There are days when I am sickened by humanity and its detritus.
A few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by an Illinois based slaughterhouse to remain open. And there was much rejoicing.
I have nothing against eating horse meat, per se but the inhumane treatment of the animals and the callous disregard of the owners is an offense of leviathan proportions.
Every horse should have a home and someone to love them and rainbows and candy. Horses, thoroughbred or otherwise, deserve better than we give them and while the situation for them will never be ideal we at least owe it to them to make it DECENT. It is unconscionable that situations like this occur, and this is just one we know of.
How hard would it be to require breeders to be the home of last resort? They get a cut of any winnings that that horse accrues throughout its lifetime, whether they own it or not. Why would it be off the wall to require them to take the horse back if/when nobody else has a purpose for it. There could be a flat surcharge(tax), payable to the breeder whenever they sell any horse that would mitigate the financial hit they would incur if that horse does come back but it should not be large enough to create a breeding incentive. Make them responsible for their actions. Breeding for the sales are we? Breed this. We have too many horses every year? How quickly would we get the population under control if the breeders were responsible for their stock?
We have too few horses to fill races? Maybe most horses shouldn't be running. Maybe we have too many tracks and too many racing days. Maybe the quality of the product would go up if we cut back on production. Maybe I am talking out of my ass.
I love horse racing. It requires horses and those horses have to come from somewhere. I just think that there might be a better way to do all of this: the breeding, racing, training, betting and regulating.
The horses deserve a good run for their money, because every bloody time, whether we deserve it or not, they give us a good run for ours.
18 June 2008
If I die before I wake...
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4 comments:
Great post.
I would add when a lazy owner/trainer would rather get a couple hundred bucks from a "meat man" instead of reaching out to contact on the horses papers (a la Little Cliff), frigging FINE THEM, a LOT. And put that money back into rescue organizations.
I never saw a well deserved fine that I didn't like.
Thanks for reading.
I don't think this issue can be laid entirely at the feet of the breeders. After all, in the story you link to, Little Cliff's breeders had his Jockey Club papers marked to indicate their interest in getting him back at the end of his career, and a fat lot of good that did them -- his last owner sent him to the slaughter auction anyway. And from what I've read, nothing happened to that trainer/owner for ignoring the breeder's desires.
It's my understanding that it's relatively easy for a breeder to lose track of some of their horses, even when tracking them through a "virtual stable." True, the breeder sees see them dropping lower and lower in the claiming ranks, but there's no big alert that says "Hey, this one's on the way to Sugarcreek Auction on Friday."
Surely the industry could develop a better way to track sales - both auction *and* private - so that breeders can at least know where one of their horses ended up. I for one am a bit tired of the "private property" argument; houses are private property, too, and somehow we all can function in a world where deeds are recorded and made available to the public.
QQ-
You are, of course, correct. There is plenty of blame to be passed around in these situations. The breeders just happened to be my target during this particular diatribe.
In a previous post I focus on the bettor. If we would abstain from betting during specific occasions and make the industry understand that there is a lot that is rotten and we don't care for it, then much could be done.
But...
Thanks for reading.
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