Grand National meeting.

marmalade76 said:
I used to have a cob on loan who'd bury you if you used a stick on him, even just a tickle. I also had an Irish import years ago you couldn't carry a stick on, I had a sharer who just like you claimed she would never ride without a stick. I said upto you. She soon changed her mind.
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That’s good for her and you. I wouldn’t do it. I value my safety more than riding a particular horse, I’m afraid.
 
marmalade76 said:
I used to have a cob on loan who'd bury you if you used a stick on him, even just a tickle. I also had an Irish import years ago you couldn't carry a stick on, I had a sharer who just like you claimed she would never ride without a stick. I said upto you. She soon changed her mind.
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I was nearly buried by my instructor's horse when I was a teenager. She always carried a whip but she didn't tell me (till afterwards :rolleyes: ) she never used it... I gave him a flick behind my leg and ended up on my feet behind him, watching him bog off up the field.
 
humblepie said:
If you look at the BHA Judicial Panel results you will see that welfare post race is taken seriously - there are a lot of equine welfare officers on raceday behind the scenes who will notice any potential issues or indeed issues. The thing about racing is that it is so visible and accounta
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AdorableAlice said:
The worlds best riders will disagree with you.
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Sorry, I'm not sure why @humblepie 's quote is included! Surely straightness is the continuing and endless work of riding. It isn't simple at all and is an ever-changing challenge? I meant this to be in answer to @tristars !!
 
Fred66 said:
If a horse isn’t 100% bombproof in traffic then it should never be allowed on the road.
If it kicks, bolts, breaks out of his field then it should be put down as it’s not safe to itself or others around it.
Risk needs to be mitigated not eliminated.
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If you are riding a horse who is bomb proof in traffic you cannot control other unexpected things happening, a dog racing up to the fence, something being blown towards the horse in windy conditions, also in my case a load of wild boar galloping towards the fence. Yes mine was good with traffic but had never encountered wild boar and I didn’t know they were there , my whip was useful to keep her straight…
 
Can anyone give me a single benefit running in the GN gives to the horse?

Does anyone think that if they could truly be asked, and truly understand, that any horse would agree to risking their life for human glory?

Whataboutery isn’t helpful, but I’m expecting it so, in advance, yes that can also be asked for all equine sports. This is a thread about the GN.
 
Burnttoast said:
We're back to that 'we can't maintain safety without inflicting aversives on an animal' which just makes me question whether people should be doing something potentially risky if they don't have a better way to mitigate the risk.
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Are we? I didn't mention anything about inflicting anything on an animal. Tristars stated that a horse that can't be ridden in a straight line, isn't ready to compete. I was just querying if they had ever actually ridden short on a racehorse. They can wander around a bit, and you can hardly just put your leg on. I never ride with a whip. The last time I regularly carried one, was on my old ex-racehorse who liked to whip round to the right. Not a great plan on the road, so I used the whip to block his shoulder. It was so long ago, I can't honestly remember but it was around 15-20 years ago.
 
splashgirl45 said:
Surely this applies to all racing not just the GN, there is also no benefit to horses being ridden at all, so the answer to your GN question is NO
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Yes, it does. It could apply to all riding. I was just wondering if anyone genuinely believed there is any benefit to the horses, cos I don’t see any.
 
Beausmate said:
Are we? I didn't mention anything about inflicting anything on an animal. Tristars stated that a horse that can't be ridden in a straight line, isn't ready to compete. I was just querying if they had ever actually ridden short on a racehorse. They can wander around a bit, and you can hardly just put your leg on. I never ride with a whip. The last time I regularly carried one, was on my old ex-racehorse who liked to whip round to the right. Not a great plan on the road, so I used the whip to block his shoulder. It was so long ago, I can't honestly remember but it was around 15-20 years ago.
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Fair enough, 'inflicting' is over-emotive language, but a whip is still an aversive in learning theory terms. I think it's just that I'm getting sadder as I get older about the situations we put horses in - for our pleasure - that require additional pressure/force to keep us safe. It's just not necessary (the situations, I mean).
 
