De nerved competition horses

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junglefairy

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Has anyone else been following the story of Never Say Never, the denerved horse representing Denmark?
https://epona.tv/blog/2017/may/vetting-the-vets

I find this rather depressing but not surprising. Rightly or wrongly I've always kind of assumed that this kind of thing goes on at the highest levels.

I don't have much knowledge about denerving but it seems like it's no different to treating injury with painkillers (in so far as all you're doing is alleviating the pain but not treating the source). So if other painkillers are not allowed why should this be?

Does anyone else despair at FEI seeing news like this and the welfare issues within FEI endurance racing? I don't really understand it because I know a couple of the top U.K. vets are very concerned with horse welfare and that is an absolute priority, so I'm not sure why this doesn't seem to be the case at FEI level.

Is it money, politics, or is it just cultural understanding of welfare?
 
To my mind denerving is nothing like giving bute an anti inflammatory that will help heal the damage, bute is banned, will be picked up on blood tests and will not allow a badly broken down horse to compete painfree, denerving means they cannot sense any pain, have little if any feeling in the limb and to my mind is totally inexcusable when used to enable the horse to be abused and become damaged beyond repair, only glanced through the article but that is my take on it.

Denerving of the front feet is nothing like denerving the suspensories that does seem to be more common, I would not want to ride one with no feeling in it's feet let alone jump it.
 
Denerving is absolutely nothing like giving a horse bute! A horse on bute that breaks a leg will still know about it. A horse that has been denerved and breaks a leg it's wont know about it and will still keep trying to gallop wondering why it can't.
 
Absolutely should be banned in circumstances like that article, but it probably hasn't because it would be difficult to police and it's hard to know where to draw the line.
Vets who knowingly enable this kind of thing should definitely be considering their codes of ethics though
 
junglefairy said:
Good points, I suppose my point was why is denerving allowed but Bute isnt...?
Click to expand...

It is, or was banned , under FEI rules but is very difficult to police, I pulled out of purchasing a horse that had been denerved behind as it would not have been allowed to compete under BE rules although no one not involved would have been aware.
 
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