My wife attended a work get together at the Lone Star Park Horse Racing Track. It was the first time that she’d been to a track. The first race was run with 3-4 year old mares, she was told. The winning horse went a little nuts after the race, bucking and running around uncontrollably. It eventually ran into a pretty big sign, stumbled around, and fell over to the side of the track. Several park personnel went over and hosed the horse down, no discernable effect. Then, they gathered around the horse with tarps. (Here’s where I’m not sure what happened.) The men with the tarps were around the horse for several minutes then a truck or cart of some type came out, went into the tarps, and came out carrying what was probably the horse in tarps.
Several people asked, “What just happened?”
“Oh, they probably shot it. Last time I was out here they had to shoot a horse.” was the response she got from one of the partners.
Now, I have a hard time believing this.
That would make for a PR nightmare.
This isn’t WWI. If they had to put a horse down, they wouldn’t just pull out a gun and shoot it.
Race horses are expensive. Even if it couldn’t race again, it seems they would try to recoup some of their costs by selling the horse’s foals (assuming it wasn’t a gelding).
Even if they did have to shoot it, they wouldn’t do it at track side.
I’ve never been to a race track so, these are just all assumptions I have made. So, what do they do with badly injured race horses?
Depending on how badly the horse is hurt, they will put it down.
Most likely, they’ll take the horse off the track first and try to treat it. Race horses are difficult to treat, since they don’t understand what you’re doing. For instance, when Ruffian broke her leg in her match race with Honest Pleasure, they put her into a cast, but she kicked it off.
If they can’t cure the horse, they will put it out of its pain. Not with guns, though – with an injection, most likely.
Don’t remember the name, but there was a racehorse that broke its leg and got a peg leg to wear. Apparently it had been successful enough that the stud fees were phenomenal, and they gave it this big, honkin’ titanium lamppost for a leg to wear. I saw film of it running around a paddock on the news.
Otherwise, it’s the Far Side School of Veterinary Medicine…
Broken Leg: Shoot
Fever: Shoot
Vicious: Shoot
etc.
Every summer I get to chase racehorses in my ambulance at the local racetrack, so I also get to see a few come unstuck. The usual course of action when a horse sustains serious damage is to put it down. The rationale is that racehorses are far too difficult to restore to complete fitness.
The main reason for saving a racehorse in such a situation would be a case where the horse was a champion mare or stallion (most racehorses in Australia are geldings), whose bloodline was valuable for breeding purposes.
RealityChuck, the horse Ruffian raced was called Foolish Pride (oh, to split hairs of a Friady evening.)
but, back to the OP, it really depends on what type of injury you are talking about. There are “serious injuries” such as a bowed tendown, suspensory ligament pull, or bone chips in the knees, which end a race horses’ but leave him fit for other uses. There are organizations, such as CANTER that donate surgery to fix the problem and find appropriate homes for horses with these types of injuries. (There’s even a TLA for them: OTTs or “Off-Track Thoroughbreds”) Organizations such as these also serve as clearninghouses for racehorses that were just plain too slow to make it on the racetrack.
Then there are your serious tramautic injuries – a broken leg, etc. Truthfully, the owner will only try to save the horse if there is serious value present (Ruffian was undefeated in 10 starts and named Filly of the Year) or possibly if there is sentimental attachment (you can’t afford to be too sentimental in the racing world, though). There is little breeding value in an undistinguished bottom tier “average” racehorse, because, really, who’s going to want the foal of a horse that couldn’t run? And don’t forget, most male horses are gelded, & it is expensive to breed a mare and not without its own risks. In these cases, where there is a serious traumatic injury, most horses will be put down. I don’t work at a race track and I don’t speak from experience but I imagine this is done with drugs and not bullets.
RealityChuck and mariamp, you’re both half-right about who Ruffian raced against - it was Foolish Pleasure.
mariamp is right - fortunately with advances in vet medicine, smaller fractures of the lower leg can be relatively easily repaired. With catastrophic breakdowns, recovery is far less certain, yet not to be ruled out. Consider Charismatic and his breakdown in the Belmont. Chris Antley, his rider, jumped (rolled) off when he realised something was wrong and supported Charismatic’s injured leg. That, in combination with the horse’s unruffled demeanor, went a long way to saving Charismatic’s life. (I was there at Belmont that day and I remember a woman behind me saying that he was headed for the glue factory - cold-hearted witch.) Ruffian, on the other hand, drove forward on her broken leg, worsening the break. And, as RealityChuck said, she thrashed about after surgery, re-breaking her leg. Horrifying.
