Did any of u hear about Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby this year? I was watching it on tv and she just collasped. so sad. I started crying because she was so young but she broke her front ankles so they had no choice but to euthanize her.
It unfortunately happens way too often in horse racing.
They're breeding for speed and soundness, and starting these horses way too young. It's a recipe for disaster, and will keep happening until they pass a rule that racehorses be raced at a bit older age.
I used to train horses for western trail riding, and we didn't even want to start a horse into heavy BREAKING until an older age. Most horses aren't done physically developing until around five years old.
To have horses that are fully broke by two and three years old is disgusting and hard on the animal.
You shouldn't think of getting on a horse's back until it is closer to three years old, and that's for light breaking.
Retired by 5 or 8. Which means she was started under the saddle WAY too quickly.
Do you know what forcing a horse to be broke before 3-5 years does to their body? It wears them down quick. They don't develop to their full potential.
That's like making a pitbull pup do heavy duty weight pulling at six months old. That's like carting a Mastiff with a human in it before the age of one.
The way I was taught, you handle your foal from day 1, petting, haltering, leading, grooming, feeding treats, picking up feet (all with mommy present until weaning), then after a year progress to clipping, trailering, bathing, getting used to tack, leading around among new experiences, the next year start longeing, free jumping without tack, ponying on trails with other horses, leading on or near roads with moving vehicles, leading at a walk with a rider, but don't actually start riding until the horse is 3 or 4 years old.
I don't hate horse racing or think it should be abolished, but the industry's current focus on making tracks softer is not the answer. The Thoroughbred industry is totally ignoring soundness when it comes to breeding, just look at the statistics that out of every 1000 races, something like 1.4 horses suffer a fatal injury. Look at Petfinder, at how many off-the-track Thoroughbreds are up for adoption but not suitable for performance sports because of past injuries.
The Thoroughbred industry needs to be a lot more rigorous about approving horses for breeding. Right now, it is whatever the market will bear, the breeding value of a horse depends solely on how much money they won in their racing career. Too often horses that broke down on the track are retired for breeding based only on their bloodlines. The geldings are the unlucky ones--and many times the decision to geld a colt is about nothing more than reducing his distractibility on the track because that's what happens to be expedient for the next race's profits.
I wish the Thoroughbred registry would institute some kind of 100-day-test for retired mares and stallions to approve them for breeding, like the Warmblood registries do. And to qualify, the horses would have to remain reasonably sound during their racing careers. Maybe something like this would encourage owners and trainers to put off intensive race training until their horses were fully mature, in hopes of eventually breeding them.
When you look at the speed records in Thoroughbred racing, you would think that with all the recent advances in vet care, nutrition, etc. records would be broken left and right like they are with humans--but it's not happening! It's really rare that any track records are broken. The Thoroughbred industry needs to take a long hard look at itself and do what is right, for the horse world in general but mostly for the awesome Thoroughbreds who love nothing more than good care and fair competition.
I delt mostly with Quarters, but I'm thinking that they see a big animal and just asume that it's ready.
We only ever raised one horse from a foal at the particular farm I worked at longest, but a lot of young horses came in that were road hard (2 - 5 year olds).
You guys r right. The one thing I hate about horse racing is that some of the owners have so many racehorses, that they don't care if one of them dies. Many of the horses, from my experience actually know what they r trying to go for which is normally a blanket of roses and lots of love. Sometimes they even want to race.
Those horses shouldn't be raced at all until they're at least done developing.
Racing 3 year olds that hard isn't right.
I wouldn't mind racing so much if they were waiting until the horse was completely ready. It's still hard on the horse, but it's MUCH easier than having a horse broke to race by two and three years old.
I'm no major horse expert. But I've been around them enough to know a few things. It's amazing how young the horses are when they race. I think some changes should be made in horse racing. So many disasters could be avoided if the horse were just allowed to grow up a little more.
Many of these horses are not even 2 years old by their first race! The Jockey Club considers January 1 to be the official birthday of every Thoroughbred, so many breeders plan for fall births, so a horse could be officially a yearling when it's really only 5 or 6 months old. Then the following spring they are put into training and allowed to enter 2-year-old races when they may be as little as 18 months old! It's true that Thoroughreds mature more quickly than most other breeds (in my opinion, this leads to more OCD problems, but that's a whole other discussion)and the weights they carry are very light, but still, a horse that young being trained to gallop full speed, no matter how forgiving the track surface, is a recipe for destruction.
Thanks for clarifying--yeah, no better way to destroy a horse's attitude and soundness, then "send it on" the downhill path to worse and worse owners (unless it's really lucky) than to ride it hard as a 2 or 3 year old---so sad.
I'm thinking that the next horse I'm going to get is going to be from the meat pen... if I find one that's rideable.
I would like a Haflinger, because they look like a mini-Belgium and I'm thinking of doing medieval reinactments, but a shorter, heavier draft cross would be great, too.
by meat pen do you mean slaughter or what? did u hear about that horse a while ago named cupid that was from a slaughter house and had a perfect heart on her forehead and her foal had a perfect arrow? talk about a miracle
Did anyone here see the HBO program, was it called, Running for their Lives? It was on Bernie Goldberg's sports program. He did a great expose on the subject. But of course a lot of horses go to slaughter and the only way to stop it is to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act HR 503 and S 311.
I have a horse, who is built like a Haflinger, really cute but he's from the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and was captured in a round up and put in a kill pen in Dickinson, ND. The horses on national parks are exempt from the BLM control and even though these horses were historically important coming from Sitting Bull's herds, they were still shot, poisoned and then sold at the auction for the kill buyers.
Have u heard about that mustang protection thing in South Dakota? They have over 1000 wild mustangs there. Every year they round up the horses make sure all of them are healthy then put a few up for adoption. It is a very successful breeding program that has strong mustang bloodlines in each horse. I've always wanted to go there. The way they train the horses is not by force, but goes by when the horse is ready for certain things, like something as simple as a halter and lead rope.
horse, That's how I was taught to break. Even if the horse wasn't handled from birth, go at the horse's pace. I don't like some of the methods that I've seen. One man that worked on the same farm as me used to beat his horses into submission. I've gone as far as leading a horse who's hard to mount or likes to throw its rider into water where it can't buck or rear and get it used to someone on its back. Not so great on saddles, but it builds trust.
