Eight Bells (Kentucky Derby horse)

[RICHARD]

A necropsy could tell if the animal had any 'congenital' defects. Are they really congenital in the classic sense-when they are bred into a horse?

ESPN did a piece today on horse racing and I heard something in the piece (the program was Outside The Lines) that shocked me.

One of the experts said that horse owners have 'plastic' surgery done to horse to make them more presentable to possible purchasers. What I got out of the piece was that people will take a horse that does not fit the criteria of a racer and have whatever defect corrected.

The conversation went in another direction.

If a man marries a woman that has undergone surgery and expects their offspring to inherit some traits from her, he is in for a surprise.

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I think someone posted that all the horses in the race were descendants of one horse.
I think that a cover-up or shushing up a report would cause more problems.

How?

If a necropsy finds out that there is a defect in the ankle or lower leg of EB it would serve as an alarm to all the owners who have horse from this genetic line.

Any horse sold after that -and because lineage is a very special point in the sales and ownership of any competing equine - will be looked at as a risky investment. Will owners look at it as a deriment? Or, will they pooh pooh the news as part of the racing business?

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4 year olds with ringbone, navicular and arthritis that are quietly shuffled out the back door of Big Mister Pleasure Trainer's Barn and off to the auction they go without their papers.

This is a telling statement. I'd like to believe that most of the animals end up stuck inside a stall for six days, 23 hours a week and ridden by some rich twit that wants to own a horse to keep up with the Riches Next Door.

"My horse was a race horse and I saved it! Now it's safe in a stall where it only runs for a hour a week!"

[Jessika]

I do not know anything about horse racing one way or the other to even have an opinion about it on that perspective, all I know is that when horses break their legs it isn't like a human or cat or dog breaking their legs. Their anatomy is so different; they have ONE weight-bearing digit whereas us humans, cats and dogs (for example) have four/five. Not to mention the sheer weight of most of them its amazing if any horse IS able to survive a broken bone, much less two broken carpals!! Which bone was broken, does it say if it was the cannon? Regardless; euthanization was the most humane decision to make in that circumstance, IMO.