[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
I have 2 questions for you.
…
[/QUOTE]
It can be frozen. A friend of mine has a two-year-old Arabian filly sired by a stallion who died in the '80s. Perhaps someday Thoroughbreds can also be bred using AI, and then who knows?
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
If we hadn’t destroyed the natural environment horses would still be eating and fucking and roaming, and not running unless absolutely necessary.
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Now this statement is ridiculous.
Horses frequently run, just for the sheer joy of doing so. When we turn our horses out in the morning, they frequently take off running through the pasture, jumping & kicking their heels in the air. And there is nothing making that “absolutely necessary”.
I grew up with horses all my life, and have been a Director of the Minnesota Horse Council for the last 20 years or so. If horses were still living in that “natural environment” you mentioned, they would be dying at 12-15 years old, instead of living to age 30, like our old stallion who died peacefully in his stall last month.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
OK, I’ll just throw one off the top of my head (no pun intended): some people would love to have their pleasure horse bred with Barbaro.
Ok, but the owners have gone on record as saying they didn’t keep any sperm. So whats the point? They lose all credibility so they can make a few bucks?
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
It can be frozen. A friend of mine has a two-year-old Arabian filly sired by a stallion who died in the '80s. Perhaps someday Thoroughbreds can also be bred using AI, and then who knows?
[/QUOTE]
I know that, see above.
So? Who gives a shit? My stock deserves better than a lousy owner who’d let them trot in a holey paddock. BTW: we’re not talking about acreage acreage. Perhaps our definitions of “pasture” are different. To me, it’s a manageable spit of land (fenced 1-5 acres) on which good grasses can grow. “Manageable” means no goddamned holes. Also, I might work them from time to time or go 'sploring, but I would never dream of letting my boys and girls run loose on our 140 wild acres out in Collbran.
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Well, I guess thats the real difference isn’t it? It’s not that my or my neighbours stock deserve better, it’s that we don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a damn horse that snaps bones at the slightest change in elevation. We are NOT lousy owners ya elitist knob, we are REAL horsemen that ride horses like they are supposed to be rode. My stock deserves to be treated like real goddamn animals, not some primadonna.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Did I say anything about making another thoroughbred from a straw of Barbaro? Yeah, you and MLS are right about insemination re the rules of the dumbass jockey club, but so what – Barbaro’s still a significant member of the bloodline. While the owners claim they kept none of his sperm, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have. Just my opinion.To me that’s every bit as irresponsible as whipping an animal to make it run faster. People with holey pastures don’t deserve to keep a horse.
[/QUOTE]
The “dumbass jockey club” rule actually served a valid purpose - by mandating that thoroughbred breeding must take place with actual intercourse between the animals it limits the number of foals on stallion can sire, which helps limit inbreeding in and already inbred breed.
As for the holes in pastures - it doesn’t take much of a hole to cause a potential stumble. Hell, I severely injured my knee running in a straight line across a field when I was in high school - a similar injury in a horse might well prove fatal because, unlike myself, you can’t get a horse to hobble about on crutches for several months. Even if you walked your pasture every day and repaired every hold by noon there would still be the possibility of the horse slipping in wet mud or on winter ice or whatever.
Of course, 8 Bells injury should be investigated. If there was wrongdoing the perpetrators should be punished.
I think the odds of Barbaro’s sperm being collected prior to his death are about the same as collecting viable eggs from Eight Belles before hers. In order to collect semen from a stud for purposes of AI, he would have needed to be trained to mount a dummy mare (or, to mount a real mare and have someone redirect his penis into an artificial vagina)–and that’s a bit difficult with a broken, healing, or even healed hind leg. There is no way in hell the New Bolton Center would risk his delicate recovery in order to take the time to train him to breed (and collect semen that, in the horse racing world, was worthless) while seriously risking his recovery. The racing world would have everyone’s heads.
Throughout the entire ordeal, the owners were just trying to save him, and saving him for breeding was a “maybe, somewhere over the rainbow, nearly impossible” dream. In fact, it was seriously doubted that his hind leg would ever be able to support him during the breeding process, and repeatedly it was suggested that he might not ever be able to. I saw video clips of Barbaro being hand walked not long before his fatal bout of laminitis, and he was happy to move–but that broken (now fused) hind leg moved like it was made of wood. I remember thinking then he would never stand at stud.
