Totilas even has special shoes?!

There have definately been studies done on the benefits of turn out but i will be damned if i can find any, i shall keep trawling though!!

One of the other things i remember was that if a horse was turned out for 2 hours a day then the nutritional uptake from its feed was increased by 40%!
 
There have also been studies on the detrimental effects of forcing a horse to shift its weight on its hind legs. Hock dysplasia is common in grand prix horses due to piaffe and passage etc. So their conformation counts against them to begin with. It's a much deeper argument than simply turnout.
 
Amaranta said:
I get what NM is trying to say as I feel the same way, I, personally like my horses to be out as much as possible, but we have to accept that because of the vast sums of money involved, owners of competition horses are loathe to turn out. Having had one horse break a leg and another damage a suspensory ligament from accidents in the field, I can, kind of, understand this.

UK horses are lucky in that they live in a culture which turns out their horses, on the continent it is very different and when these horses are imported, time has to be taken in introducing them to turn out.

As for Totilas, he receives the best of care and I would rather see a horse treated like him than see one abandoned to starve in a field.
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Yep.
 
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If you knew someone who kept their dog in a crate night & day just let out for a short while to do some obedience training(no free time for it to bond with another animal or human) would you be happy to see it carry on. I don't think so. A decent sized dog crate is relative to a horse in a 12 X 12 stable. Both the dog & the horse can be very valuable but they are still anilmals with pack/herd needs. Some could become very introverted, perhaps more trainable as depression can lead to not being able to think for its' self. Others could become hyper when released but neither type would be in a balanced state of mind. Certainly not happy.
 
POLLDARK said:
If you knew someone who kept their dog in a crate night & day just let out for a short while to do some obedience training(no free time for it to bond with another animal or human) would you be happy to see it carry on.
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LOL, there are threads in AAD which have advocated precisely this, and nobody seems to be shocked :p
 
FrodoBeutlin said:
No, definitely not dressage horses. Not horses which cost £500k to 1 million and are competing internationally.

Retired dressage horses, maybe.

(To be fair, I have never seen pictures of Olympic-level dressage horses grazing in a field either. The only one I have heard of was Escapado, the exception that proves the rule!)
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But they branded *you* cruel for turning your (more sensibly priced?) horse out like they didn't realise that horses *could* spend time outside of a stable and without being led/ridden by someone. Is their idea of what a horse should be so far removed from what a horse actually is that they call you cruel?

(And I'm deducing that your horse isn't a £500K-£1 million wonder horse only because you say you've never seen one grazing either and yours get to graze :))

Maybe I'll post them some DVDs ;)
 
 
No offence taken AshTay, both horses cost less than £10k! :)

The cruelty bit is because people are convinced that the horses *are* happier in a stable. You have no idea how ingrained it is!

Another anecdote -- after I moved to said high-performance yard, I was complaining about the lack of paddocks, and an old trainer of mine replied (and I quote): "Poor horse, he is working so hard now, just let him rest in his stable when he's not working!!" And she was an otherwise brilliant person (she wasn't against turnout, she encouraged people to go hacking etc). But still, she thought that a hard-working horse would be happier stuck in a stable rather than grazing ...
 
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TGM said:
Blimey, I must have missed these and I am sucker for a good old 'crate debate'! What was the justification for crating a dog so extensively?
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I saw someone getting roundly slated for this, and the Great Crate Debate is an ongoing one of course (:rolleyes::p) but I hadn't seen anyone advocate such an extreme approach without living to regret it;)
 
No TGM, I admit I exaggerated a little -- I shouldn't have gone as far as saying people were advocating that, but there have definitely been threads in AAD where a poster said their dog was crated all day and night because they were at work at night, and only let out once early in the morning, once at midday (both quick toilet breaks) and then for an hour or so at night, and that definitely did not cause the kind of uproar that Totilas' lifestyle has caused on here ;)
 
Out of interest, how do people feel about hamsters/mice/rats/gerbils/chinchillas/guinnea pigs/rabbits/birds/fish etc that get a lot less time out of their cages/tanks than Totilas does out of his stable?
 
Nocturnal said:
Out of interest, how do people feel about hamsters/mice/rats/gerbils/chinchillas/guinnea pigs/rabbits/birds/fish etc that get a lot less time out of their cages/tanks than Totilas does out of his stable?
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I hate to see birds in cages and i dont like seeing any animal in an enviroment that is not stimulating.

I am presuming though that the hamsters\mice\rats\gerbils etc etc are not put under the mental and physical strain that our equine athletes are :)
 
Allover said:
I hate to see birds in cages and i dont like seeing any animal in an enviroment that is not stimulating.

I am presuming though that the hamsters\mice\rats\gerbils etc etc are not put under the mental and physical strain that our equine athletes are :)
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Interesting, thanks. So you feel that its because they're working animals that they need chillout time, and they get that best by being turned out? Is it the freedom to run/buck/roll etc, or the interaction with other horses that is most important, do you think?
 
An interesting photo: an article in Reiter Revue (one of the biggest equestrian magazines in Germany) about the Classical Sales Warendorf auction (whose dressage horses are turned out in big grass paddocks daily, during the training period preceding the auction)

Tellingly, the title (in a clearly shocked tone!) reads "150k euros in the field!"

2rzvvgl.jpg
 
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