Horses cast from other careers competed and entertained at the 2014 World Equestrian Games.

One thing I like about spectacular-type horse sports—the kind that are designed to be as showy as they are sporty—is that there seems to be a place for horses of all kinds of backgrounds. These horses don’t have to be from the finest line of breeding in their discipline, and they don’t need some specific training regimen since age 3. Vaulting and performance show horses can be older, of mixed bloodlines, and full of sometimes difficult histories, and somehow these traits just seem to make them all the better for their job.

Take, for example, Islay, the 19-year-old ex-police horse at the 2014 World Equestrian Games (WEG) in Normandy. Islay ended up in a major British charity, World Horse Welfare (WHW), when he was deemed unfit for police work. But he was placed with a champion longer, Liz Mackay of the U.K., 12 years ago, and she believed in the 17.3-hand gelding’s ability as a vaulting horse. She was right. At WEG, Islay worked on loan under the Canadian pas-de-deux team, sisters Angelique and Jeanine van der Sluijs. The group came in at 11^th place out of 28 competitors.

But WEG’s not the only place that sort of happy ending can happen. At Haras Laurentien in Quebec, Canada, performance-show designer Samuelle Ducrocq-Henry, PhD, uses three rehomed horses in her 14-horse public shows set to music and story lines. Her horses traveled a cumulative 25,000 kilometers just to get to their new home and job in the performance industry