More Aintree deaths

[boglin]

I didn't know this yesterday, but two horses also died at Aintree on Friday, in the Topham Chase.

In The High Grass was 7 years old. Time to Sell was 9. Both were destroyed after falling - In The High Grass fell the 8th fence, and Time To Sell only made it to the 2nd - the Chair.

Only 12 of the 29 horses who set out managed to finish this race. In Saturday's race, of the 40 who ran, only 15 got all of the way round.

So I suppose we can count our blessings that out of the 37 horses that fell or were pulled up in these two races, only 3 of them died, eh?

Details of the other races held at Aintree this weekend are here. Looking at the results it's the Topham and the National that are by far the most catastrophic. The latter can only be expected, with the horses being expected to race a distance of over 4 miles and jump 30 fences - between just over 4' to 5'2"

In the past 10 years, 32 horses have died in the Grand National meeting.

Comments

[boglin.livejournal.com]

You're right in that there are many cases when a horse *can* recover from injury. I know someone with an ex-racehorse who was going to be destroyed who took him on. As you say, the fate of a racehorse is very often tied up with profit. I think racing is far worse for this than other equine sports - and I think there are issued with the physiological makeup of a horse than makes modern thoroughbred far more likely to be injured than your showjumper or 3 day eventer. I take issue with any industry where so often an animal's welfare comes in way behind the money you can make.

McKelvey, this year for example, had been recovering from a tendon injury he had sustained last year, and done very little racing - but still his owners decided to enter him for the most gruelling race in the calendar.

Sadly, it's not just 'a few horses'. Since Animal Aid began monitoring and recording race horse deaths in March 2007, 171 horses have died. And it isn't just the horses who die on the course who have to be accounted for. Animal Aid report that 18,000 horses are bred each year by the British and Irish racing industries, and only around 40% go on to race. Around 6,000 British Thoroughbreds leave racing each year. what happens to those other horses. As with greyhound racing, the truth often isn't very pleasant.

Gambling is a massive source of income for the industry, and anyone who bets on horse racing is thus, in my eyes, in part responsble for these deaths.

As far as the use of the whip goes - again, as with greyhound racing, the industry self-regulates. IMO, not very well. There are often concerns in the press about the use of whips - I've chosen two publications here that aren't particularly fluffy and sentimental:

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/equestrian/Use-of-whip-on-horses.3734547.jp

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/racing/article3641890.ece


and a report by the Equine Veterinary Journal states:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/evj/evj/2004/00000036/00000005/art00003

"The risk of falling was significantly associated with whip use and race progress. Horses which were being whipped and progressing through the race were at greater than 7 times the risk of falling compared to horses which were not being whipped and which had no change in position or lost position through the field."

I ride, and I use a whip. If I'm riding a horse it will do what I tell it to do (most of the time) - because I would never ask anything unreasonable of a horse. And if a horse doesn't respond to the leg, it gets a tap, and if it doesn't repond to a tap it gets a couple of harder taps. It's far more humane than kicking and kicking and nagging a horse. But the way whips are used in racing still horrifies me.

As for the idea that racing is no more or less cruel than a lot of other things we as a human species do to other animals and indeed other people on this planet, I find it sad that you put that forward as justification for it. Just because I abhore racing, does not mean it is the only thing I abhore. Just because animals rights are very important to me does not mean I have no interest in human right. Compassion isn't finite in its limits. The idea that 'there's lots of other shit things in the world so what does it matter' is a terribly depressing one to have.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly with you.