But, unfortunately, as this site (as citing Equine Online) suggests:
“There are still situations when a horse with a serious fracture cannot be saved. The fracture site might be too contaminated or blood supply may be sufficiently compromised to allow for successful repairs. The horse’s large size and weight often inhibit treatment. Sometimes an individual’s temperament won’t allow for recuperation. Many times, complications occur in the other limbs due to excessive weight-bearing during the rehabilitation period. In these cases, the humane solution is euthanasia.”
All this talk about broken legs makes me nervous. My brother, a longtime racing fan, finally bought his first thoroughbred: Marseille Ballet! She’s a 2yo sweetie, in training. Funny, but the first thing I thought when he got her was that I hope all her races are safe.
I was told once (from someone who races horses so I took it as fact at the time) that a leg break in a horse can be likened to taking a piece of chalk, putting it into a vise and slowing applying pressure. The result tends to be the chalk will shatter into splintered pieces rather than break cleanly apart.
Horses with this type of break are, as a rule, put down because to heal an injury such as this would mean the horse would need to stay completely off the leg for an extended period of time. A horse standing on three legs would eventually have the bones in its feet ground through its hooves due to the distributed weight difference in the loss of one good leg.
If this is untrue I would be happy to hear it as I like horses in a little girl “daddy, can we have a horsey, please” kind of way.
Most of my references are on my other computer, which is not currently in service. However, most of the time, racehorses are put down, as others have said, because they’re difficult to treat. Horses can’t lie down for long periods of time, because they can’t breathe properly, and so a broken leg is tricky to treat.
If you want to go searching on Google, I believe I used “horse glue factory” as my search words.
My sister, a vet, participated in some interesting work while in her last couple of years of school. They had a full equine surgery (Which resembles a cross between a warehouse, a barn, and a surgical theater) where they were able to apply a wide range of fixes for broken legs. Some of the fixes include a suspension rig to partially keep a horses weight off it’s legs while the broken leg sets-up, walking casts for less serious breaks, the use of freeze-dried bone as a matrix for bone replacement (Very limited rejection with freeze-dried bone) in serious breaks, and advanced physical therapy.
While some of these techniques are still experimental, some others are already working their way to common practice.
Most notably, the discussion of my screennamesake. sigh
Anywho…I’ll address each of these and try to add some new info/insight:
You’d think so, and you’d think the fact that there is actually a room for jockeys to vomit (“flip” is the term they use) the contents of their stomachs–with a sign that says “REGURGITATORS: Please clean sink after use” would cause an uproar. But it doesn’t, mainly because it is how things are. How they should be may be something else entirely, but it is the way it is.
No. They “shoot” them with a lethal injection.
This has been covered, more or less. The one thing to add is the consideration of overbreeding–gelding or colt or filly, a very, very slim margin are profitable as breeding stock–most particularly, males. Storm Cat may stand for $400,000, but there are hundreds of thousands who
have been sent to the meat market when they prove valueless at stud. (Overbreeding, esp. of the top, “fashionable” stallions, is a rather large issue in the industry right now–small farms are feeling their young studs are not being given a chance.)
The majority of owners try to recoup the racehorse’s vast expenses on the track. There tends to be two flavors of owners–those who own racehorses, and those who own breeding stock. Their search for profit is contrasted this way: racehorse owners try to recoup the cost of the horse on the track, and possibly selling the animal to a breeding operation upon retirement. Breeders try to recoup their extremely high overhead and stud fees by selling their foal crops in the sales ring. Very few do both.