minesadouble said:
However, unpopular opinion, I can't support the extreme jockey bashing.
He made a stupid decision to keep riding when he should have stopped. A decision he made in the heat of the moment when his blood was up. He will now have to live with the knowledge that that decision cost a brave, talented, much loved horse his life. Surely he would never for one moment have thought that keeping going would have resulted in the death of the horse.
I can't imagine how he is feeling right now. I've seen that he has deleted his Social Media, I fear to think how bad some of the comments on there would have been! If he's a normal human being he will be beating himself up sufficiently that he won't need that kind of input from anyone else. A stupid, stupid mistake that I'm quite sure he deeply regrets.
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Well as long as the jockey probably feels a bit sorry for himself that’s all ok then. Personally I feel more sorry for the horse who suffered more than the jockey will ever do and paid for that ride with his life. The jockey will just hop on another one after his 10 day ban.
 
Burnttoast said:
Jockeys choose, horses do not. And way more horses die in the carrying out of this sport than humans do. If the same number of humans died it would have been banned years ago.
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If we didn’t have the relationship we do with horses then their only purpose would be to be in the food chain. In the grand scheme of things then the horses who die in sport have a massively better life and death than the alternative.
 
Errin Paddywack said:
I bet the working horses in Egypt and the like would be happy to swap with our racehorses. I would imagine the care they would get in a racing yard would be like heaven to them.
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I don’t think that’s a great argument. It’s still showing that horses suffer for human use, whether that be to earn a living or for fun.
 
Fred66 said:
If we didn’t have the relationship we do with horses then their only purpose would be to be in the food chain. In the grand scheme of things then the horses who die in sport have a massively better life and death than the alternative.
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I love dogs, and I’m against greyhound racing. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If the GN ceased to exist tomorrow, our horses would continue on living their lives and all the associated welfare issues with leisure and competition horses would continue.
 
equinerebel said:
I love dogs, and I’m against greyhound racing. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If the GN ceased to exist tomorrow, our horses would continue on living their lives and all the associated welfare issues with leisure and competition horses would continue.
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I would hazard a guess that far more horses suffer at the hands of leisure riders than in professional horse sports. The GN is just more prominent and visible to people.
 
teddy_ said:
Jockey's do know the risk; but let's not minimise their death when that occurs because they partook by choice. Pretty poor taste...
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I think the person who did that was the one who linked human deaths as a result of humans not wanting to live boring lives with horse deaths as a result of that human desire, which they did in order to minimise horse deaths on the context of a discussion that was about horse deaths. The argument was that horse deaths are OK because people don't want to live boring lives and jockeys die too.

That was Bonny.
 
This argument always goes the same way. "There's more suffering in livery stables".

If you have a problem that needs solving, you pick off the outliers first. In the case of the use of horses by people, jump racing is the outlier by a very, very big margin. And I will repeat myself until the whataboutery stops (which means forever) , that eventing would not survive if there was an average higher than one death for every weekend of cross country at any one venue. Some weekends ten or more horses would die across the various venues, can you imagine the outcry?

And as well as justifiably patting itself on the back for the increased efforts to rehome, racing needs to give itself a good hard stare in the face about why such a huge proportion of horses sold out of training are already broken, many beyond repair.
.
 
Fred66 said:
I would hazard a guess that far more horses suffer at the hands of leisure riders than in professional horse sports. The GN is just more prominent and visible to people.
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Even if that is true, and I'm not sure it is with the huge scale of some competition yards and breeding programmes, what's the point you're making here? Leisure horses suffer too so don't bother addressing welfare issues in horse sports?
 
equinerebel said:
Can anyone give me a single benefit running in the GN gives to the horse?

Does anyone think that if they could truly be asked, and truly understand, that any horse would agree to risking their life for human glory?

Whataboutery isn’t helpful, but I’m expecting it so, in advance, yes that can also be asked for all equine sports. This is a thread about the GN.
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The horses who run it themselves? No I don’t think I can.

