Racing very young horses leads to bone failure and insanity. Racers like to pretend these poor creatures want to be treated this way but the fact that jockeys us whips tells us otherwise. Barbaros was kept alive to curb critics demanding the racing of two and three-year old Thoroughbreds be stopped.
By Jane Smiley
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 30, 2007; Page C01Nine years ago, I had a thoroughbred mare who came down with colic in the night, and was too far gone to save by the time she was found at 6 a.m. After she was euthanized, I remember staring at her body, which was stretched out in the grass, running my hands over her. Her coat was shining. Her haunch was rounded and firm. Her feet and legs were perfect. Only that one thing had been wrong, that twist in her gut, but it was enough, and it killed her. So it is with all horses.
*snip*
Some observers have been angered by the outpouring of sympathy toward Barbaro, but there is something extra large about the death of a horse.
And the death of a thoroughbred seems to me to be even more shocking, because thoroughbreds have been bred to press on and prevail where other breeds of horse throw in the towel. When we saw Barbaro in last May's Kentucky Derby fly away from the field so gracefully and effortlessly, he was doing something thoroughbreds have been bred to do for 300 years -- to sense the encroaching fatigue of three-quarters of a mile at top speed and want only to run faster, to push ahead and take the lead.
All the articles about this victim of human greed and nasty desires try to pretend the poor, dying horse was 'fighting' to stay alive. They have this fictional account as to how the horse 'wanted to live' and had 'a big heart', etc. I have had many large mammals from goats and sheep, horses to the USA's biggest ox team. Eventually, they all die. Before this happens, they lived on my various farms, protected and used by myself. The deal I have with all my animals is simple: I protect them from wolves and lions and disease, I feed them when there is no food on the ground, I protect them from blizzards and falling into pits and in turn, I use them for myself.
This includes eating them, just for example. But as a species, they do just fine and I do fine, too. It is the secret pact made by humans and domesticated animals.
The desire to glorify this poor race horse means pretending he WANTED to be driven into the ground. This means there was no training which involved scaring him to death so he would run as fast as possible to escape the very loud, horrible electric gates that held him in before the race. They use all sorts of loud noises to scare the horses when the gates open. This is to motivate them to run away, not turn on each other or go backwards.
Time to talk about my own horse, Sparky. He was a devil horse when I got him. He was very stubborn. If anyone wanted to race him and he didn't want to move, his legs would lock. And being a Haflinger from Austria, his sense of entitlement and royal rule was so elevated, if one did try to scare him into running fast, he would roll over instead. Worse, if he felt he was under attack, he would fly into a rage and fight!
When I used to take him to horse shows with carriages, he always thought we went there to fight the other stallions. He is a small draft horse and I had to restrain him as he would try to go over to the biggest Percherons and Shires and Belgians and rise on his hind legs, neighing imperiously. Not only himself but a fellow Haflinger buddy of his, the aptly named Napoleon, did the exact same thing.
When I introduced Sparky to Chip and Dale, the ox team the size of medium sized elephants, a ton and a half each, Sparky jumped on them and bit both of them! This is what 'heart' is all about! Not running frantically until the legs break!
I know that horses can sense when things are going bad. If they have hoof problems and you try to ride them, they will nip at you and curve their spines, tucking in the hind quarters. Then you have to get down and check their hocks and hooves.
On top of the stupid sentimentality over the abused racehorse, Barbaros, we get a grave misunderstanding as to what is going on here: we are breeding increasingly fragile horses as breeders use only 'winners' and this means they get flightier, crazier and more strung-out. Weaker horses.
My Haflinger, for example, has problems caused by inbreeding which really annoy me, specifically the loss of those Mongolian horse-strong hooves that used to characterize his breed, for example.
The term Thoroughbred describes a breed of horse whose ancestry traces back to three foundation sires -- the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk. Named after their respective owners -- Thomas Darley, Lord Godolphin and Captain Robert Byerly -- these three stallions were brought to England from the Mediterranean Middle East around the turn of the 17th century and bred to the stronger, but less precocious, native horse. The result was an animal that could carry weight with sustained speed over extended distances, qualities which brought a new dimension to the burgeoning, aristocratically supported, sport of horse racing.So began a selective breeding process which has been going on for more than 300 years, breeding the best stallions to the best mares, with the proof of superiority and excellence being established on the race track.
'Best' means speed. Period. Because they are not bred for other purposes, the bones of the legs get flimsier and flimsier. My small draft horse who is listed officially as a 'pony' even though he is quite large, can carry a huge burden at a high speed for a long distance. A race horse's legs would buckle and collapse if they carried 700 lbs on their backs for even a few hundred yards. The ox team could pull giant trees, several tons at a time if on wheels, huge oaks through deep mud. But they were very slow. Sparky would trot alongside, pulling his wagon, nipping at their tails for fun. He hated going ahead of them, he always wanted to be behind...driving them forwards while they moo in rage.
Most race horses I have known didn't show this sort of fighting spirit. They usually yielded to smaller, tougher young stallions. Most people don't know how these poor horses are bred!
Ahem. The mare, when she is in heat, is introduced to, say, a Haflinger stallion. Who is strong, handsome and gay. The stallion will snuffle the excited mare (I loved watching Sparky do all this!), he would 'escort' her about the paddock and knicker and neigh, arcing the fat, full neck. The mare would be delighted! 'Oh, what sharp hooves you have! What flashing eyes! Such a round, fat rump!' She faints with joy! Even though the stallion is shorter, what she is eyeing is the stuff that evolution tells her, is the most desired characteristics of a good mate!
But this is all a tease. The handlers remove the now angry stallion, they then BLINDFOLD the Thoroughbred mare and then bring on the real stallion who basically RAPES her! Thoroughbred stallions are terrible lovers! The ability to court a mare has been bred out of the animals thanks to 200 years of this garbage!
