One Horse

17 thoughts on One Horse

1. I respect your convictions here.

   I agree that its not acceptable to torment animals.

   But i’m confused.

   Where’s is the line?

   is it drawn at:

   Life?

   the ability to feel?

   mammal status?

   what?

2. The sad reality: Barbaro’s life and death really hasn’t shed much light on the cruelty behind the horse racing industry. Yes, every sentient creature should bring out in us the kind of compassion that went so far in the effort to save Barbaro. But… Barbaro was a winner (a BIG winner), and had he not been, the American people wouldn’t have shed a tear for him. The winners get the best care, extensive news coverage, and the love of their country, and the rest keep the slaughterhouses in Texas busy.

3. It’s not the racing of horses that is the big problem here. Horses are born to run (and jump), they generally love to do it, and many of them are very competitive about it.

   The problem is the industry. Too many owners, trainers, and riders make their profit using underhanded techniques, ranging from abuse to neglect to criminal activity and just plain ignorance. There are rules and laws in place to prevent these things, but like any other industry, there are still those who break those laws.

   Another problem is racing 2 and even 3 year old horses before they’ve fully developed. Thorougbreds are fast to mature, but not that fast. All Thoroughbreds have birthdays of Jan.1st for racing purposes, so some of those 2 and 3 yr olds are many months younger than assumed.

4. While I agree it’s really a shame that Barbaro had to be put to sleep after a long road of surgeries that didn’t work like we hoped they would, I wouldn’t exactly call it animal abuse. I own horses, and every time I ride them is a risk (especially since mine are a little clumsy and like to rough house on rides sometimes), but I know if one of them broke their leg, there’s no way that my family could even attempt to treat them as the owners of Barbaro did. It’s so terribly expensive and that’s a shame. I live in the Bluegrass state and if a horse gets injured, you usually take it out to a field and shoot it. But we take very good care of our horses. If we didn’t own them and ride them, they’d have nowhere else to go but the slaughterhouse. They’d be born and die there.
   If you want to talk about cruelty, talk about how Bush is basically destroying the heart of the west, the wild Mustang population, thousands at a time, and he’s very conscious of it. He gathers them, slaughters them, and sends them off to Europe where horse meat is a delicacy.
   These race horses aren’t abused, their treated very well and given the best of the best when it comes to care. The tracks they run on are well maintained and every measure is taken to try and prevent accidents like this. Racing is what they live for. Horses are natural runners and by racing, you respect the ability and power of these amazing creatures. It’s obvious the owners cared enough about this animal because they put millions of dollars into caring for it when they could have just killed it right after the race in which he injured himself. But they didn’t.

5. Death is always sad, and he was a beautiful horse.

   The money spent on this horse over the last eight months could have fed a small third world nation; he had better care than most of our poorer elderly population have a chance of during their last days.

   “The winners get the best care, extensive news coverage, and the love of their country, and the rest keep the slaughterhouses in Texas busy”

   Great statement,,,, similar to humans.

   This is the only thing we need to take away from this.

6. Yeah, that’s true about how so much is spent on a horse’s medical needs and so little is spent for human needs, but the owners of the horse don’t lead a business that seeks to feed people or treat them. They chose what to do with their money the way they did because that’s their trade and their business. An article I read said that the family of the horse donated a lot of money to some veterinary fund. That’s at least something good coming out of this.

   I hope something can be done about health care in the US, it really is a horrible situation. I pretty much don’t expect to even have health insurance when I graduate from college. I think my parents can only cover me while I’m in school.

7. Deanna has it right. There’s nothing fundamentally fucked up about racing horses per se; it’s one of the forms of athleticism to which they are best suited. The modern flatracing industry’s practice of training horses to carry a rider at around one year of age and competing them intensively at age two, however, is profoundly fucked up and completely unhealthy for the horses. Horses in other disciplines (including other forms of racing, say, steeplechase) who are not expected to become champions before hitting physical maturity have vastly longer working lives for a reason. Their bones are also less prone to shattering.

8. The winners get the best care, extensive news coverage, and the love of their country, and the rest keep the slaughterhouses in Texas busy.

   It’s a hard world. As my buddies down at Coronado will tell you, it pays to be a winner.

9. It’s obvious the owners cared enough about this animal because they put millions of dollars into caring for it when they could have just killed it right after the race in which he injured himself. But they didn’t.