But I guess folk could argue that the advancement in equine veterinary practices, medicine and research thanks to the massive money that comes from racing is benefitting not just race horses but leisure horses too. money that doesn’t come from any other source of equine sports as it’s just not there.

Does that make it morally ok? 🤷🏼‍♀️ I don’t know.
Am I thankful that my horses could benefit from it? Yeah I am if I’m being honest.
 
Peglo said:
The horses who run it themselves? No I don’t think I can.

But I guess folk could argue that the advancement in equine veterinary practices, medicine and research thanks to the massive money that comes from racing is benefitting not just race horses but leisure horses too. money that doesn’t come from any other source of equine sports as it’s just not there.

Does that make it morally ok? 🤷🏼‍♀️ I don’t know.
Am I thankful that my horses could benefit from it? Yeah I am if I’m being honest.
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I do sometimes wonder if multiple vet visits, potentially painful invasive treatments, long periods of box rest or postage stamp paddocks and still potential failure/pain from compensatory movement etc is really better for the individual horse than a year in the field and a quiet pts if they don't come right. The latter is sometimes the consequence anyway. It's also propping up a barely functional insurance industry that seems to have made vet treatment significantly more expensive and tricky to navigate. I do get people's desire not to lose a much-loved horse but if they're really broken they're broken and if they're only a bit broken there's the option of retirement to a field so that people can continue to cherish them. The trouble is, they want to ride them.
 
ycbm said:
This argument always goes the same way. "There's more suffering in livery stables".

If you have a problem that needs solving, you pick off the outliers first. In the case of the use of horses by people, jump racing is the outlier by a very, very big margin. And I will repeat myself until the whataboutery stops (which means forever) , that eventing would not survive if there was an average higher than one death for every weekend of cross country at any one venue. Some weekends ten or more horses would die across the various venues, can you imagine the outcry?

And as well as justifiably patting itself on the back for the increased efforts to rehome, racing needs to give itself a good hard stare in the face about why such a huge proportion of horses sold out of training are already broken, many beyond repair.
.
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^^^ this. Given their lifespans it's almost criminal that the thoroughbred industry breaks so many individuals when they are the equivalent of adolescents, or at conception in the case of ecvm, and then mostly expects other people to take on the expense and potential heartbreak of the next 15 years (or whatever) like they're doing us a favour.
 
Burnttoast said:
I do sometimes wonder if multiple vet visits, potentially painful invasive treatments, long periods of box rest or postage stamp paddocks and still potential failure/pain from compensatory movement etc is really better for the individual horse than a year in the field and a quiet pts if they don't come right. The latter is sometimes the consequence anyway. It's also propping up a barely functional insurance industry that seems to have made vet treatment significantly more expensive and tricky to navigate. I do get people's desire not to lose a much-loved horse but if they're really broken they're broken and if they're only a bit broken there's the option of retirement to a field so that people can continue to cherish them. The trouble is, they want to ride them.
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Agreed, the same applies to other animals too, particularly dogs.
 
ycbm said:
I think the person who did that was the one who linked human deaths as a result of humans not wanting to live boring lives with horse deaths as a result of that human desire, which they did in order to minimise horse deaths on the context of a discussion that was about horse deaths. The argument was that horse deaths are OK because people don't want to live boring lives and jockeys die too.

That was Bonny.
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I stopped commenting on this thread yesterday because it was going round in circles and it felt like nobody had anything useful to add to the discussion. I’ve no idea why you felt it necessary to add the above, it’s just made up by yourself for a silly dig at me and again adds nothing meaningful.
 
bonny said:
I stopped commenting on this thread yesterday because it was going round in circles and it felt like nobody had anything useful to add to the discussion. I’ve no idea why you felt it necessary to add the above, it’s just made up by yourself for a silly dig at me and again adds nothing meaningful.
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to be fair it's gone round in circles every year on here at about this time for as long as I can remember. Doesn't mean the debate isn't worth having, though.
 
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