The ability of a stallion to attract mares is important to the survival of the offspring! There would be no weak race horses if all the mares got to have some say in their choice of mates! I once brought a small mare in heat to my own Sparky. I was worried she would be scared of him, he is very, very boisterous. She spotted him in the distance, standing on the mountainside, the wind in his mane. She whinnied to him excitedly. Whoo! Mucho grande!
He snuffed the breeze and his eyes widened with joy and desire. He bellowed his loudest neigh, reared up and shook his thick mane. Tail high, he charged down the mountain.
The meek little mare I was leading exploded into action and I released her and she ran straight to him. He didn't jump her. Instead, he paraded in front of her, jumping in the air and kicking out his hind legs, arcing his thick neck while she went around and around him, nickkering approval, then she let him sniff her tail which she flicked to one side, he then snuffed in her nostrils, nuzzled her neck and then she let him mount her.
Thereafter, he was her loyal escort. Some dogs attacked her one day and he trampled them, snorting with disgust. A bear came and attacked and he screamed and lashed out, driving it away. People trying to touch Molly suddenly found Sparky barring their way. Only Chris, myself and my son could approach Molly without Sparky getting angry. It was quite funny.
And no race horse enjoys this sort of life! The mares are kept seperate from the stallions who have nearly no ability to appeal to any mare, it being bred ruthlessly out of their genetic pools.
&hearts This happened to Appaloosas, too, for example:
In the mid-1800s, settlers flooded onto the Nez Perce reservation, and conflicts soon ensued. The Nez Perce War of 1877 resulted in their herds being dispersed.In the late 1800s and early 1900s, interest in the breed gradually began to grow as Appaloosas began appearing in Western roundups and rodeos.
The Appaloosa’s flashy coat patterns caught the eye of the public, and in 1937 an article in Western Horseman entitled “The Appaloosa, or Palouse Horse” revealed a widespread interest in the breed.With the goal of preserving and improving the Appaloosa breed, the Appaloosa Horse Club was chartered in 1938. From those first few enthusiasts, the Club has grown into one of the leading equine breed registries in the world.
Far from being 'saved', the breed is gone now because it was based on color by the Nez Perce but modern breeders use pedigrees which means no spots on the rump don't matter, most of the horses are now all brown because color is a very iffy thing to breed for, look at dogs. Easily lost. And like the Haflingers, the breed was 'improved' by mixing in with Arabians. The first horses in America had some Arabian blood but they were mostly war horses of the old sort with big noses and strong legs.
&hearts Haflingers still carry the genes of the warhorses used by the Mongols.
The history of the Haflinger horse can be traced to medieval times when writings told of an Oriental race of horse found in the Southern Tyrolean Mountains of present day Austria and northern Italy. Many of the villages and farms in the Tyrol were accessible only by narrow paths requiring agile and sure-footed horses for transportation and packing. Artwork from the region from the early 1800's depicts a small noble chestnut horse with packs and riders traversing steep mountain trails.The first official documentation of the present day Haflinger (named for the Tyrolean village of Hafling) was in 1874 when the foundation stallion 249 Folie was born of the half-Arab stallion 133 El' Bedavi XXII crossed with a refined native Tyrolean mare. All modern purebred Haflingers must trace their ancestry directly to Folie through seven different stallion lines: A, B, M, N, S, ST, and W.
During the years of World War II, there was a significant shift in breeding practices, as pack horses were needed by the military and a shorter draftier Haflinger fit the bill. Following the war, the height and refinement of the breed has returned, with an emphasis on developing a small horse that was versatile for both riding and driving, with a strong constitution, a solid conformation with substantial bone, and an uncomplicated personality.
The Mongols invaded Hungary and destroyed the place and their furthest battle westwards was in Austria. The horse stock of the Mongol fighters proved to be very good pack animals, they carry tremendous weight and walk with great care and interbred with war horses, made for a very powerful but mid-sized Alpine animal. Halflingers in Austria are turned out when they are young to range in the mountains and when they are three and a half years old, are brought down into the valleys and trained.
This doesn't happen in America so the breed is already deteriorating since the harsh conditions imposed by nature are being circumvented. In Austria, Haflingers with poor hooves didn't survive the first years in the wild, for example.
Shetland ponies that come from the wild have amazing, hard hooves that don't need shoes, even. Molly's hooves when she was 35 years old were stronger and better than poor Sparky's hooves that have been weakened by poor inbreeding already. His buddy, Napoleon, died of hoof disease.
And Barbaros! His hooves totally disintigrated! This is why they had to put him down, not the broken leg but the hooves rotting. Gah. When they talked in the media about how 'brave' he was, I saw clearly, his ears were back, his eyes were showing their whites and his haunches were tight, all very bad signs. Horses, when hurt, like all the creatures hunted for millions of years by lions and humans, give up immediately. This is their natures.
When my huge ox, Chips, fell on the ice and broke his hip in his old age, he couldn't get up. We call these 'downers' and they die within 24 hrs. So I sat with him throughout the night until he died. He liked that. He let me hold his head while he looked at me with those big, brown, sad eyes. At least I didn't work him to death.
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I'm for an all-out ban on horseracing and dog racing, just as dogfighting and cockfighting are banned. There is no need for "anaimal sports" - you want to race, put on your track shoes and race.
The slobs I've seen at places like the Kentucky Derby couldn't go 20 yards without collapsing. (And me? I'm 50, and I can still run a 13-second hundred. That won't get me into the NFL, but how many other 50-year-olds do you know who run sprints?)
Posted by: JSmith | February 01, 2007 at 09:49 AM