the best job ever. It’s peaceful.”
She counts each one she foals and gives each a nickname. “I’ve done 164,” she said. “I know every one of them. And I follow my horses. I treat them like they are my children. When you have a child, you prepare them for kindergarten. I pick up the legs and I lay on them. It makes it easier for them and makes it easier for the trainer. I don’t like to set them up for failure. I set them up for success. Everybody should love them. To me, they are beautiful creatures.”
Colin, who operates Dowd Horse Transport, learned of Amy’s accident when his plumber called him. “She was up 15 to 20 feet in the air and the bales beneath her collapsed,” Colin said. “She fell with it and her legs got tangled up.”
Her injuries included a fractured tibia and fibula, a torn meniscus, a broken arm and a broken wrist.
She had been rushed to Saratoga Hospital, where it was quickly decided that she needed to be medevaced by helicopter to Albany Medical Center, where Mina, who had hired Amy, had an immense impact. “Tom donates to Albany Medical School,” Colin said. “He said, `I’ll take care of it.’ When she showed up there, there were five orthopedic surgeons waiting. Everybody lined up.”
There were four surgeries. She had a donor bone put into her leg. Then things got worse. “The trauma made her anemic,” Colin said. “She had to do blood transfusions. Then she had compartment syndrome (when increased pressure in a muscle decreases blood flow and may cause tissue damage). They had to cut her legs open.”
She said, “I was in the hospital for almost a month,” she said. “I have a plate and four screws in my wrist. I shattered my leg in multiple places.”
Her will never shattered. Asked how she got through her hospital stay, she said, “Thinking about the work I used to do the day before the accident.”
But she did get out. “Right now, she’s wearing a weight-bearing cast,” Colin said. “No pressure on her leg for two to three months. Her family donated an electric wheelchair. She’s using it. She’s getting out of the house. Super good for her mental attitude. She was starting to go nuts. Just sitting there and watching TV is not for Amy Dowd.”
The support she’s received has been unending. “Food deliveries are non-stop,” Colin said. “Her aunt, Patricia Allison (a twin of her mother), moved up from Kentucky to stay in the house with Amy and cook and clean. Harness trainers and students at Albany Med call to keep in touch. And Tom and his wife Karen.”
Tom Mina, a racing lifer who purchased Five Oak Farm in October 2002, may be Amy’s biggest fan.
Their meeting in 2019 was serendipitous. He barely knew Colin through his horse transporting business: “I had a woman working for me who gave me notice. Colin called me up and said, `Listen, my wife trains harness horses and we have a farm.’ I said, `Does she have experience foaling?’”
When Colin said yes, Mina interviewed her. Mina, who is the CEO of T. Mina Supply in Medford, Long Island, said, “I’ve interviewed a lot of people. I can sense people.”
He liked what he sensed in Amy: “I said, `Let’s give it a whirl.’ She’s the best employee I ever had at this farm. We talk every day.”
On April 9th, she texted Mina about the new foal. Then she called him at 10 a.m. She said, “Guess where I am.” Then she told him she was at Saratoga Hospital.
“I’ve got some good friends at Albany Med,” Mina said. “I called them. She could have lost her leg.”
He knew she’d get through it: “This is one of the toughest broads of all time. She’s very thin, but she can do anything. She’s a tough gal.”
She had an aide in her recovery: her six-year-old rescued dog, a German Sheppard mix she named Freyja. “It’s the Viking word for love,” she said. At the time, she and Colin were going through a rough patch, including a three-month separation that didn’t last.
In a video interview with Tracy Egan, Executive Director of the New York Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund, Amy said, “Who rescued who? Cuz I’m not sure if I rescued her or she rescued me.”
Freyja, who has been trained by Amy to only run outside the paddock, has gotten into the habit of licking each new baby foal, as well as the yearlings. She may have picked that up from Amy, who is incredibly close, literally and figuratively, to the horses she raises.
There is a beautiful photo of Amy lying with Jenny Waterbags’ new foal, with mom lowering her head and giving Amy permission. “Jenny was one of the first babies I delivered when I started here at Five Oak Farm in May 2019,” Amy said. “We didn’t sell her. We kept her to race. She’s a first-crop Justify. But she kept getting hurt in training. I always said it was because she got to see me, because I always rehab horses at the farm. Her last injury made her a broodmare. Secretly, it made me happy she was home for good! She was always my girl. Always wanted me to lay down on her. So I thought it was very fitting I do the same with her first baby. She approved. So much love in one photo.”
Mina, who breeds and races as Mina Equivest LLC, got hooked on horse racing when he was 14: “My father came home from the track with a program. I said, `What’s this?’ He had it marked up with horses circled. At 15 or 16, I sneaked over to the old Belmont Park. I was mesmerized.”
He claimed a Thoroughbred with a buddy in 1987, Classical Ballad, and has been actively involved with horses ever since. He bought Five Oak Farm in 2002: “I had broodmares in Westchester County and a mare in another place. This farm was owned by a polo guy. It was pretty run down. My nephew, Nick, helped me. We turned it into a beautiful place, two miles from downtown Saratoga. Then I built a house on the farm.”
Mina usually sells the horses he breeds. One of them, No Parole, earned half a million dollars.
His highest-priced yearling was a son of Uncle Mo that sold for $375,000. “I’ve sold a couple others for $300,000,” he said. “I’ve done okay. You need one of those every several years.”
He hit the jackpot with Wudda U Think Now. The yearling by Fast Anna out of Unbridled Grace by Unbridled Jet sold for $60,000 to Stuart Grant’s The Equine Group at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga New York-Bred Sale. In 2022, Wudda U Think Now posted four victories and one third in seven starts, and was named 2022 New York-Bred Champion Older Sprinter. “Tom and I went to the banquet,” Amy said. “It was awesome. I don’t train them, but there’s something about the people who raise them.”
Mina’s confidence in Amy is enormous: “I trust her implicitly with my horses, with my money. I’m an old Italian guy from Queens. I zigged and zagged a lot. To trust somebody, it takes a lot of time for me. I go to Florida for five, six months, and I know them, two great people. They make a lot of decisions for me and I don’t have the angst I used to know.”
Amy is battling the angst of getting back to normal. “I am okay,” she said on May 12th. “I’m on the mend. I’m getting there.”
Not being with her horses was a mighty obstacle: “It’s been killing me not being able to be with my kids, my horses. It is what it is. One day at a time. Look forward to what you can do in the future. I’ve been able to get to the barn. My horses are my life. They are not just animals to me. They are family. They’re part of me. So when I got to go outside to see them again, I was ecstatic.”
The first time back was May 1st. “They came right to the gate,” she said. “When I hollered to them, they came running right over. From where I came from… I left the hospital not knowing if I would keep my leg, to reach that moment with my horses, it was heartfelt. It made me feel full. It made me feel human.”
Her spirit survives.
