pickelish
Thats so evil
crying Not as bad as racing those idiots racing don't care about the horses at all it's way worse then cross country!!!!!
If the horse has no potential they have them almost left to die....I know this cause I rescued a few like that and some have died it's so bad.
They also cut off tendons that they need just to make them race better man I hate racing
stare I beg your pardon?
I worked on the backside (was a race horse groom) for several seasons, and I have never even heard of "cutting a tendon" to make a horse run faster! Where did you get this? And what tendon is cut??
Race horses either run fast or leave the track, one way or another. Eventing trainers and others will go to the backside looking for a horse that can't make it in the races anymore, but is sound enough for other disciplines.
There are many accidents in racing, some of which kill the horse, a few kill the jockey. Many of the horses' deaths are when a horse breaks a leg or ankle, and it cannot be fixed surgically, so the horse is put down. In others, the horse is simply not worth the money to fix it, so they are either put down or the slaughter buyer is called and if the horse can still stand up, he will buy it for a few hundred dollars and sell it to the slaughter houses. Most race horse injuries, however, are "bucked shins" in the two year olds, which they usually recover from in a matter of months or less (damn shame a horse that young is on the track to begin with), and tendon and ligament injuries. Most of the latter injuries will heal with time and treatment, but may return if the horse continues to race (which most do if they can still make money). I own an OTTB mare who had a slight problem in the pasterns, but it never has been a problem. She left the track because she just wasn't fast enough to earn money.
I was in two race horse partnerships, in which of our 7 horses, only one had a career ending injury, and he was sold to a dressage person. But our partnership was one of the more humane ones on the tracks.
I consider TB racing the most dangerous sport for a horse. I too went to the steeplechases for many years, and saw a few fatal accidents. But the day at the Middleburg Meet in Virginia when three horses in three separate races broke legs and were summarily shot, I stopped going to steeplechases.
I've also seen rodeos, endurance racing, quarter horse racing, grand prix jumping, and eventing.
Eventing at the top is not that dangerous. A fact little appreciated is that horses by and large will jump better over solid fences that do not move than over poles that do. They learn the difference quickly when they rap a hoof or hang a leg. The event horse is one of the top three atheletes in the horse world, the other two being race horses and endurance horses. Each is fit for its own sport in its own way.
The cross country includes work on the flat at a trot and canter and gallop, which warms up the horse for the final part, the long gallop over jumps. Note that the cross country jumps are not as high as grand prix jumps, though some are as wide. If you take a percentage of horses killed in eventing cross country and compare it to TB racing, you'll find eventing to be a quite safe sport by comparison. Same for Steeplechasing... more injuries and death than eventing.
Eventing - In those two tapes, there was no narrative or explanation for either. The first looked like a bad time for the horse, but there was no way to tell if the horse was severely injured. I have seen similar scenes where the horse was not injured at all, or pulled a muscle. I've also seen a horse break a stifle or other bone on an awkward jump like that (which often is the fault of the rider coming into the jump too fast). That one in the video was particularly bad, as the horse kept trying to get over the fence. The other one, the water jump, the horse simply walked away from... I have no idea why it was as an example of a horse being injured. It was the poor, drenched rider that may have been hurt. Water jumps at events are notorious for bringing either horse or rider down, or both, but it is most common for the rider to remount his uninjured horse and continue on. Horses rarely get hurt in the water complex.
The worst thing I've seen was a cross country obstacle that included jumping a ditch at the bottom of a hill, galloping up the (steep) hill, jumped a small log at the top, made a 90 degree turn to the left and took a picket fence jump with an arch not as high as it might have been, with the landing from that jump a steep slope. I saw a lovely gray horse get to the top of the hill with great impulsion and barely make the turn, turning so fast he never saw the jump until the last moment, at which time he took off straight up into the air, cleared the fence and tumbled down the slope, landing flat on the rider. The rider died. The horse got up and trotted away.
So why do we put the horse through such strain and danger? Because we are humans and the horse has always served us whether plowing our fields, racing for the doctor, chasing the deer we need for meat, or serving as a war horse. So, always, there was some way the horse was used that was dangerous, and some ways that were not. I don't believe that will ever change.
All we can do is make rules to make the more dangerous horse sports safer. About that gray who took the hill jump and fell down the slope? They removed that picket fence jump entirely for all the rest of the event, and that obstacle never had it again -- the horses reached the top of the hill, turned left, and slid down the bank, no problem.
If we can reform racing so that 2 year olds were not allowed to run (which could someday lead to further restrictions as to age), that would be wonderful. But it will take decades. Race horse owners generally know little to nothing about horses or race training -- they are in it for the prestige of being able to say "my horse is in a race today" and bringing their friends or clients to their owner's box at the track for a day at the races.
OK, end of novel.
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