Felissa Dunn was introduced to the world of horseback riding at a camp when she was 12. She immediately fell in love with it.<\/p>\n
The next year, the Levittown native got a thoroughbred show horse off the track, but she says it was in her college years when she was able to explore her passion for training horses. <\/p>\n
\u201cI went off to college when I was 18, but liked the racetrack better,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cI came home for Christmas break, called one of my friends that I rode with, and she said, \u2018Oh, I work at [Parx, formerly known as Philadelphia Park] racetrack. We get paid to walk and brush horses,\u2019 and I said, \u2018You\u2019re kidding,\u2019 so I went there, and I started working.\u201d<\/p>\n
She graduated from Temple with a teaching degree but said it took her \u201ca long time\u201d because she was spending a lot of time working at the racetrack, galloping other people\u2019s horses until she bought one of her own.<\/p>\n
Dunn met her husband, John, at Monmouth Park one summer after that, and he owned and trained horses, too. She said they\u2019ve owned around five horses at a time for years, and the newest addition is Kentucky Outlaw, a 3-year-old thoroughbred who will race in Saturday\u2019s Haskell Stakes at Monmouth Park.<\/p>\n
\u00bb READ MORE: Lower Merion U19 boys \u2018stuck together\u2019 and earned the soccer club\u2019s first national title<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n Journalism, who won the Preakness and finished second in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, is the Haskell favorite.<\/p>\n John and Felissa purchased Kentucky Outlaw for around $12,000 last summer, she said, and have been training him since. Horses aren\u2019t allowed to compete until they have a gate card, a certification that the horse has been taught and can perform gate procedures, and it took Kentucky Outlaw a while to earn that.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was having problems breaking from the gate,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cI actually had to send him out to a farm for somebody to try to work with him. He\u2019s just a quiet horse, and he would just stand there while the other horses broke, and then he\u2019d break.\u201d<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s Haskell will be Kentucky Outlaw\u2019s sixth race. He won a Maiden Special Weight<\/a> in February and an Allowance Optional Claiming<\/a> in March, both at Parx, and the Long Branch Stakes in May at Monmouth Park.<\/p>\n Felissa added that his past few races were easier than the Haskell, and she\u2019s a little nervous.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s my husband\u2019s idea to go in this race,\u201d she said. \u201cI would have found an easier race because I\u2019m more of a pessimist. He\u2019s more of an optimist. The horse is fast, though, the breaking problem just sets him back a little.\u201d<\/p>\n