Sorry - am I missing something? What about all our beautiful T.B's that are sacrificed in the name of 'sport' every year on our racetracks. Read animal aids www.racehorsedeathwatch.com website. Click on the horses names, and see how old they are when they break down, break their necks, legs, backs, or have fatal heart attacks and have to be destroyed in front of thousands of spectators. Racing is a cruel sport. Please don't shout at me, I am just expressing my personal opinion. x
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Sorry - am I missing something? What about all our beautiful T.B's that are sacrificed in the name of 'sport' every year on our racetracks. Read animal aids www.racehorsedeathwatch.com website. Click on the horses names, and see how old they are when they break down, break their necks, legs, backs, or have fatal heart attacks and have to be destroyed in front of thousands of spectators. Racing is a cruel sport. Please don't shout at me, I am just expressing my personal opinion. x
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Maybe, but this isn't case of that is it. The horse had a haemorrage - something which isn't to do with reckless or dangerous riding.
Actually haemorrhaging, i.e loss of blood from the circulatory system, is extremely common in horses that do short fast periods of work. IMO, the source of this TBs major haemorrhaging was due to the work it was doing/has done - it has a weakness there and shouldnt be in racing, but then you can debate, it would never be alive, probably a good thing keeping in mind the amount of wastage that doesnt even get to racing. On the other hand, a load of French, dogs, cats and other inbetweeners probably wouldnt get their grub! - big circle of life thing I guess we have learnt from that paragraph
A common type is EIPH - Exercise Induced Pulmonary haemorrhaging - this is located in the lungs and effects a very high percentage of horses. Apparently racehorses (or horses in any sport) arent taken off the pitch unless bleeding from the nose is visible - as bleeding is deep in the lungs, its only visible in 5% of horses.
As the large intestine is only attached in two points to the abdominal wall (beggining and end), if i remember correctly, one of the causes of EIPH is the impact of this organ swinging (out of time) and after lots of knockin about, compressing the lungs when galloping - thats a really bad description but I thought it was pretty interesting!
A lot of people use Furosemide, (a potent diuretic - banned in a few countries regarding racing) to normalise airflow (which reduced risk of EIPH) but the drug has a few side affects include weight loss, electrolyte loss and dehydration.
..the not so long point is that there is always a cause and affect, always more going on than you and I will ever know, always people that will ignore it and always people that will oppose it, and then theres the people that just dont really care
The debates on HR is very interesting as half the people that oppose it have NO IDEA what so ever and make LUDICROUS remarks where they havnt researched at all!.. I read on a forum a while back someone remark "o they whip them and abuse them etc etc?!". If they had bothered to back up their argument they would realise that their are rules on whips and I dont think you can touch a horse more than (might be wrong here) 6 times. Now imagine how many people/kids you pass that are slapping their horse over and over again because they have plodded to a stop..? And anyway - its in the R-horses industry to keep their horses in the best possible condition. They are well looked after for the job they do.
The thing that really winds me up is when r-horse fans say..."you can take a horse to water but you cant make them drink"....Yea fair enough, they were born to run, but I dont think the horse knows how much they can be damaged by amateurs that dont understand the mechanics of their equines...therefore its our (meaning people in the industry - not biased people like me
) responsibility to ensure we do not let it get too out of hand. - putting it into perspective, there are ALOT more worse things out there than horseracing.. and we have the JClub to keep things under control - untill corruption occurs of course ..mwhaha..(getting carried away). It gives hundreds of people jobs and the chance to work along side such beautiful and well trained (for the job they are doing) animals. There is always two sides to the story and I realise I can never see the whole picture so my opinion is completely invalid, like a lot of peoples on subjects like these
Gosh I miss researching this subject! .. although the research did make me become vegetarian,...and as im intoleterant to everything,..I kinda shot myself in the foot there - haha!!