Gene Lyons on Eight Belles

[mooseandsquirrel]

snip

First, tragedies like Eight Belles’ death are an inherent part of horse racing. They can’t be entirely prevented. Riding horses under any circumstances can be dangerous. When he first became acquainted with my quarter-horse Rusty, my farrier, an outspoken individualist like many people you meet around barns, warned that he was too headstrong and athletic for a middle-aged novice.

“You keep messin’ with that big sumbitch and he’s gonna hurt you” was how Tom put it.

Problem was, I’d already bought him. Not long afterward, I’d saved Rusty from a near-fatal colic attack on a 104-degree July day. It’s hard to describe my emotions when he stopped while I was walking him out—he’d been staggering, in a daze—to nibble on clover. He was going to live. He drank something like eight half buckets of salty water at half-hour intervals that night, roughly 150 pounds of lost fluid.

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

m&s

[Straight Shooter]

1. "I’ve come to feel that places that are no good for horses aren’t particularly good for people."

I like Gene Lyons' attitude, there. My home office window looks out on a pasture, with horses. Sometimes my neighbor asks me to feed them when they're gone. We run across the pasture together, side by side.

The good from the horses makes up for a lot of bad in this world. But I still think horseracing should be banned unless and until they stop breeding them with champagne-glass bones.

[frogcycle]

2. good article

the last point is the real point

maybe the gender characteristics - running a filly with 19 stallions - is another factor I had not thought of.

All the wild claims about "forcing them to run" being equivalent to bullfighting or dogfighting are nonsense.

Anyone who has seen a herd of wild horses thundering across the plains knows horses run - exuberantly. They are naturally built to. Like Zebras and wildebeests.

Anyone who has ridden a trail horse in a group knows they are competitive. If you get one that wants to be in front, you'd better start out in front, or you are going to be challenged the entire trip trying to keep him/her from bushwhacking, scaling walls, whatever, to pass the others. And if he tries to pass another who wants to be in front, watch out for hooves.

So racing horses is not in and of itself cruel. They probably enjoy getting out on the track as much as a bunch of guys enjoy a pickup basketball game.

But breeding freaks and then racing them is perverse. Modern thoroughbreds are like some of the large dog breeds where hip problems are prevalent. Thoroughbred horses have spindly legs - ankles in particular, that are no longer sufficient for anything but running straight on good surface - and barely adequate for that. Quarterhorses can cut, stop on a dime, do stuff that would just turn a thoroughbred's legs to matchsticks. Percherons and Clydesdales have legs that could support an elephant. The racing community has bred highly competitive animals with genetic defects, and is seeing the results.

Horse racing needs to get some new blood. Or stop racing. Or continue an escalating trend of tragedy.