DD
Well-Known Member
time to ban horse racing and dog racing. cruel sports.
time to ban horse racing and dog racing. cruel sports.
Stop using dogs, cats, ferrets and birds of prey to hunt with too. Lets let them all free to live life the natural way as nature intended!
You mean let the dogs hunt the cats, let the cats hunt the mice, let the ferrets hunt the rabbits and let the birds of prey hunt anything they can get their talons into! Hunting is natural and nature is cruel, whether or not mankind is involved it will continue.
Oh no! You would need to de-fang/claw/talon them and brainwash them all into living together in harmony! Let them all breed willy nilly! Crossbreed too cos why the hell not! You need to genetically modify the plants as well so they dont have feelings and thus dont mind about being eaten! I mean we all need to go vegan and live in fluffy bunny world man!
time to ban horse racing and dog racing. cruel sports.
I think it's petty well known that I'm very conflicted about jump racing. I appreciate the contribution it makes to the economy, the number of jobs which rely on it, the skill that goes into it, the fun that people have following it and watching it, the fact that the horses wouldn't be alive at all if they weren't bred to race , and that they would choose life if offered the choice.
But the fact remains that the published death rate at the race course is over 1% of horses in jump training per year. That doesn't include what I suspect is at least another 1% put down at home after an injury sustained during a race. Eventing has, I think, well over 10,000 horses registered for this season. If three horses died every single weekend at BE events, and another three PTS when they got home, would BE continue to run?
No, I don't think jump racing should be stopped, but in my heart I hope it fades out slowly over time.
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How would you make it safer then ?I love racing and would not support a ban but I do think the injury and death rates are too high. And however much people talk about their much-loved horses - money talks and they are there to do a job and will be sacrificed to that end. Racing could be made safer in many different ways but that would cost.
Firstly I would commission proper research into the effect of racing on 2 year olds. The study saying it reduces their risk the BHA keep citing discussed upthread is bobbins. I can't believe such a poorly controlled piece of research is being used in the way it is. I suspect the conclusion would be that 18 month old horses should not be in full training and 2 year olds should not be racing. That would probably help.
Amber's Echo are you talking about this link?
http://www.jockeyclub.com/default.asp?section=RT&year=2008&area=11
It is the American Jockey club in the link. I honestly don't know if the British version believes the same or not. I just wanted to clarify that. I was given this link by an American who wanted to show me that racing at two was beneficial. When I asked to see the study itself, nothing was forthcoming and unfortunately I wasn't able to find it myself via google.
I have read that many jump horses are backed at older ages (I guess ones that didn't flat race when younger). I do wonder if they are sounder/less sound statistically? Of course if the ones transferring from the flat turned out to be tougher, it could be because the weaker ones have already been discarded (awful term, but you know what I'm getting at). It is something that needs to be looked at thoroughly.
where is your evidence that losses in racing as any higher than in other uses of horses .
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The parade of posts about lame horses on here daily who are suffering the slow loss of soundness in chronic discomfort that moves into pain in an slow onward progression shows that no area of horse use has the moral high ground .
]All this hysterical anti racing stuff is really for people who don’t want people to use animals at all .
Thank you for explaining. I want to understand more about good research v bad research.
In the on course death rates published by the racing and eventing authorities.
And in the fact that other sports which take much longer than a race, like polo, hunting, endurance would, if they had the same death rate per minute of activity as jump racing, be littered with the corpses of dead horses.
There would be at least three every weekend at BE events.
Even the racing authorities, to their credit, don't try to pretend that they don't have a much higher death rate than other horse activities, GS.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
That's pretty insulting to a number of forum members GS 😒
There is a campaign going on supported by doctors against school rugby, because of the number of serious injuries compared with other sports. Would you conclude that the people who support it are against all sport?
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It’s what I believe if you choose to think it’s insulting that’s up to you.
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Yes the nature of the sport means racing has more deaths but a quick death is not the worse thing that can happen to a horse .