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
You know the difference in the two, but my thing with racing is the grieving owners talking about how much they loved the dead horse- just be honest and say you’re crying over the lost income.
[/QUOTE]
The thing is, it’s not necessarily one or the other. One can grow attached to an animal, for example, that one is ultimately planning on slaughtering for food. Or that one is using for a utilitarian purpose.
I don’t think that having multiple emotional connections with an animal (or person, for that matter) invalidates grief over losing said animal, or makes one a hypocrite.
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
That horse would never have been alive were it not for our amusement. That is the only reason that thoroughbreds exist. Thoroughbreds are superadapted to do one thing well, and that is to run as fast as they can for a moderately short distance.
I’m not making any value judgments about horse racing, but I will say that if you shut horse racing down you’ve just essentially destroyed thousands of animals who aren’t even valuable for food.
[/QUOTE]
The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that it validates anything a person wants to do with an animal, because if it weren’t for that person wanting that animal for X specific purpose, well then, that animal would probably have to be killed 'cause no one would want it, and you wouldn’t want that, would you? Ha ha, I got you you bleeding heart animal-lover!
I’m not as firm on this issue as Mr. Viscoso, but I do feel that there are right and wrong ways for people to interact with animals in their care. I’m not convinced that horse racing (and breeding for said racing) is right. Nor am I convinced it’s absolutely wrong.
A horse is dead. Big deal.
At the risk of bringing some more facts into what has become a wonderfully hyperbolic Pit thread, I think that this past Friday’s WSJ article about how current Thoroughbred bloodlines are rather thinned is positively prescient.
Whether the facts in that article are a condemnation of horse racing as a whole I’m not sure. They go a lot further towards being a condemnation of current breeding practices, I believe.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
You don’t need me to teach you how to use a shovel, do you?Now you’re going to lecture me on prairie dogs? I live in a fricking desert.
There’s a rule around here: “All pastures will be walked weekly.” It’s really not that tough.
[/QUOTE]
Whew. Good thing it takes a prairie dog two weeks to burrow a hole.
Oh, wait. That must be a prairie dog on Bizarro World, your home planet. Here on Earth, a hole can appear in a day, so even if you “walk weekly” you cannot guarantee holes don’t appear.
Your other sentiments are likewise a mixture of foolish naivete and simple obstinate idiocy. Obviously gratuitous cruelty toward animals is not to be admired, but “whipping a horse to make it go faster” is not gratuitous nor particularly cruel.
See, you’re confusing horses with people. Here’s a helpful guide: four legs, and hooves = horse. Two legs, no hooves = person. It’s not a rigorous guide, but I figure with a case of stunted intellectual development as bad as yours, we should start with the basics and handle the tricky exceptions later.
A horse was put down as a result of a form of humankind’s mild recreational gambling amusement. The fact that a bunch of Dopers that I used to respect are leaping to defend this practice is, frankly, execrable.
[QUOTE=KarlGrenze]
You’re right, many post-racing horses (particularly if they have been good racers) can lead good lives.
Not all of them do, and for many owners, keeping a laminitic horse (depending on the severity) that cannot ride and is not useful as a breeder animal is a pain. So the animal ends up euthanized if it is unable to fill either one of those career paths.
And even in your case, even if you were able to ride the horse, it was not as intense as a race, and it got care to prevent laminitis development.
[/QUOTE]
The thoroughbred I used to ride didn’t get any special care. He was treated just like every other horse at the stable. No, he wasn’t being raced but he was a working animal, carrying riders daily for up to 8 hours a day in the summer, including some jumping and dressage work. That’s not as intense as professional racing but this was, by no means, a coddled animal.
When there was an outbreak of foot disease there the thoroughbred was not one of the animals affected.
I think it’s more of a problem of the stresses imposed by professional-level racing than an inherent weakness of the breed. As a comparison, human athletes competing at a world-class level are also vulnerable to catastrophic injuries seldom seen in the average amateur.
Well, that’s too bad, but I’m not sure why you thought anybody would give a shit about losing your respect?
This tactic seems to come up on the SDMB quite often. A poster will state that another has “lost his respect” for breaking some moral code, or disagreeing with some statement, that is taken as axiomatic by the other. The “losing some respect” crap is basically a cowards way of arguing—a method of making another poster feel bad without having to employ any mental exertion.
There isn’t a good reason why horse racing should be banned, in my view. The destroying of horses is a rare event, given the popularity of horse racing. It’s in nobody’s best interests to have a horse destroyed or treated badly, least of all the owners.