Actually yes, they would, and do. The tarp is the, uh, dead give-a-way…it’s more like an ominous shroud. Only the most severe injuries involve use of the tarp; when Ruffian shattered her ankle in the match race, she was still ambulatory. (Very often, horse injuries don’t prove fatal until a few hours, if not days, after it is incurred…) When Go For Wand practically severed her leg in the 1990 Breeder’s Cup Distaff, she was put down–right in front of the grandstand, but concealed by a tarp–at trackside. Part of the reasoning is moving the animal; getting a gruesomely injured (and shocky) animal into an equine ambulance is no easy feat, I’d presume. The body is removed, and the next race goes on, if a bit delayed. I’ve never been trackside for such an event, and I’m grateful. :::shudder:::
Note: Sports Illustrated did an extremely tasteless, IMHO, frame-by-frame sequence of Go For Wand’s grpahic demise. We see the moment-by-moment sequence of her fall (her injury was so great, she did a forward roll–Ruffian, like most others, was pulled up in obvious distress, but still standing), we see her hobbling about on three legs, we see the outrider grabbing her and getting her to lay down, and we see her receiving the “pink juice” behind the tarp. Yeeeeeeesh.
I’m going to go hug my kitties now.
(Postscript: Bruce Headley, a trainer of racehorses for over 40 years and a friend of mine, has never lost a horse due to injury. Ever. This is borderline miraculous, but he attributes it to taking his time and not pushing yound animals. The Daily Racing Form has stats on this–fantastic as it sounds, it’s absolutely true.)
As far as I know, they do indeed still “shoot” racehorses destroyed on course in Australia. The device used looks something like the popguns we used to have as kids, not like a revolver or a rifle.
Racing horses is a game of economics, and while occasionally owners and trainers will go to extreme lengths to save the life of racehorse, it’s fairly rare. From memory, in Australia the decision about whether the horse should be destroyed doesn’t rest with the owner or trainer (although I daresay if you were a high enough profile owner/trainer, the racecourse officials wouldn’t argue with you).
I recall that some years ago a jockey in America who was dismounting his horse and cradling it’s injured foreleg - he was riding in one of the major Kentucky races at the time and had already won two other others. Is action cost him the race, but undoubtedly saved the horse’s life.
That was Chris Antley on Charismatic in the 1999 Belmont Stakes (run in New York, but still part of the Triple Crown). The colt actually broke down (and it’s very subtle; you wouldn’t notice the difference in gait) just before the wire, still managing to finish third. Chris pulled him up, hard, immediately. I’ve never seen anything like it prior or since…he really loved that horse.
There has been some dispute as to whether Antley’s actions actually saved Charismatic’s life, but it has been universally agreed that he certainly saved the colt from further injury.
I have a large framed print of a painting of just that scene–Chris cradling the hobbling chestnut’s leg.
In the “Crap!” department, Antley was found dead in his Pasadena house around Christmastime this year. At first it was considered homicide, but the high dosage of ampehtamines in his system led to other conclusions. They believed he sustained the life-ending head injury thrashing around his house. He hadn’t been riding in nearly a year, unable to maintain the weight or his mental health.
Do you by any chance know where/when this race was so we could maybe look up and find out what specifically happened? Sheer curiosity… I know this isn’t the point of debate, but this is so definitely not a leg break or fracture…it sounds like something was really f-d up neurologically with the horse… what I’m wondering is what actually happened with that particular animal. I can see that happening following a head injury. So it’s just strange. Chances are though that when she brained herself on the sign she was most likely dying by the time she hit the ground.
Ruffian, I’ve enjoyed reading your posts… I’ve been a diehard horse nerd since I was in diapers, but have never followed racing beyond the stereotypical Walter Farley & Mary O’Hara books as a kid. Thanks!
I heard about Antley also… I’d love to find a copy of that pic to at least see it… Poignant.
Thank you for the compliment, Magaira. I’ve rather enjoyed writing these posts; gives me an outlet for the obscene amount of racing trivia I’ve absorbed in my lifetime.
The picture I have can be seen here: http://equinart.adnetsol.com/Moment_of_the_Year.htm . It’s called “Moment of the Year” (as you may have figured from the url) and was painted by famed equine artist Fred Stone.
The original photo of Antley cradling the horse’s leg was published in one of our papers here a few days ago. Apparently it won an award, so it’s almost certainly avaiable online. I’ll check the old papers and see what I can track down.
You’d presume correctly. Horses evoloved to rely on their ability to see long distances and run to survive. A horse in pain and unable to run panics. 1500 lbs of panicked animal is a threat to everyone nearby, and loading one into an ambulance is essentially impossible. My sister tells me that even animals that are salvagable are tranqulized ASAP, to prevent panic and further injury.
I’ve rather enjoyed writing these posts; gives me an outlet for the obscene amount of racing trivia I’ve absorbed in my lifetime.