Horse racing

No, those sickos are also libbies.
FYI, if you feel bad for the animals, there are greyhound rescues available to you.
They aren’t put down.

 

“lighten up” says the guy who calls everyone and anyone who doesn’t think like him a “sicko” or some other derogatory name.

get a fucking mirror, man.

and I’ll take my 2-3 day ban for this if I don’t have to read your nonsense.

 

You might want to look that up, then come back and apologize for post a falsehood.

 

Like I said. Lighten up. I was responding to another poster who used the word sicko.

 

There aren’t greyhound rescues? I thought there plenty to choose from. I should have said…they aren’t all put down.

 

I could care less about Horse racing. But here’s a different perspective.

I wonder what the comparison of euthanizing horses in this arena is to euthanizing pets in general, like dogs. I understand that some horses are sent to the border and sold as horsemeat. I don’t think they process horsemeat in the US anymore.

So how does the treatment of horses compare to other animals we use as pets or even eat?

If we don’t have horse racing, it’s not as if these horses would even exist in the first place.

I’m not taking a position either way on this, I find it morally murkey.

HBO had a much touted star filled show called “Luck” about horse racing. They decided to shut the series down after one season because a couple of horses died during the shooting.

 

Worked at a track for a few years doing marketing. While a few owners were less than stellar people, and a few trainers were full of themselves, for the most part, the horse people were great. The assistant trainers and grooms that spend every day with the horses love the animals even more than people love their pets.

And while putting these majestic animals down is tragic, the truth of the matter is, when the bones holding a horse up breaks, there isn't much we can do. These bones hold up 1200 to 1400 pounds of animal almost 24 hours a day, as horses sleep standing up. Horses need to move, and unlike humans, cannot survive on bed rest. Maybe, and hopefully one day soon there will be an inexpensive option to do some sort of bone replacement that can save the horses. The technology is there, but it still very cost prohibitive at this moment.

And most horse people aren't raking in the huge monies. The track I worked at ran a lot of $5k, $10k, and $20k claiming races, with purses per race ranging from $10k to $25k. The winner of a race only took home about half the purse, and after paying the jockey, trainers and grooms, what was left was used to feed and care for the horses.

I can tell you that for the most part, post-race lives of the horses is much better today after the scandals 30 and 40 years ago. The track I worked at set up a 503C charity fund that funded two ranches that housed retired race horses. All owners could choose to pay a small donation every time they started a horse in a race, and the track would match. Us employees were not required to, but could have a portion of our check go to the fund, and the track would match that as well. While a good number of the horses were too high strung to ever have a second career, and they lived their lives out on one of these ranches, that wasn't true of all the horses. Many went on to have second careers as rodeo horses, trail horses, and we even had one that was part of the big city's mounted police force.

Having 7 horses die on a race day is awful, but it's also unusual. For whatever reason, horse accidents tend to happen in clusters. It is inexplicable. We could go weeks without a single incident, then bam, we'd have 3 one day, followed by 2 more the next. Then, weeks again with no issues. There are also literally thousands of race horses housed at a track at any given day. My track had 1,200 full-time stables, with 200 temporary stables, mostly used to house horses coming in from other states so they could be checked by the track vet before letting them mingle with the rest of the population. Churchill Downs has closer to 1,500 full time stables if I remember correctly, and with this being Derby weekend, they were full.

Most states have passed laws to do necropsies on the animals and try and find if there is a way to reduce these on-track injuries. And they are being reduced overall, which we all agree is a good thing. Better track surfaces and maintenance, and stricter doping guidelines, which I personally think is the biggest issue. Like humans, steroids will improve a horse's ability, but at the cost of burning them out faster. Steroids may also put an extra amount of unnatural muscle on a horse, and muscle weighs more than fat. And these extra pounds might be the cause of the extra stress on the leg muscles that cause them to break.

It would be sad if an entire industry goes away. There are many good horse people who care about these animals like children. And tracks can employ a lot of good people. I miss hanging out at the track, though I don't miss the main point of my job, which was basically convince gamblers they need to gamble more. Still, overall, it was much more of a positive experience than negative.

 

Yeah he's just eaten up with resentment and anger towards anyone who is different than him.

 

I like you dangole.
Explain that.

 

That's 2 falsehoods by you on the same page.

 

Sad but this is right next to trans kids winning swim meets on my list of shit to care about. Waaaaaaaay down at the bottom.

 

Proof?

 

This is where I'm at with this. We must have a lot of vegetarians on this board. I just find it hard to get worked up about horses forced to run races in comparison to the life that we permit cows and chickens to live.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

there is a man down the street from me who has a couple of rescue greyhounds. He says they are great pets. I have no further knowledge than this.

 

Apparently thousands are put down each year
Claiming that none are ..