Racehorses are treated to a life that wild horses (and other working horses) can only dream of. They have the best food and the best veterinary care, which is more than what can be said for most horses.
Horses and dogs are two animals that people like to personify because they are smart and seem to have personalities.
Don’t get me wrong. I love both animals, but that doesn’t make them philosophers. As long as they have food, water, and shelter, they are happy. Some posters would have you think that these horses are in their stalls at night contemplating freedom.
These racehorses are treated better than 99.9999999% of all other horses in the world. To say that somehow we are mistreating them by racing them is crazy.
The fact that they make so much money to their owners ensures that they receive the best care possible.
[QUOTE=chique]
The thing that pisses me off most about the attempt to save Barbaro’s leg is that the owners wanted to preserve him for breeding - millions to be made in allowing your Derby winner to sire babies, after all, and don’t doubt for a second that breeders wouldn’t be lining up to have him cover their mares.
[/QUOTE]
How do you square this with Barbaro’s owners stating multiple times that they would keep the horse even if he was unable to breed, run, or be ridden so long as the horse was not in pain? The main reason for putting him down was that his pain could no longer be managed and his condition was continuing to deteriorate. It wasn’t because his leg was broken (that had actually been healing) or because he unable to breed (that was undetermined).
[QUOTE=Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party]
What happens to horses when they are euthanised at a race event, typically? Are they made into dog food (or glue) or buried?
[/QUOTE]
In the jurisdiction were I work, and probably in most, every horse that dies on a race track is subjected to a complete post mortem examination by a veterinary pathologist. So chances are her remains were transported to the KY Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab at U KY to be necropsied.
The remains of animals after post mortem are typically either rendered or incinerated. It wouldn’t surprise me if the owners don’t elect to bury Eight Belles
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
It can be frozen. A friend of mine has a two-year-old Arabian filly sired by a stallion who died in the '80s. Perhaps someday Thoroughbreds can also be bred using AI, and then who knows?
[/QUOTE]
The decision by the Jockey Club to only register foals conceived via “natural cover” i.e. the old fashioned way, is financial, not technical.
Nobody would pay $100,000 stud fee for a breeding to Stallion X if an infinite number of foals were possible each year. And they CERTAINLY wouldn’t pay $10,000 stud fee for a breeding to “Pretty good son of Stallion X” if they could just buy a straw of Stallion X.
It is possible for a Thoroughbred mares to produce two foals per year this way: They are bred to a racing Quarter Horse stallion. The embryo produced by that mating is harvested and placed in a recipient mare. That foal can be registered as a Quarter horse. Then they are bred natural cover to a Thoroughbred stallion and produce a registered Thoroughbred foal.
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Horses frequently run, just for the sheer joy of doing so. When we turn our horses out in the morning, they frequently take off running through the pasture, jumping & kicking their heels in the air. And there is nothing making that “absolutely necessary”.
[/QUOTE]
When you let them out to run free, I assume no one is beating them if they’re not running fast enough? Or forcing them to run if they’re injured?
Anyone care to refute anything in this article exposing the darker side of horse racing?
They get a great long life, sure, if they don’t die or get injured along the way, and as long as they’re fast enough to earn money. And as for the line upthread about they wouldn’t have a life at all if not for racing- which is better- no life or a life of possbile injury and abuse? Ask an abused child that same question.
A couple of excerpts from the article I just linked, to refute a lot of the crap posted in this thread:
***The industry promotes the false image of race horses retiring to lives of luxury as pets, well-cared-for riding horses, or stud horses. In reality, when horses can no longer race, they are usually sent to slaughterhouses. **
Rather than allowing a horse to rest long enough to heal completely, many owners and trainers decide the horse does not have race-winning potential, and they sell the horse at auction. From there, the horses are either sent to a slaughterhouse that ships horse meat to the European and Japanese market, or into abusive situations at the hands of new owners who may think they would like a retired racehorse, but forget about horses’ longevity and the expense necessary to maintain them properly. The United States alone slaughters tens of thousands of horses every year, of which many are ex-race horses.
Horses are sent to slaughterhouses in cramped trailers, usually without access to water or food. Injuries are common. A University of California, Davis study of 306 horses destined for slaughter found that 60 of them sustained serious injuries during transport. Some travel in double-decker trailers designed for cattle or sheep, vehicles not tall enough for horses, though the U.S. Department of Agriculture banned the use of these trailers for horse transport. Horses are subject to the same method of slaughter as cattle, but thrash about to avoid the pneumatic gun that should render them unconscious before their throat is slit.