   Absolutely, but the owners would almost certainly not have done the same for any other horse they raced. Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby, for goodness’ sake – and he was ungelded! His stud fee could have been in excess of $100,000. In fact, if you read some of the older articles on Barbaro’s veterinary care, you’ll find that quite a bit of emphasis was put on trying to build up the strength in his injured hind leg so he could mount a mare.

10. I’m not a huge fan of any animal racing industry–greyhound, horse, etc. Regardless of the industry, though, when I heard about these most recent developments with Barbaro all I could think about was the horse’s quality of life. I was happy to hear that he was not immediately euthanized after his injury (even if, as is likely, it was only to keep him around for his sperm), but after so many surgeries and setbacks, I had to wonder if his quality of life was suffering. And if he wasn’t happy, putting him through more painful surgeries just seemed cruel.

    May his afterlife be full of delicious oats, green grass, and wide open fields.

11. Alex, I missed the part where Barbaro’s life required the commandeering of an adult human’s body.

12. I’m not really anti-horse racing, but some of the comments here seem a little illogical. Deanna says it’s not the racing that’s the problems, it’s the racing industry. But really, what’s the difference? Yes, as Lindsay says, these horses live to race; but maybe that’s truer than some people would like to admit; literally, the horses would not exist if someone hadn’t bred them- and bred them with light bones that tend to shatter. It isn’t as though they’d be standing around bored and sad, or in a slaughterhouse, without racing–they would have never been born. People make the same point about meat animals–that all those poor pigs would have nowhere to go if we didn’t eat them. But if we didn’t breed them as a commodity to be eaten, they’d never exist!

    All the pain that horse experienced was because he was bred to race, to make someone money. I’d even argue that the “great health care” he got was simply so they could breed him, not to make him more comfortable or happier. He was probably in pain the whole time. He never existed for his own ends. If you think the goodness racehorces get out of life outweigh all the pain they suffer at the end, well, fine. But don’t pretend that racing is helping a bunch of animals that would otherwise be homeless or bored.

13. De-lurking here to comment on one of my favorite subjects.(Horse people are just as bad as dog people and cat people, you know!)

    I’ve been around horses my whole life, my mom owned and trained race horses (although not Thoroughbreds), and I do follow racing, but I don’t think I would ever participate in the sport for the very reasons that jm describes. It would be great if every race horse was cared for with kindness and his or her best interests in mind, but that’s not always the case. It’s the graded stakes winners that get all of the glory and the pampering, and even that’s not a promise of a life of luxury – look at Exceller, who was sent to slaughter the same year he was nominated for the Racing Hall of Fame, if I recall correctly.

    Most race horses are not stakes winners. A race-bred horse is generally pretty lucky to have a middling race ability. They run unnamed races at smaller racetracks and are often shunted from track to track, owner to owner, trainer to trainer. Luckily, in retirement, some race horses get to be schooled in new disciplines, like pleasure. But I just can’t shake the uneasy feeling I get knowing that while Barbaro was being given the chance to fight for his life, so many other perfectly healthy horses were being allowed to die simply because they weren’t winners.

14. If you want to talk about cruelty, talk about how Bush is basically destroying the heart of the west, the wild Mustang population, thousands at a time, and he’s very conscious of it. He gathers them, slaughters them, and sends them off to Europe where horse meat is a delicacy.

    Wild mustangs are destroying the heart of the west. They are exotic imports, and they compete for grazing space with the native species (as do cattle, for that matter, which are also regularly slaughtered). Their population has to be controlled some how; we may as well eat them. What’s really the difference between a horse, a deer, and a cow? Although I find it unlikely that wild mustang makes for good eating.

15. MPG,

    Alex, I missed the part where Barbaro’s life required the commandeering of an adult human’s body.

    I’m simply a poor online communicator.

    the ‘line’ i refer to is the line drawn between caring about the well being of a living thing and not caring at all.

    for example, I hire terminex to kill millions of termites with Chemical weapons and don’t think twice about it.

    But I avoid squirrels in the road if possible. My line is the insect, i’d kill them all with no remorse if they didn’t have an ecological function. So, I’m ashamed hate to admit that ‘cuteness’ plays a role in my compassion, but it does.

    Where’s your line?

16. I don’t have a line. I kill puppies with hammers for fun, dontchaknow.

17. Luckily, in retirement, some race horses get to be schooled in new disciplines, like pleasure

    I know what you mean here, but, considering the usual post-race life for a champion racer, this just made me giggle and giggle.

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