Every year, around 300 racehorses die on British race tracks as a result of a.) fatal falls or serious injuries, most often breaks to the legs, backs, or shoulders, b.) heart attacks, or c.) a drop in performance that makes them not profitable. In addition to the hundreds raced to death, thousands more are killed or abandoned to neglectful or abusive situations every year because they can no longer run fast enough to be profitable.
**Ex-racehorses who are not euthanized often suffer an even worse fate. **
In the U.S., around 5,000 horses leave racing every year, the same number who enter it. Very few enjoy a decent retirement. Some are shot within weeks of their money-earning days coming to an end. A small number become breeders. Many are slaughtered, their bodies sold to countries like France, where people eat horse meat, or they end up as pet food. Others are exported, or sold from owner to owner into increasingly abusive and neglectful situations.*
[QUOTE=Soapbox Monkey]
If it’s really that simple…then why is Michael Vick in jail?
I mean, they’re just animals, right?
[/QUOTE]
Michael Vick is in jail because what he did is against the law.
There are two issues at play here, the ethical and the legal.
While ethics and the law sometimes intersect, what is legal is not always ethical, what is illegal is not always unethical, and what is ethical is not always legal (duh.)
We could explore the differences between Vick’s actions and the actions of people who race horses:
People who race horses are engaged in a legal activity. Dog fighting is not a legal activity.
Eight Belles being put down was not done cruelly, while Eight Belles (or any magnificent creature such as a horse) being killed is a tragedy, Eight Belles wasn’t tortured, electrocuted, hanged, or et cetera. Eight Belles was put down in a professional manner that was done to end the suffering of the animal as fast and painlessly as possible.
Vick could have taken his pit bulls to a vet and had them euthanised, I doubt many vets would argue with his desire to euthanize the animal if he brought them in and said “this dog is crazy violent, I need it put down.” Michael Vick was a wealthy man (much less so now as he has immense debt that he can’t pay off, foreclosures coming and et cetera), this would not have been a burden on him.
Instead Vick killed the dogs in horrific and violent manners, and allowed cohorts to do the same on his property.
As for why horse racing isn’t unethical and why dog fighting is, I’d proffer the following arguments:
As human beings, we all have rights and duties that should guide our moral actions. In ethics, anytime an action will have any effect on another person, you must weigh the ethical ramifications of that action in order to decide whether or not it is ethical. But when dealing with ethical actions which only affect animals, you only have to weigh how that action in and of itself affects the person, the rights of the animal unfortunately shouldn’t be factored in.
I would posit that humans have a right to generally entertain themselves in a manner that doesn’t hurt others.
Humans have a right to posses and use animals as chattel, to use them for entertainment, service, or food. This is a natural right derived from our very existence as omnivorous creatures that have long relied on the rest of the animal kingdom for these needs/wants.
Humans have a duty to not engage in wanton cruelty. So while animals don’t have rights that should be weighed into our decision making, being cruel to them is still cruelty. Some would argue any treatment of animals that doesn’t afford them the status of equals to humans is unethical (PETA), I would argue that while the rights of the animals isn’t a factor, it is unethical to abuse an animal needlessly. This means when we kill animals for food, we should do so as quickly and efficiently as possible. While painlessness can only factor in so much as it doesn’t become cost prohibitive, we shouldn’t take specific efforts to make the animal’s demise more painful or gruesome. When using animals for entertainment, said entertainment must no consist entirely of cruelty towards the animal. If the entertainment involves some incidental cruelty, that is a different situation. With dog fighting the entire process involves deliberate cruelty to animals, and that is the entire basis of the entertainment. In horse racing, while some of the animals may be abused, the overarching goal is winning races and enjoying the animals run against one another.
Again, the key ethical guidelines are in how we behave, not the affects on animals (when other humans are at play, the ethics of the decision change.) We shouldn’t abuse animals wantonly because it is immoral behavior in and of itself, not because we are violating the rights of animals (they have no, from an ethical perspective) but because we are lowering our standards of behavior and conduct.
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
When you let them out to run free, I assume no one is beating them if they’re not running fast enough?
[/quote]
Is anybody “beating” them on a racetrack?